Linearsharpen D60 release version out

[Pekka]

Download from

http://photography-on-the.net/D60/LS_D60.zip

Changes to beta 2:

-----------

New conversion engine:
- more accurate colors
- no red tint problems, no red/yellow overflow problems
- very good highlight and shadow preserve in histogram
- less actual color tint alteration steps, better overall quality

-----------

New sharpening:

CONVERT + SHARPEN (HQ)
New sharpening which fixes artifacts caused by too "loose" interpolation of Canon linear conversion.
Noise is very low.
This is the preferred sharpening choice for me - it is quite slow (bearable in my 2400+ with 1GB RAM) but in my opinion worth the wait.

It produces two snapshots:

"sharpened HQ" which is default HQ sharpening. Quite like "strong" in beta 2 but better overall quality

"sharpened HQ SMOOTH" which is "sharpened HQ" with subtle edge smoothing in the end. This improves edge quality and thus removes last hints of artificial sharpening - it preserves the look of the original (unsharpened image) well.

CONVERT + SHARPEN (FAST)
Sharpening with only slight interpolation fix - much faster but will contain artifacts (there's possibly color fringing inside shadows, jaggyness on red and yellow) - fortunately on most photos you won't see those. All those errors are inherent to D60 linear files and linear sharpening is quite sensitive to pick them up.

There are no Lab color steps in sharpening any more.

-----------

NOISE REDUCTION IS NOT INCLUDED IN SHARPENING STEPS. Noise blur actions should be run separately.

For two reasons:
- with D60 there is no definitive e.g. "ISO 800" overall noise level, so you should decide for each photo how much is needed. The noise blur steps are only named by ISO to give you a clue how strong they are.
- noise blur uses Lab mode which theoretically looses some colors (in practice it does not show very easily).

-----------

"try fixing indoor yellow cast" has been adjusted for new conversion. There is also a "reduce yellows" action for alternative and additive yellow/red WB tint removal.

-----------

"result to grayscale" has been added. Only one choice, but it is quite good looking.

-----------

There is a user preset system with 5 presets for automatic variations which you may want to apply to finished photo:

A "components" action contains one changer action like "saturate +1" per line. You then copy those steps and drop them to "userdefined" 1 to 5 actions below and after that you just run "RUN USERDEFINED PRESETS" action to build all 5 presets into snapshots.


All comments are welcome.

If you use this tool per day basis and think it's useful, feel free to drop me $5 using Paypal link in http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/ - I'll drink to your health!

http://photography-on-the.net/D60/CRW_0833_RT16_a.jpg

http://photography-on-the.net/D60/CRW_0833_RT16_b.jpg

[Morden]

I can't wait to try this! Cheers!

[igor]

Works fine,thanks Pekka
http://jjj.image.pbase.com/u18/igor_diklic/large/11762562.CRW_2766L.jpg (paste the url to new browser to open it)

[Morden]

[If you use this tool per day basis and think it's useful, feel free to drop me $5 using Paypal link in http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/ - I'll drink to your health!
I was very happy to donate to such a wonderful cause as drinking to my health! But, seriously, your action is a great help, and I'm glad to contribute, as long as you keep up the good work. :)

[Persio]

Pekka,

Could you please verify if there is a problem with "Reduce Yellows"? I get a black image after running this action on a converted image.

Double thanks,
Persio.

[dohara]

Excellent job Pekka, you help make all of us look good.
I will gladly make a donation.

Dennis

[Thomas]

Excellent job Pekka.

The HQ sharpening action delivers much better results than the LP_Batch. Congratulations!

Regards,

Thomas

[JC Barker]

Pekka,

Great action. Is there anything special I need to do to run this under the Automate/Batch section? When I try this it comes up with command errors.

Thanks for any help.

JC Barker

[Pekka]

Persio wrote:
Pekka,

Could you please verify if there is a problem with "Reduce Yellows"? I get a black image after running this action on a converted image.

Double thanks,
Persio.



Yep, sorry about that. It tries to use a setting from a file that does not exist. I'll upload a fixed version soon (I'll first see other comments and see what else should be fixed).

[Persio]

Pekka,

Thanks again.
I tested the release version on several of my D30 files and found the results on the pale side, specially for skin tones. I understand this action is aimed at D60 users but I love it so much I will use it for my D30 files.
I find the "Convert+Sharpen HQ" oustanding for D30 files except for the pale skin tone issue. The sharpening is fantastic. Is there a tweak that you can suggest for warming up the skin tones?
I find the "Convert+Sharpen Fast" to be inadequate for D30 files. The sharpening is too aggressive.

Regards,
Persio.

[brian k]

I'm sure once I get the hang of this it will be a very useful tool,but could you give me an idiot's guide to using it properly please?
When I check the Convert and Sharpen HQ. box there's dozens of other actions automatically checked also.Are these all necessary? or can I cancel some to make the action a lot quicker.

brian k

[who10]

Pekka,

Like so many others I really appreciate your tools. They have given me a tremendous leap forward learning to use PS7 with the D60.

With regard to “Persio’s” comments, I agree on the “aggressiveness” of the final release. The three images at this link applied LS_D60 (the tigers use beta 2 because the released sharpen affect was too strong). I have actually been comparing results on several files. Tonight I’ll drop down sample of LS_D60 output from one of the tigers to demonstrate the difference.

http://home.attbi.com/~who10/wsb/html/view.cgi-photos.html-.html

As a side I tend to use "auto levels" in PS7 right after running LS_D60. That seems to counter the "paleness" described by a couple of users.

Best Regards.
David

[Pekka]

who10 wrote:
Pekka,

Like so many others I really appreciate your tools. They have given me a tremendous leap forward learning to use PS7 with the D60.

With regard to “Persio’s” comments, I agree on the “aggressiveness” of the final release. The three images at this link applied LS_D60 (the tigers use beta 2 because the released sharpen affect was too strong). I have actually been comparing results on several files. Tonight I’ll drop down sample of LS_D60 output from one of the tigers to demonstrate the difference.

http://home.attbi.com/~who10/wsb/html/view.cgi-photos.html-.html

As a side I tend to use "auto levels" in PS7 right after running LS_D60. That seems to counter the "paleness" described by a couple of users.

Best Regards.
David


Thanks David,

Auto levels just tops level of each color channel. It's usually only luck to get anything good out of it :)

I'll put out version 1.01 in day or two. There are fixes to colors, saturation and snapshot system. I got Breezebrowser and have tested on files produced by it.

I think I tried too hard to please all those who commented on beta 2 and that drove my goals off the "correct path" - which is IMHO "do it primarily to my own liking and offer variations that will suit most other tastes, too". Also, it does not seem to be a good idea on relying people choosing correct correction steps after conversion (that is why the result in release version is "pale", it is sort of a mould image) - next version will offer more vivid colors from the start and hopefully its results won't need much editing at all. There will be a chooser for different brightness and saturation levels among other things so you can see right away what matches your taste.

If you need weaker sharpening that can be done, but while waiting try running "masked_gb" once or twice on sharpened photo and see if that softens it a bit.

Also, make sure that you process only linear files that have sharpening OFF.

[who10]

Thanks Pekka,

I took your advice and ran masked gausion blur twice and it cleaned up the image really well. What I especially like about the release version of LS_D60 is that it softened the moire in the long whiskers - then applying the masked_gb polished things up nicely.

This tool is a pleasure to work with...


David

As a side I color balanced by hand this time (no auto levels!), and did recheck my linear settings to be sure I hadn't inadvertantly pre-sharpened the frame. For those interested I put this image on my link as well.

[gisele]

Also, make sure that you process only linear files that have sharpening OFF.


pekka,
about the above statement: i'm new to all of this and am trying to get a good understanding of it all.

when you say linear files, do you mean tiff or jpeg files? not RAW files?

(I just bought YarcPlus Converter to use to convert my RAW files to tiff or jpeg.)

[Persio]

Pekka,

Thanks again for your efforts.
Let me offer a comment on pleasing photographs.
The colors and hue of a photograph of a non-human subject can be easily accepted by viewers because one has not seen what the photographer saw when taking the picture.
The colors and hue of human subjects are a totally different story because all of us can easily relate to the tones of human skin, even when we are talking about people of different races.
You are attempting a very difficult task of pleasing various photographers who are interested in the results of your efforts. In my humble opinion human subjects offer the best and most challenging benchmark for color adjustment.

Regards to all,
Persio.

[Yavor74]

I'll send Gisele the basic over-view of linear processing.

Oh, by the way...the new LS produces the most incredible blues I've ever seen.

Bob
PS: This LS really works well with Yarc+'s ARF...

[SteveCliff]

Pekka wrote:
feel free to drop me $5 using Paypal link in http://photography-on-the.net/D30/linear/ - I'll drink to your health!



Donation on it's way .... thank you for your hard work Pekka!

[Glantz]

Can anyone help?

When using Pekkas new Linearsharpen, I get an error
saying " finding edges Scratcdisks full"

One my c-disk I have 840 MB free space

I`m running on a portable Celeron 700Compaq
WIN ME 192MB onboard Ram

Thank you

drglantz

[Persio]

Glantz,

A good portion of the space you have available on drive C is used by Windows as virtual memory, specially since you have very little RAM (192MB) to run a very heavy application as Photoshop.

Try cleaning-up your drive C to leave more room for Photoshop and plan on increasing the memory of your computer.

For serious Photoshop work you will need to consider a more powerful computer.

Regards,
Persio.

[robertwgross]

For editing some of these large image files, you really need a computer with some "horsepower". When I purchased my newest computer in November, the clock speed was roughly six times faster than the previous machine, and the memory was 512MB. I could not envision that any image editing could ever need that much power.

Here just two months later, I've already increased the memory up to 1GB, and that speeds slide scanning noticeably. The image editor program can carry four images where it could only carry one previously before it went to virtual memory.

So, if you have large image files and you value your time, consider more computer resources.

That is the thing about new computers. They allow us to make mistakes much faster than ever before.

---Bob Gross---

[henkbos]

Glantz,

Buy another PC! Notebooks are not the best for editing. I have a desktop and a notebook but will NEVER edit on a notebook or even comment on pictures of others while viewing on a notebook. Screen is just not up to it.

Stack your PC with RAM, the more the better, but expensive on a laptop. Disk space cost next to nothing for a desktop, I have in total about 100GB.

Good luck,

Henk

[robertwgross]

Let me second what Henk just stated.

A laptop computer is OK if you must remain portable.

However, for much serious work, you will find the laptop to be a PITA. You can mitigate that somewhat. Fill it up with lots of disk and lots of memory. You may find the pointer control poor, so you may be able to plug in an external pointer such as a mouse. You may be able to plug in an external CRT monitor, but you will still be fighting the limitations of the laptop's video electronics.

A laptop is tolerable in a desktop situation, but not for long.

---Bob Gross---

[sanford]

Sorry, this might be dumb but is this also for mac users?

[Thomas]

glantz wrote:
Can anyone help?

When using Pekkas new Linearsharpen, I get an error
saying " finding edges Scratcdisks full"

One my c-disk I have 840 MB free space



I have 512 MB of memory and anything less than 1 GB of space on the hard drive will give me the same error.

Erase from your disk the stuff you do not use.

Measure how long it takes you to process Pekka's "Convert and Sharpen HQ" action.

Regards,

Thomas

[jimd]

This works even better than the two beta versions of
Linear Sharpen for the D60 that I've tried.

Pekka, Thanks!

I have encountered one problem.
I've not been able to get 'Reduce Yellows' to work.
The action runs a bit and hangs on a black
screen.

Has anyone else encountered this?
Any hints to what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks,
JimD

[bjku]

Thank you so much, Pekka.

I have been waiting for it...
Thanks again...

- bjku

[brian k]

Just before the Convert+Sharpen HQ action is completed I get a message telling me Smooth not available.
Can you explain this please?

Brian k

[neil_r]

brian k wrote:
Just before the Convert+Sharpen HQ action is completed I get a message telling me Smooth not available.
Can you explain this please?

Brian k

Me too, Using Photoshop 6.0

Neil

[drandy]

neil_r wrote:
brian k wrote:
Just before the Convert+Sharpen HQ action is completed I get a message telling me Smooth not available.
Can you explain this please?

Brian k

Me too, Using Photoshop 6.0

Neil


Can you use Pekka's program with Photoshop 6.0? I thought it was only for 7.0?

[neil_r]

Just Installed 7.01 and still get the "Smooth not available" message ??

Neil

[brian k]

I'm using PS7 also and still getting Smooth not available

[Pekka]

brian k wrote:
I'm using PS7 also and still getting Smooth not available

That's a bug. Fixed in 1.01 (I'll try to post it in couple of hours).

[lozoyad]

Donation is on its way Pekka!

[nnmmaa]

Thanks for this software.
Please explain the best way to resize D60 raw file (e.g. to 13x19 in) in the work flow of LS

[Pekka]

Here's version 1.01:

http://photography-on-the.net/D60/LinearSharpen_D60_101.zip

Some changes here and there, new chooser for brightness and saturation. Very effective ISO 1000 noise reduction.

More tomorrow (it's 4 am here...)

About resizing D60 raw file to e.g. to 13x19: I made some tests and to me just resizing HQ sharpened photo gives best results. You could always resize before sharpening, but that would need completely new sharpening settings. I'll investigate....

[Thomas]

drandy wrote:
Can you use Pekka's program with Photoshop 6.0? I thought it was only for 7.0?


I tried it with Photoshop 6.0 and it works very well.
I did not encounter any problems with "smooth ..." during the HQ sharpening.

Regards,

Thomas

[igor]

Hi ,Pekka I'll think that first LS_D60 have more
accurate colours,LS_D60_101 is oversaturated.
http://space.virgilio.it/igor_diklic@tin.it/LS/CRW_2152L%20copy2.jpg
http://space.virgilio.it/igor_diklic@tin.it/LS/CRW_2152L%20copy.jpg
Ig®

[brian k]

Smooth works fine now.Thanks
New problem -I've just converted one of my images which looks great apart from the fact there is a black fringing round part of the subjects head.
It 's a portrait with a white background.
Any fixes for this within the LSD60 1.01 or will it be the painstaking job of removing it with the pad and pen?

[Persio]

I have tested the latest release LS_1.01 on my D30 images and unfortunatelly the sharpenning is still way too agressive for these files. The HQ option is much better (for obvious reasons) but still not adequate for D30 images. It generates strong halo on the edges of objects in the image.
Pekka may have changed somewhat the sharpenning process because I did not notice this with version 1.00. My comment on version 1.00 was the paleness on the colors, which has been much improved with version 1.01.

Thanks Pekka,
Persio.

[Pekka]

brian k wrote:
Smooth works fine now.Thanks
New problem -I've just converted one of my images which looks great apart from the fact there is a black fringing round part of the subjects head.
It 's a portrait with a white background.
Any fixes for this within the LSD60 1.01 or will it be the painstaking job of removing it with the pad and pen?

Can you mail me the RAW and I'll see how it behaves?

[Pekka]

Persio wrote:
I have tested the latest release LS_1.01 on my D30 images and unfortunatelly the sharpenning is still way too agressive for these files. The HQ option is much better (for obvious reasons) but still not adequate for D30 images. It generates strong halo on the edges of objects in the image.
Pekka may have changed somewhat the sharpenning process because I did not notice this with version 1.00. My comment on version 1.00 was the paleness on the colors, which has been much improved with version 1.01.


Yes the sharpening is slightly changed in each version, for D60 images, and I will try to improve that part with each release.

As this is for D60 I have not tested it with D30 so results with it can be anything. If I have time I'll add sharpening choice for D30, too.

[Persio]

"As this is for D60 I have not tested it with D30 so results with it can be anything. If I have time I'll add sharpening choice for D30, too."

Pekka,

Adding a D30 sharpening choice would be fantastic.
Thank you very much.

Persio.

[Pekka]

igor wrote:
Hi ,Pekka I'll think that first LS_D60 have more
accurate colours,LS_D60_101 is oversaturated.

Well, generally people complained (and I see it too) that even previous version was accurate it did look pale and skin color was not what people expect to see. That is why this version has deeper colors right after conversion. Color accuracy is in my opinion better in 1.01 (their RGB and CMYK values are much purer).

I like this color version better as it gives output which generally does not need any processing at all (apart from noise reduction for higher ISO), and it lacks a the slight blue tint previous version had.

If you want to reduce saturation from the result of conversion every time, you could for example open action "...saturation +5" and copy channel mixer inside it to the end of action "post". A second way is to disable third channel mixer in "post". Feel free to alter it to your personal preferences.

I'm going to keep a small pause in color editing and concentrate on sharpening in next versions. But gradually we're getting there :) But because I'm not working with hue/saturation but with channel mixers, making changes to one specific hue is nearly impossible and it all affects everything. Good saturated and "open" skin color means that you mayget more cyan in blues, for example. And just adding saturation to certain conversion (like release version) may clip yellows and reds and produce odd skin hues.

Here's the color progression between versions:

PREVIEW ("darker" applied 3 times):
Reported problems: red skin color, reds oversaturated, problems in cyan

http://photography-on-the.net/D60/LShistory/preview-(darker-3x).jpg

BETA 2:
Reported problems: too dark top curve, magenta/red skin

http://photography-on-the.net/D60/LShistory/beta-2.jpg

RELEASE:
Reported problems: pale, yellow too light (and green muddy)

http://photography-on-the.net/D60/LShistory/release.jpg

1.01 (brightness -5, saturation 0):

http://photography-on-the.net/D60/LShistory/101-brightness--5-sat-0.jpg

1.01 (brightness -5, saturation -5):

http://photography-on-the.net/D60/LShistory/101-brightness--5-sat--5.jpg

[rnb1]

I use PS 7 on a mac running OS 10.2.3. I, like at least one other person who posted above, would very much like a step by step guide to using this action.

For example, the only RAW conversion utility available to me is the Canon File Viewer Utility. What settings should I use? When I import into photoshop, should I assign a profile, or leave un-color managed and let the action take care of it? How are the user defined actions defined? Are some settings preferable to others?

When I have tried the action so far (linear convesion from File Viewer), the result seems unduly bright.

Are there different sharpening settings depending on the type of image (i.e. landscape versus portrait)

Thanks for any help.

[mskad]

100% crops of the same image.

Technical data:
=========

Image info:
----------------

ISO 400
D60 with 70-200 f/4 L

Canon Raw Decoder parameters:
---------------------------------------------
Tiff 16bits
Sharpening to 'No'
Color balance to 'Daylight'
False color filter checked

PowerShovel parameters:
-----------------------------------
Gamma=1.0

Color table: used my own tif file. See this post for details: here (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=4326775)

'Smoothing' filter on
Sharpening: 1(radius)/800(intensity)/40(control)/20(edge)

Pekka's LS D60:
----------------------
Used HQ action
showing 'SMOOTH' snapshot
Did brightness +1 twice

Here is the result:
===========

Pekka's LS D60:
http://genji.image.pbase.com/u20/mskad/upload/12136981.pekka_lsd60_HQ.jpg
PowerShovel II with SharpControl:
http://genji.image.pbase.com/u20/mskad/upload/12136983.powershovel_sharpcontrol.jpg

Comments are welcome...

Mskad.

[Persio]

mskad,

Your pictures did not show...

[mskad]

Don't know what this is? The pictures are hosted at PBase and sometime it's just slow...

Sorry,
Mskad.

[Pekka]

I took the privilege to take img tags off mskad's message as pbase forbids external linking and so prevents embedding photos, now you can see the photos by clicking the link.

A comment to LS vs. Powershovel comparison what mskad offers:

LS uses _only_ what Photoshop 6 has to offer in 16-bit mode (plus what current linear converters output), and Powershovel is a dedicated application using some patented (i.e "ripped"?) sharpening algorithms, so comparison is hardly appropriate, is it? Let me quote from http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1021&message=4117488:

"I use the same algorithm in software that is sold for a premium price (for medical/biotechnology applications). Therefore, I am reluctant to disclose how I am doing it. You never know who is listening...

Vtie"

PS. In my opinion LS is doing pretty well in comparison anyways :)

[mskad]

Hi Pekka,

Not only LS D60 is "doing pretty well" but I would say it is excellent!

And yes, the sharpening part of PowerShovel II (SharpControl) has somehow an odd licensing policy.

Actually, I think that a LS D60 action working on David Coffin's crw.c raw converter (on which PowerShovel is based on) would rock.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your awesome work.

Mskad.

[Pekka]

mskad wrote:
Hi Pekka,

Not only LS D60 is "doing pretty well" but I would say it is excellent!

And yes, the sharpening part of PowerShovel II (SharpControl) has somehow an odd licensing policy.

Actually, I think that a LS D60 action working on David Coffin's crw.c raw converter (on which PowerShovel is based on) would rock.

Yes, That looked really good when I checked it - the big problem in D60 RAW (as has always been with Canon) is the no-so-good interpolation in conversion that is apparently provided with SDK. When you do linear (or any strong) sharpening straight to it you get tons of color fringing, jaggyness and other odd stuff which LS tries to fight with its own slow method of adding aliasing effect.

[Pekka]

rnb1 wrote:
I use PS 7 on a mac running OS 10.2.3. I, like at least one other person who posted above, would very much like a step by step guide to using this action.

For example, the only RAW conversion utility available to me is the Canon File Viewer Utility. What settings should I use? When I import into photoshop, should I assign a profile, or leave un-color managed and let the action take care of it? How are the user defined actions defined? Are some settings preferable to others?

When I have tried the action so far (linear convesion from File Viewer), the result seems unduly bright.

Are there different sharpening settings depending on the type of image (i.e. landscape versus portrait)

Thanks for any help.

See http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7640

[Persio]

mskad,

I get a FORBIDDEN error message when trying to access your images in pbase. What should I do? since apparently Pekka was able to see them.

In a previous message you mention David Coffin's crw.c raw converter. Where is this converter used? I use BreezeBrowser which I believe is based on Canon SDK.

Thanks,
Persio.

[rnb1]

Pekka,

Thanks for the link. I'll give it a try.

Can you tell me if there is any difference between the Canon Mac and PC software that I should take into consideration. Also, I have been using the newer File Viewer to convert instead of the Raw Image Converter in the original software package.

[mskad]

Persio wrote:
mskad,

I get a FORBIDDEN error message when trying to access your images in pbase. What should I do? since apparently Pekka was able to see them.

In a previous message you mention David Coffin's crw.c raw converter. Where is this converter used? I use BreezeBrowser which I believe is based on Canon SDK.

Thanks,
Persio.



Don't know what's wrong. Works fine with me.

Anyway, you might wanna have a look
here (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=4327038)

About David Coffin's raw converter: it's a free, non commercial raw converter that works with almost anything that can produce raw files: Canon G1,G2,G3 D30, D60, 1D .... but also Nikon, Sigma and others. The code (ANSI C) is freely available and you can tweak it if you want!

Some other folks are using his code in different tools. The most significant I am aware of is the very good PowerShovel II.

And yes, Breeze and Yarc are using the Canon SDK.

Hope this help,
Mskad.