Leaf Capture - Extra Crispy please!

[bradleygibson]

I find the previews generated by Leaf Capture to be oversharpened, unless I'm zoomed in on a file to 100%.  (I figured out how to turn off default sharpening).

Does anyone know a way to get Leaf Capture to ease up on the preview sharpening?

[yaya]

I find the previews generated by Leaf Capture to be oversharpened, unless I'm zoomed in on a file to 100%.  (I figured out how to turn off default sharpening).

Does anyone know a way to get Leaf Capture to ease up on the preview sharpening?

There isn't any. A preview is a preview...
At 100% you can see the real sharpening effect

Yair

[Graham Mitchell]

I find the previews generated by Leaf Capture to be oversharpened, unless I'm zoomed in on a file to 100%.  (I figured out how to turn off default sharpening).

Does anyone know a way to get Leaf Capture to ease up on the preview sharpening?

Could you attach a screen shot? Perhaps it's not sharpening, but the resizing algorithm used.

[gazwas]

Capture One used to suffer from exactly the same issue at some point in V4. Very unrealistic sharpening at anything other than the 100% view. The issue was addressed in a point update to correct the over sharpened look. 100% view is the correct way to judge sharpness but unlike what Yair says a preview should be a preview and not a complete miss representation of the actual image.

I would log a support case about it and use Capture One if it becomes a real problem.

[bradleygibson]

Hi, Yair,

I am definitely seeing sharpening in the LC previews.  Whether it's applied as an independent step or incorporated into the interpolation algorithm (ie. bicubic sharper), it's pretty obvious--here's a sample screenshot of the default on-screen renderings for Leaf Capture  11.3.6 and LR 3.2.  Let me know what you think.

Good idea, Graham--here's an unretouched, uncompressed PNG of the same image presented side-by-side so you can see what I mean:

http://GibsonPhotographic.com/share/web/4LuLa/LCvsLR%20Previews.png

Note that LR is viewing a *_copy.mos version of the file.  This is to remove the mandatory compression the back has provided.  (Yair, any help in getting an uncompressed option in a future firmware would be very much appreciated.)

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hi, Yair,

I am definitely seeing sharpening in the LC previews.  Whether it's applied as an independent step or incorporated into the interpolation algorithm (ie. bicubic sharper), it's pretty obvious--here's a sample screenshot of the default on-screen renderings for Leaf Capture  11.3.6 and LR 3.2.  Let me know what you think.

Hi Bradley,

Thats not sharpening but aliasing artifacts caused by the downsampling (<100 zoom) on your display.

Cheers,
Bart

[yaya]

Capture One used to suffer from exactly the same issue at some point in V4. Very unrealistic sharpening at anything other than the 100% view. The issue was addressed in a point update to correct the over sharpened look. 100% view is the correct way to judge sharpness but unlike what Yair says a preview should be a preview and not a complete miss representation of the actual image.

I would log a support case about it and use Capture One if it becomes a real problem.

I think "complete miss representation of the actual image" is a bit harsh...Not sure how much experience you have with Leaf Capture but this is the first time I here of someone querying about it...

The way the preview is drawn on screen also depends on the screen resolution and how much of it the preview area actually takes. You'll notice that if you change the size of the preview area by dragging the divider, the preview will be re-adjusted and sometimes dragging it a few pixels to the left will sort things out. (this may work a little bit different between landscape and portrait images).
One thing that LC does well is generating the previews very fast (faster than any other raw converter I believe) which was done following many users' feedback. I guess that there's some trade-off here for specific magnification settings

Yair

Yair

[bradleygibson]

Hi Bradley,
Thats not sharpening but aliasing artifacts caused by the downsampling (<100 zoom) on your display.

You are correct--the second option in my statement that you quoted was referring to this, but it was overly brief.  Regardless of source, the effect is the same--the extra high frequency information makes it more difficult to judge optimal sharpness in a series of preview images without zooming in.

Thank you for setting me straight!

[bradleygibson]

I think "complete miss representation of the actual image" is a bit harsh...Not sure how much experience you have with Leaf Capture but this is the first time I here of someone querying about it...

The way the preview is drawn on screen also depends on the screen resolution and how much of it the preview area actually takes. You'll notice that if you change the size of the preview area by dragging the divider, the preview will be re-adjusted and sometimes dragging it a few pixels to the left will sort things out. (this may work a little bit different between landscape and portrait images).
One thing that LC does well is generating the previews very fast (faster than any other raw converter I believe) which was done following many users' feedback. I guess that there's some trade-off here for specific magnification settings

Yair

Yes, I think that may be a little too strong as well, but As I mentioned to Bart, it still is problematic.  It looks like, for the sake of speed, Leaf Capture uses a decimating algorithm (like nearest neighbor interpolation) to downsize.  If you offered a switch to use the old, slower way (such as bilinear) buried in preferences somewhere that didn't suffer as much from this issue, that would be great.

[yaya]

Brad you can use the Loupe tool to check focus very quickly on the thumbnails so that you don't need to select each image at a time

You can set the Loupe's size to up to 400X400 and it shows you 100% inc. whatever sharpening you have applied

Yair

[gazwas]

I'm not a Leaf user but it was enough of a problem in Capture One to change this behaviour witn an update so don't know why this should not be the case with Leaf Capture.

As far as it not being a misrepresentation I still stand by this and the examples posted above dispay this also. Over sharpening does not only effect the sarpness of the image but also the contrast, moire patterns and colour. Having to check images at 100% to check all this would soon become tiresome for me. The fit view should give you 95% of all the info you need and if it doesn't, I'd say it wasn't working properly.     

[bradleygibson]

I agree.  While I still wouldn't characterize this as a "complete misrepresentation", it's a problem that there's no need to be facing.  A fairly decent bilinear algorithm should do the trick and be fast enough.

Using the loupe doesn't really address the fundamental problem of being able to get a sense of the image as a whole (without the artificial aliasing effects).