Hi
New to the forum other than as a guest. Anything to choose (preference) between InFocus and FocusMagic for detail sharpening?
Hi,
FocusMagic tends to produce fewer artifacts, but InFocus can also achieve great results if used with care (=proper radius).
FocusMagic is a mature product which produces excellent results. It is relatively good at keeping the noise and detail separated (it even has settings for film scans), although low noise image sources will always give the best results (modest denoising before sharpening always helps with deconvolution).
InFocus allows to combine deconvolution with a more common type of sharpening and micro contrast boost in the same procedure. I'm hoping that the next version of InFocus will allow some additional user control, like user generated Point Spread functions (PSF) and maybe alternative deconvolution algorithms to choose from. Sometimes the estimated (based on actual image content) deconvolution method works quite well. I've also found that InFocus works well with upsampled image content, to compensate for upsampling blur.
It would be nice if Capture One would consider some improvements to its sharpening functionality, although they may assume that for additional post-processing people will already use Photoshop or other external tools and investing R&D into that functionality will not pay off enough.
It would be a pity if PhaseOne leaves it at what it is, because things like the already implemented sharpness fall-off correction can be a real bonus if combined with state-of-the-art sharpening. Also, the process of Capture sharpening is something that should be tied in with Raw conversion, maybe even at the demosaicing level, and can use input from the EXIF data to assist the user in selecting the best settings. Sharpening also ties in with the distortion and keystone correction, and with general output resampling functionality. There's enough benefit to be had from improving the sharpening quality, and it might be yet another reason to choose Capture One as one's main Raw converter.
Cheers,
Bart