ASking for more flexibility in sharpening options in v1.5

[manutremo]

I am preparing an Exhibition in v1.5b1. The photos come from a Canon G3 camera, shot in Raw, converted with BB (all settings neutral), and then corrected in PS with Autoeye 2.0 and Color Washer. The files are then saved in jpg with 10 quality. No resizing nor sharpening are applied.

This files are directly fed into EE. Sizes path are set as:
micro (Imagemagick 480 USM)
small (Imagemagick 640 USM)
normal (Imagemagick 800 USM)
big (Imagemagick 1024 USM)

In most cases I see that the images have been oversharpened by mogrify; in some cases the halos are very noticeable.

Inspecting the php coding, I see that depending of the size of the image, the software assigns a "$sharpness" level from 0 to 9, which is the translated into usm parameters before calling mogrify.

By tweaking with the assignation of the sharpness level (using 2-3 levels less than default), I've been able to produce good looking photos.

But obviously, sharpening depends on lots of other factor. For example, if now I try to use photos from my D30, the requiered sharpness levels may (or will) be different. Conclusion: hard coded sharpness levels / usm parameters are not practical.

So, all this is just for asking Pekka if there will be a more flexible way to tweak this parameters in the final version, in order to adapt them to different cameras, shooting modes, workflows, etc.

Thanks in advance

[Pekka]

I was about to leave this for next versions, but I see it may be important for many users to be able to tweak sharpening easily.

Today I'll add methods into database and build a "resize method editor" with preview image, so that you can build your own resize menu items for path editor. This will delay beta 2 a day, but is quite useful.

So, in beta 2 you'll be able to have path sizes like

GD 14%
IMAGEMAGICK 612 wide USM (for G3 original size)
IMAGEMAGICK 50% USM strong Q86% (for 10D PS half low is photos)

PS. Before anyone asks: I do NOT want to add resize selections and sharpening settings into upload page, as in 99% of cases galleries are based on quite fixed a workflow and daily upload should have as few steps as possible.