Sharpening Test (Systems Compared)

Everyone has a question as to what is the best sharpening system to use.

So I have three of them,4 with Photoshop and used them to sharpen the following link.

The three are
1- Miranda Intellesharpen.
2- Magic focus.
3- Photokit ( reviewed on Luminous Landscapes.

I am leaning towards Photkit because of it's ability to stack different types of sharpening as well as the ability to also sharpen for out put ( printing).

You be the judge, which one do you like, they are all close.

At this point I saw some work with Magic Focus that was awsome but I have not been able to duplicate it. I will keep trying.

http://www.pbase.com/p​hili1/sharpening

My favourite is Photokit (although it produces very big files), but often simple USM works really well.

Phili1:

Before you spend $100, you should try My TLR Sharpening Toolkit. It is a free download. The toolkit is a sophisticated Photoshop action set for sharpening images based on the same three-pass sharpening philosophy in Photokit Sharpener, although it can also be used for single-pass or two-pass sharpening. I engineered this toolkit to include the best features of commercial sharpening tools, like Focal Blade and Photokit Sharpener. Features include:

• Sharpen with Highpass Filter or USM sharpening.

• Sharpen edges and surfaces separately (or either alone).

• Sharpen light and dark pixels separately.

• Generate masks using luminosity or color boundaries or a composite of the two.

• Brush in creative sharpening/blurring.

• Blend If settings protect against sharpening highlights and shadows.

• All sharpening is done non-destructively using layers.

http://www.thelightsri​ghtstudio.com …/TLRSharpeningT​oolkit.htm

The Toolkit comes with illustrated instructions in PDF.

I also have tutorials, tips, and a learning gallery on my site to help you with sharpening. All of it is freely available to all.

http://www.thelightsri​ghtstudio.com …nYourSharpening​Skills.pdf

http://www.thelightsri​ghtstudio.com …kit/SharpeningT​oolkit.htm

http://www.thelightsri​ghtstudio.com …k/2004OCT11/200​4OCT11.htm

http://www.thelightsri​ghtstudio.com …k/2004NOV01/200​4NOV01.htm

http://www.thelightsri​ghtstudio.com …k/2004NOV29/200​4NOV29.htm

Have a happy New Years!

Cheers,

Mitch

Thanks I already paid for it.

I just added MIranda's CSPro sharpen for the 20D and it is great, does a good job.
go to the above site and let me know what you think.

Hi all,

phili1, I hope you don't mind me downloading some of your samples and adding one more to them.
Please go to this site: http://homepage.hispee​d.ch/flowe/digifoto/ro​ro_08.htm

Pictures #1-4 are phili1' samples and #5 is his #1 sharpened by other means. For most comfortable comparison, you can switch between any two pictures just as you like.

This requires JavaScript to work. If you are not too keen on this, you can download picture #5 independently from http://homepage.hispee​d.ch …to/img/flag_alt​ernate.jpg But then comparison and evaluation are not that easy and conclusive.

I'm fully aware that all samples depend on individual and arbitrary settings and these might not be the best possible, but some hints as to the different performances may still be valid.

I don't want to tell yet what tool I used to sharpen #5 - and this not for any personal or even commercial reasons. I just hope for some "blind" and unprejudiced assessment of the relative merits. If in the end you may want to know, because it work well for you, there will be no reason not to tell.

Comments?
flowe

PS: phili1, I've read your picture data: 800mm at 1/30s and ISO1600... - amazing!

Do tell, Flowe. I promise, I will not tell another soul.

What is it with the USM sample that makes it very different from the other 3 sharpening attempts?

Thanks

Flowe: I Posted this because I downloaded $200 worth of and found me questioning the people who reviewed and praised them.

I had used unsharp mask and High pass for it before. For the last three days every once in a while I go back and do different test trying to give them the benifit of the doubt.

Luminous landscapes rate Photokit no. one and someone on this forum rates Magic focus No one. And others swear by Fres Mirandas program best and I have both. I see very little difference between them. Photkit is my favorite over the others rigth now.

Now you have another system and I have to say I like yours the best. I see 2 things yours did that the others did not. The pole became sharper and the Flag smoother, a defeinite improvement over all.

I also have to say I would love to know how you did the comparison system it is awsome.

Rink Rat. I guess you like USM but I have issues with it. In my attempt I see things going on in the tree. Some people know how to use it different then I do.

What I am hoping to do is produce something for a sticky so others can benifit from it and not spend bad money. If we can come up with photoshop system we can build a tutorial for people.So jump in and help.

Flowe if you want to give us a hint it would be appreciated.

phili1: I actually like Flowe's sharpening the best. I was just wondering what is different about the USM version. Is that an example of purple fringing, or chromatic something-or-other? (or some other term I am obviously not aware of) The edges seem "brighter".

For my files, I go back & forth between High Pass, & USM. It seems like flowe's version beats both of those. If flowe would only give up the secret...

This is fairly common with strong USM. Sharpening increases contrast. More sharpening can push the contrast too much, resulting in very bright-to-dark edges - often too bright, as you're seeing here. This can be lessened and controlled better by using a duplicate layer, sharpening that, then using a Blend If on the dupe layer. (Photokit does this, as well as gmitchel's Sharpening Toolkit.) The control allowed is excellent, but of course takes more work and a bit more understanding.

I find that Fred Miranda's Intellisharpen II also pushes too much contrast far too often. FM is good for low to medium sharpening requirements IMHO, but once an image needs "a lot" (relative term) of sharpening the resulting bright edges are too much.


I have to say that I also like Flowe's version the best. But I have to add that both PhotoKit and Gmitchel's Toolkit could do the same exact thing. I have no doubt in my mind that either could reproduce the same quality of sharpening, but I'll also admit that a decent amount of knowledge, skill, and experience would be required with either. I'm very curious about Flowe's method, and extremely curious about it's ease of implementation.

Scottes: I agree and I am trying different settings but can not duplicate his results as of yet.

I am also fooling a round with selective sharpening and have gotten even better results using find edges and masks, a tutorial in photoshop help.

Any suggestions you have about using Photokit let me know.

It's been a long while since I downloaded the Photokit demo. From what I remember it seemed pretty darned intuitive to me after reading thier tutorial/help. But then again I read all of Bruce Fraser's articles on sharpening as well as the info in "Real World Photoshop CS" as well as Gmitchel's sharpening info on his web site, and I think something on Luminous Landscapes or some other site. So, at the time, I was pretty in tune to the process. "Intuitive" may not be the most accurate term...


But that was 6 months ago and I've done nothing but web images since then, so FM is about all I've used. I've got to get off my butt and attack the last 6 months of stuff to get printed....

That's not what Michael Reichmann said.

He compared Focal Blade and Photokit Sharpener and concluded:

"The obvious question is — which one is better, PK Sharpener of FocalBlade? It isn't a cop-out for me to say that neither one is better than the other. They are both at the head of the class, though they are quite different in how they are used and what they demand from the user."

Then he said this:

"If you are want the most intensive hands-on control over every possible sharpening parameter, then FocalBlade is your preferred choice. If you'd rather have a somewhat simpler approach (though not at all simple), with equally impressive final results, then PK Sharpener is the way to go. For 90% of users PK Sharpener will provide the preferred workflow and is easier to use."

As one who has written his own actions that employ the same method as Photokit Sharpener and added features (and even had the folks at Photokit borrow a couple from me) *AND* who has used PK Sharpener and owns Focal Blade, I can assure you that Photokit Sharpener is not #1. Focal Blade gives you more control. For crafting the very best image, Focal Blade is superior to PK Sharpener, IMHO. If you are serious about image quality, you want control, not generic presets, IMHO.

People have a lot more choices than PK Sharpener and Fred Miranda's plug-in.

Cheers,

Mitch

Scottes:

You are right. Sharpening is more art and craft than science. It takes a lot of practice to sharpen images sufficiently without adding unnecessary artifacts.

PK Sharpener takes less knowledge than my action sets because they do have presets. Bruce Fraser et al. invested a lot of time developing those presets. More than Fred Miranda, it seems.

Unless Fred Miranda's plug-in behaves differently than his Intellisharpen actions, all it does is a handful of USMs with progressively more aggressive settings. His customizable actions added edge masking. To use those customizable actions also requires that you know what you are doing with USM settings.

I am working on a training CD for sharpening. It will have lessons for the various techniques included in my action set and for several others, also. About 15 lessons altogether. Hopefully, it will be ready in several weeks.

Cheers,

Mitch

Well the report I read was a recent one on Photokit and I rememeber him saying that he was surprised at the advanced version and based on that he said it was one of the b est.

To answer the question and reply about USM, that is my complaint, I see some people get it to do wonderous things, but there is not one article I can find that gives a how to tutorial. It does bring up artifacts if you over sharpen it. I did find an article about using maskes and tried it but it was about the same as other methods.

My reason for this thread is to hopefully make a sticky for people to go to so they do not have to spend $300 + on software that does little or nothing.

G MItchell, you seem to know what you are doing and you might be right about his comments, I can't get on the sight to reread, but I have been know to fast read wrong.

With that said can't we some how develop something of a comparison system showing everyone just what each system can or can not do.

So far The systems I have tested ( bought) Focus Magic - Photokit _ Intellihance - Canon Cs Pro & of course USM Photoshop.

Her is my find:

Focus Magic - It lets you pick the area to adjust, with up-down adjustment clicks. It also lets you adjust panning blur ( I have not been able to figure this out yet) but in both cases slight adjustments have produced unreal photo's. It changes the whole look.

Intellehance - It makes a decent adjustment which is adjustable but the improvements are marginal.

Canon Cs pro - Is an imporovement over Intelehance but by much, I was hoping for a better one but it is cheap.

Photokit - I like it becasue you can stack the different systems of sharpening. Pro Capture lets you do adjustment to light and dark masks but I can not see a drastic difference when I do it. Then you have Creative which gives you different USM type sharpening, edge,Luminous etc.

I think the problem with the normal person using USM is they have to do it in Layers a little at a time, I will give it a try.

Meanwhile if you have anymore insight let people know.

I did find a reference to the Reichmann article:
PKS has been described as the 'the finest image sharpening product ever produced' by Michael Reichmann in his review for 'The Luminous Landscape' and it does seem to leave little room for improvement in its basic philosophy, although possibly it could use rather more automation. It would for example be possible for the capture sharpening stage to make use of EXIF data and camera model and ISO to suggest suitable possibilities for at least the more popular pro (and prosumer) digital cameras.