LinearSharpen 3.09 - 'the wishlist update'

[Pekka]

Roger, Samson, John, Griffin et al,

PC: http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/LinearSharpen_309.zip

MAC: http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/LinearSharpen_309.sit

Please remove _all_ previous 3.xx versions to ensure the 3.09 runs as expected.

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Thanks a lot for feedback and discussion!!! :)
I have read carefully all you've commented on LinearSharpen and so I have now 3.09 ready for you.

Adding more saturation took some time because I had to build increase of saturation carefully to keep all colors in dynamic range (avoid clipping).

This version has many improvements:

- sharpening in HQ or non-HQ mode (fast mode). HQ mode (which I prefer, worth the wait) uses the aliasing improvement by resampling - it's slower but you can see the quality difference to non HQ: in areas e.g. which are near bokeh edges sharpening is significantly better and more constant.

- 4 different levels of sharpening for each ISO 100-200 sharpening method

- both sharpening methods have a 'chooser'

- sharpening methods has been improved a lot (to LS 2.1 derivant) to get rid of halos

- ISO 800 sharpening has now also a low quality mode, and is very fast.

- colours have been improved a lot (better yellow purity and 'plant' green tint is corrected, blue is now ok. More overall saturation is applied)

- The resulted photo is now in AdobeRGB mode for your convinience

- grayscale chooser (3 different outputs to snapshots)[/b]

- saturation +5, +10 and -5 actions for easy changing

- You can change the last saturation setting in action "AfterShave" to suit your saturation needs

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Note that if you have very underexposed photo use the curves to bring it back to normal range after conversion. Using levels only will give you too much saturation and color shifts.

[samson]

Pekka,

Great work on 3.09! When do you sleep???

There is still a problem with blues. The other colors now have good saturation, but blues remain too bright and are over saturated.


Thanks.

[samson]

Pekka,

You mention in a prior post that converting to Lab mode alters the colors and contrast. Is this true of version 3.09? If extra sharpening is needed do you recommend not converting to lab mode, but just applying USM to the overall image?


Thanks.

[Griffin]

Oh, I don't even have tried version 3.05 very throughoutly! Thanks for the update anyway.


Regards.

[evan]

Pekka,

Thanks for your efford....can't wait to try your new action tonight :)

Great work !!!

[ianmcg]

Pekka,

I'm getting some very strange results with LS 3.09 which can only suggest that there's something broken at my end.

I photographed a test shot with a good range of smooth colours and made 4 versions as follows.

[My PS 6.0 working space is Adobe RGB and I'm using breezebrowser 1.4 to make 16 bit tifs]

1. Non linear tif, assign sRGB and convert to working space.
2. Non linear tif, assign Fred's New LC non linear profile and convert to working space.
3. Linear tif and convert with Fred's linear ICC 1.5 action [which does an Adobe RGB conversion at the end]
4. Linear tif processed with LS 3.09 convert only.


Viewing in PS files 1-3 are quite similar to each other and all very close to the original print that was photgraphed. I can hold it next to the screen and th smooth colours practically join up the edges. Naturally there are some variations between the 3 and it's a toss-up for me whether 2 or 3 is better.

However in 4 the colours so saturated that to get it looking anything like 3 (or the original) requires a saturation of reduction of -25 which I'm sure is not the idea.

Clearly something is broken but I can't see where the problem can be. I've tried turning off CM before running LS and even if I view in Thumbs+ 4 which ignores profiles it is still obvious that file 4 is miles more saturated the others.

Any ideas?

[John Boyes]

Thanks Pekka, sounds great - I will try tonight and post an update.

John

[Pekka]

ianmcg wrote:
Pekka,

I'm getting some very strange results with LS 3.09 which can only suggest that there's something broken at my end.

I photographed a test shot with a good range of smooth colours and made 4 versions as follows.

[My PS 6.0 working space is Adobe RGB and I'm using breezebrowser 1.4 to make 16 bit tifs]

1. Non linear tif, assign sRGB and convert to working space.
2. Non linear tif, assign Fred's New LC non linear profile and convert to working space.
3. Linear tif and convert with Fred's linear ICC 1.5 action [which does an Adobe RGB conversion at the end]
4. Linear tif processed with LS 3.09 convert only.


Viewing in PS files 1-3 are quite similar to each other and all very close to the original print that was photgraphed. I can hold it next to the screen and th smooth colours practically join up the edges. Naturally there are some variations between the 3 and it's a toss-up for me whether 2 or 3 is better.

However in 4 the colours so saturated that to get it looking anything like 3 (or the original) requires a saturation of reduction of -25 which I'm sure is not the idea.

Clearly something is broken but I can't see where the problem can be. I've tried turning off CM before running LS and even if I view in Thumbs+ 4 which ignores profiles it is still obvious that file 4 is miles more saturated the others.

Any ideas?






There is more saturation than in previous versions but of course as I looked it today morning it seemed too strong to me, too - depends a lot of monitor temperature and how tired your eyes are :)

Anyways, I have here a (YET ANOTHER, THEY CRY!) new version which among other things fixes problems with gold color, red continuity and saturation is not so aggressive.

"Soon on a website near you"

Pekka

[John Boyes]

Another version!!!!! I'll have half of what your drinking at the moment Pekka!

Tried 309 tonight and I think the sharpness is now the same as LS2.1 but like ianmcg, I too found that the final result was about 15 - 20 units of saturation too much.

Love the idea of the chooser and HQ modes as well, plus the 4 sharpening options should cater for most tastes. I always shoot low sharpness so the xtra-high is just about right!

Look forward to the next version....LOL!

John

[bernardoadam]

Hi Pekka,

I like to say thank you very much for such a work. Looking up the content of curves, unsharp mask etc. I saw that you do a very hard job.
I like very much the results of the sharpening action. Referring to the colour conversions please keep an eye on the face colors, there for me the version 3.09 give me to pale colors, a little bit greyish. Some oversaturation in the reds (Canon software) is done by your conversion very good.
I found in examples that green tends a little bit to blue (madow).
I hope to speak for all users of your workflows, thank you very much for your work.

Together with a colleague (same hobby) we came to the conclusion that may be there will never be a workflow which is capable to get for all different pictures an optimum result. So there will still a little bit work in PhotoShop.

[Griffin]

The file is gone! Why? Strange!


Griffin.

[richphoto]

I am finding that if I have more than 1 image open on the decktop it brings the lower one up durring the sharpening selection and then leaves it there to start over on that image .
has anyone had this happen or can you only have 1 image open

[Pekka]

Griffin wrote:
The file is gone! Why? Strange!

Griffin.

Sorry, I forgot to write about it! I'll upload a new version tomorrow.

[Pekka]

richphoto wrote:
I am finding that if I have more than 1 image open on the decktop it brings the lower one up durring the sharpening selection and then leaves it there to start over on that image .
has anyone had this happen or can you only have 1 image open

This is a problem with Photoshop's "select previous document" action command - it's a bug which is really annoying sometimes. Only cure so far is to load and process only one document at a time.

[Pekka]

I've been working with a new method combining hue adjustment curves and use them combined to hue/saturation in way which preserves color integrity and accuracy much better than hue/saturation only. The colors are now very close to Canon conversion, but with slight improvements I like to have, like getting rid of general muddyness of Canon conversion, and of especially purify those greeny yellows which affect skin tones, too.

I have now here a pretty good version of the converter, which I'm going to integrate to the sharpener 3.11 (as in 3.09) tomorrow. The conversion might still need a small yellow tweak, but I sort of like yellows warm...

Fo anyone interested, here's two full size D30 photos I took last night for comparing canon conversion (RAW Converter to 16-bit TIFF -> to AdobeRGB -> to sRGB ->8-bit -> save as JPEG max setting) and my 3.11 version conversion without sharpening (RAW to Linear TIFF -> TIFF with LS Converter to 16-bit TIFF -> to AdobeRGB -> to SRGB -> 8-bit -> save as JPEG max setting). Lens was 50mm 1.4 and I used two EX550's as infrared slaves to D30 and ST-E2.

What do you think of the colors?

Canon conversion was done on normal contrast, low sharpness and normal saturation (note that even in low sharpness it has some sharpening included, unlike LS version).

LinearConvert 3.11:
http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/CRW_4502_LS311_not_sharpened.jpg

Canon's own conversion with their own RAW image converter:
http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/CRW_4502_canon_low_s.jpg

[John - NJ]

3.11 is much better IMHO. The gold bow on the box and the golden color of the beer, the greens and yellows are all outstanding. The Canon photo is very flat. You're on to something now!

Pekka, you never fail to amaze! Thanks for the hard work.

[colin walker]

Pekka,

Just a quick question, why do you not use the channel mixer for saturation?

Colin

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My G2 & D30 16bit Linear Converter Examples:-

http://www.pbase.com/colinwalker/gallery/linear/

http://www.pbase.com/colinwalker/gallery/d30/

[ianmcg]

Pekka,

That looks a lot more like it. For me the PC magazine red colour looks so much better.

[As an interesting aside how did Mandfield bitter end up in Finland?. I did a project at the brewery years ago and spent quite a while in the place.]

Look forward to the release version.

Many thanks for all your good work.

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Pekka,

Now we know what keeps you going into the wee small hours to produce all these goodies for us. :D

I've always found the blues to be the biggest issue. The blues on the microdrive look pretty good. Of course, I could not possible comment onto the accuracy of the Foster's can. :)

I shall be checking regularly for 3.11 tomorrow until it appears.

Thanks again,

[Dale]

Roger_Cavanagh wrote:

I've always found the blues to be the biggest issue. The blues on the microdrive look pretty good. Of course, I could not possible comment onto the accuracy of the Foster's can. :)

Thanks again,

I find the overall brightness is better with 3.11. The only items I could compare colors was with the microdrive and the Heineken can. The blue and green look the same as the real items in the canon jpg. I have my monitor calibrated with ColorVisions Spyder.

Dale

[KHogan]

Hi Pekka,

It looks like you're definitely getting very close. I have to concur with Roger and Dale about the blues. As I mentioned in another reply, it's been the blues that have been my biggest pre-occupation so that's what I looked the most closely at in your latest example here. In both images (Canon jpg and Linear converted) they look good but they are different. I think that the difference is likely enough to make a difference. Also to my eyes, the colour of the yellow gift package is quite different between the two images with the converted one looking to have a bit more green in it. This may be what's also happening with the blues?

I will be very interested in trying out your latest version. Your incredible efforts on this are amazing. Thanks so much for spending all this time for us!!

Regards,
Kharim

[Dale]

Dale wrote:

I find the overall brightness is better with 3.11. The only items I could compare colors was with the microdrive and the Heineken can. The blue and green look the same as the real items in the canon jpg. I have my monitor calibrated with ColorVisions Spyder.

Dale



Further to the above I downloaded the two jpg files and made a print of each. The blue and green of the microdrive and Heineken are closer to the real items in the print of the canon converted jpg however the canon jpg has is a lot of noise compared to 3.11 jpg. The files were printed on a Epson 1270 printer using Epson premium glossy photo paper for which I have custom profiles.
Keep up the good work Pekka it is really appreciated that you are making your action files available to us.
Dale

[mbvt]

311 already? Sjeez, you're on a roll! I was just rounding off my experiments on 309

Personally, I think there's too much '(red-)copper' color in your version of the image. Look at the Lipton tea box on the right for example, or the beer-bottle on the left. The Canon version is a bit more neutral.

I have this with 309 as well, btw. This especially shows on deer/lions/ducks/etc., you get the idea.

Other than that, this is a great kit; I especially like the chooser principle.

gr. Michel

PS I also like the B/W chooser. Are they digidaan's channel mixtures by any chance, or did you invent your own?

[mbvt]

Another item on my wishlist would be something to fight against the fairly strong cutoffs in reds that appear in ls309 (and to a lesser extent ls21).

See here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~mbvt/images/cutoff1.jpg
and here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~mbvt/images/cutoff2.jpg

All images were converted Adobe Rgb-> sRgb, or WideGamut -> Adobe Rgb -> sRgb.

Both ls309 images were "normal sharpening, HQ", btw.

gr. Michel

[Pekka]

colin walker wrote:
Pekka,

Just a quick question, why do you not use the channel mixer for saturation?


Who said I haven't? :) You are correct that channel mixer produces much more even saturation increase than hue/saturation dialog.

[Pekka]

ianmcg wrote:
Pekka,

That looks a lot more like it. For me the PC magazine red colour looks so much better.

[As an interesting aside how did Mandfield bitter end up in Finland?. I did a project at the brewery years ago and spent quite a while in the place.]

Look forward to the release version.

Many thanks for all your good work.

Thanks,

In Helsinki you can find most esoteric beers in most grocery stores and from Alko (the official booze shop). I usually try all I see, and there have been some very strange ones like organic beer, Monty Python beer and this Mandfield. It had a really strange flavour I've never tasted (in a beer), but it was quite good.

Cheers,

Pekka

[Pekka]

Dale wrote:
Roger_Cavanagh wrote:

I've always found the blues to be the biggest issue. The blues on the microdrive look pretty good. Of course, I could not possible comment onto the accuracy of the Foster's can. :)

Thanks again,

I find the overall brightness is better with 3.11. The only items I could compare colors was with the microdrive and the Heineken can. The blue and green look the same as the real items in the canon jpg. I have my monitor calibrated with ColorVisions Spyder.

Dale



I'm interested to hear how 3.11 works and looks on you system:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2170

[Pekka]

mbvt wrote:
Another item on my wishlist would be something to fight against the fairly strong cutoffs in reds that appear in ls309 (and to a lesser extent ls21).

See here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~mbvt/images/cutoff1.jpg
and here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~mbvt/images/cutoff2.jpg

All images were converted Adobe Rgb-> sRgb, or WideGamut -> Adobe Rgb -> sRgb.

Both ls309 images were "normal sharpening, HQ", btw.

gr. Michel

This is corrected in 3.11 release version: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2170

It's a strange phenomenon, and it seems to be part of Photoshop's hue/saturation dialog processing and heavy curve processing. Those dots gave me a program error when I tried to select them with a picker tool from hue dialog! They must be byproducts of some internal calculation rounding bug.

[Pekka]

mbvt wrote:
311 already? Sjeez, you're on a roll! I was just rounding off my experiments on 309

Personally, I think there's too much '(red-)copper' color in your version of the image. Look at the Lipton tea box on the right for example, or the beer-bottle on the left. The Canon version is a bit more neutral.

I have this with 309 as well, btw. This especially shows on deer/lions/ducks/etc., you get the idea.

Other than that, this is a great kit; I especially like the chooser principle.

gr. Michel

PS I also like the B/W chooser. Are they digidaan's channel mixtures by any chance, or did you invent your own?

Hi Michel,

Yellows are now canon-like in 3.11 release version: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=2170

Pekka