Sharpened=pale??

[Mark D Segal]

FWIW I've just run a 1.42gb pano  80013 px x 3188px through PS CS4 on Win 7 64 bit and using PKS2 took two minutes to capture sharpen and generated a 6.6gb layered file.
So no problem with big files and PKS2 here.

Likewise the largest file I ever sharpened with PKS was a 1.1GB panorama operating on Mac OSX (10.6.8 in those days) with 24 GB RAM and 24 virtual cores. I don't recall how long it took, but it worked fine - it didn't crash and the results are both sharp and natural looking.

[Hening Bettermann]

A seeming problem turned into a discovery

During my tests for sharpening, it occured to me, that the preview in Iridient, scaled to screen size, looked much sharper than the output, viewed in PhotoLine, scaled to screen size. I wrote to Brian Griffith (author of Iridient) and learned, that the scaling algorithm plays a HUGE role, and that at 100%, the images should look the same, and yes they did.

After a while, I remembered, that Iridient, of course, uses its algorithm (Ultra Rez Sharper in my choice) not only for scaling the preview, but also for the saved output.

My (capture) sharpening procedure was upscaling with Photozoom Pro's S-spline Max algorithm, then sharpening with Iridient's Reveal.

So: if I used Iridient both for upscaling and sharpening, would the result be even better? And YES it was! Also I found out that the sharpening radius needed was much lower this way, 1 instead of 3 in the example. However, colors are a little desaturated, which is easily fixed with a saturation adjustment layer.

Side benefit: Saving the 1.28 GB TIF upscaled in  PZP, unsharpened, takes about 5 minutes; sharpened with Extra Detail, it takes 9 minutes. Saving the upscaled+sharpened image in Iridient takes about 45 seconds! So the time for adding the adjustment layer is saved in on beforehand ;-)

Screen shots:
1-upscaled in PZP with S-Spline Max, sharpened with preset 'Extra Detail'
2-upscaled like 1, sharpened in Iridient with Reveal, radius 3, Edge Detail 1, Micro Detail 25
3-upscaled with Iridient's Ultra Rez Sharper, sharpened with Reveal, radius 1, Edge Detail 1, Micro Detail 25.
4-3+adjustment layer for saturation

All screen shots at print size, that is upscaled to 225%. Note: in case you want to try for yourself, don't get confused: The image scaled+sharpened in Iridient looks grossly oversharpened - at 100%. 

The fine print:
I have not done near enough testing of the software mentioned in this post. In case you draw any conclusions or try it yourself, you do so at your own risk, including the risk that your computer may explode when using the software. ;-)
Disclaimer:
I have no affiliation with Brian Griffith other than that I have been a very satisfied customer through many years. - For the time being, I hold some warranties in Adobe.

Good light!