found a sharpening action for photoshop

[Grady69]

Found this sharpening action for photoshop on Deviantart.com called Mansyk SRS Here is 2 pics i tried with it, please tell me what you think, Please?

[Robert_Lay]

It's completely pointless without having the originals for side-by-side comparison.

[Grady69]

Sorry i shouldve known that ill get the originals posted soon

[Radtech1]

Well, they don't look not sharp, so I guess it works. At this resolution, I don't see any sharpening artifacts, so I guess it works well enough for this resolution.

Rad

EDIT:

By the way, both shots are apealing. Only small nits. The little leaf in the forground on the cat shot should go - (cute kitty) and the blue areas on the Joy shot should be toned down.

[Grady69]

Ok here is the originals they were just converted to jpeg and resized to post no PP at all. Hope this helps this time.

[Reverend]

Just looks like a pretty standard unsharp mask to me.

[dkorr]

might be better to sharpen in RAW

[Robert_Lay]

Tnx for posting the originals!

The sharpened images do have what I would call an enhanced local contrast. There is a difference between that and "sharpness", but don't ask me to explain it, because I haven't researched that issue in detail. The only explanation that I can offer is that I expect "sharpening" to manifest itself primarily in the boundaries between scene elements, whereas enhanced contrast manifests itself across all areas of a scene, regardless of whether it's a boundary between scene elements or not.

I realize that may still sound a little fuzzy (unsharp), but that is the best I can do at the moment.

Another question might be, does it make the sharpened image noticeably better to the casual observer? I would have to say "no".

Now, how can we explain such a disappointing result?

I think you have to take into account that we are still not looking at the renditions that we must use in order to evaluate the sharpening process. The sharpening was applied either before or after the downsizing. I have no way to know which way it was done (and I should have thought of that before asking you to post the un-sharpened versions.

If the sharpening is applied to the downsized images, it is of little to no value, because it has to be applied to the native JPG image as it came from the camera. (I am assuming these were not RAW images). If you make actual prints at large magnifications, such as 8" x 10", or better yet , 16" x 20", that is where you might see a more significant difference. So long as we are looking at these 0.7 MP images, we are not going to see as much difference as we would at higher resolutions, such as at the native resolution of the JPG file coming from the camera (6.3 MP).

Sory to nickel and dime you like this, but as usual, simple questions do not have simple answers.

[Grady69]

Well I did the shapening action in raw then converted to jpeg. But anyway it doesnt always want to work when you start up CS4, even if i reset actions and reload it, so it has issues. So I just went back to using Lonestardigital.com's Texas-Two step action it seems to do what I need just fine. Im sure there is better
out there, I just havent been out there to try other actions. Thanks for the responses, they were greatly appreciated
Grady69