JPG-sharpening in PM5 to aggressive

[Micha]

I appreciate the new interface in PM5 very much and of course some new functions in the iptc dialog! Thank you for this ;-)

But when I click "sharpening" while saving and compressing my original JPGs I think this is far too aggressive. I would like to have a slider, to control it much better ... or to reduce the "standard"-sharpening.

Would be fine to have a look on this.

Nice Greetings
Micha

[pshrutpark]

I appreciate the new interface in PM5 very much and of course some new functions in the iptc dialog! Thank you for this ;-)

But when I click "sharpening" while saving and compressing my original JPGs I think this is far too aggressive. I would like to have a slider, to control it much better ... or to reduce the "standard"-sharpening.

Would be fine to have a look on this.

Nice Greetings
Micha

+1

A slider would be very useful.

I often find I have to turn sharpening off when exporting grey scale JPGs. Otherwise the images are brittle.
 

Peter

[Soizic]

+1

[gvadf]

THis is, what I noticed to.
It would be very helpful to have a chance to adjust the strength of sharpening!
Now, the function is useless, because to intense.
Guenter

[bjornh]

I agree. The sharpening seems to bit more aggressive than PM 4.6

I would also like to raise a suggestion I had earlier regarding sharpening of previews. I like to have it on since it gives me a better view on the final image but I would like to easily see if I have the option turned on as well as easily toggle it on/off (sometimes my images are already sharpened). Something similar to the "Perform color matching icon" in the top right.

[Micha]

My Posting is one month old and there is still no answer from camerabits, why???

[Kirk Baker]

Micha,

My Posting is one month old and there is still no answer from camerabits, why???

What you're requesting is something we'd like to do but it has a much lower priority than Cataloging.

I have no questions to ask you about how to solve the problem and implement the feature.

I often don't respond to feature requests unless I can't understand the request.

-Kirk

[Micha]

Hi Kirk,
Sharpening in 4.6 was o.k., I never had any complaints ... isn't it possible go "go back"? We do all efforts to deliver perfect photos and then PM in a last step destroys picture quality with this agressive sharpenig, very sad, not state of the art.

Picture quality should come first!

Nice Greetings
Micha

[Kirk Baker]

Micha,

Sharpening in 4.6 was o.k., I never had any complaints ... isn't it possible go "go back"? We do all efforts to deliver perfect photos and then PM in a last step destroys picture quality with this agressive sharpenig, very sad, not state of the art.

Picture quality should come first!

We didn't change anything in regards to how PM 5 does sharpening.  The parameters are the same in both versions.

Perhaps PM 5 is doing sharpening twice somehow.  Please list a set of steps to follow in both PM 4.6.x and PM 5 that reproduce the sharpening differences that you're talking about.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[Micha]

Hi Kirk,
sorry, I do not plan to reinstall old 4.6 Version because I switched to 5.0 ... you should have better resources to check this issue ... which was also registered by some other users if you read the whole thread.

Believe me, I know, when sharpening is too much ... an in PM 5 it is too much, it is a bad quality!

Nice Greetings
Micha

[pshrutpark]

Micha,


We didn't change anything in regards to how PM 5 does sharpening.  The parameters are the same in both versions.

Perhaps PM 5 is doing sharpening twice somehow.  Please list a set of steps to follow in both PM 4.6.x and PM 5 that reproduce the sharpening differences that you're talking about.

Thanks,

-Kirk

Further to my message above, I found that v4.6.8 often tended to sharpen too much, especially for grey scale images for which I often had to turn sharpening off.

However, it seems to be more noticeable in v5.0. Could be my imagination or the result of beginning to process 36MP images at about the same time as v5.0 was released.

Peter

[dennis]

The sharpening in PM 5 is the same as previous 4.x versions.  It is essentially a 0.3 radius unsharp mask, 200%, and threshold of 2, but the sharpening is only applied to the luminance and the chrominance (which is typically more noisy) is left untouched.  (For a grayscale image, which obviously doesn't come out of a camera, there is of course no chrominance.)

For testing, I took a D800 JPEG photo at 400 ISO and did a Save As with sharpening and no scaling at quality 90.  I did this for both PM 4.6.9 and PM 5.  Then I loaded the two saved JPEG files into Photoshop and subtracted one from the other, and the standard deviation was 0.9, meaning that 2/3 of the pixels are within one level (out of 256).  A handful of pixels differed by as much as 10 levels.  But comparing the images directly (by pasting one on top of the other as a new layer then hiding/showing the layer) at 200% magnification I could not tell visually where there was any difference.

So although the sharpening has NOT changed in the Save As operation (I know because it is my code), we are using a new JPEG library implementation.  This would explain the slight difference between the two versions of PM due to round-off errors in the math.

Now if you are sharpening previews and you are looking at a noisy photo that has already been sharpened, then yeah, I expect it to look over-sharpened.  There is also the possibility that the caching system is doubly sharpening, but this would not affect a Save As operation (unless of course you are looking at the sharpened Save As file in PM and sharpening that).

If you can devise a scientific way for us to verify that there is a big difference then please let us know how to reproduce.  As far as I am concerned, this is all a subjective discussion without a way for me to verify any difference between the two versions of PM.

Photo Mechanic is internally using the code from the original Camera Bits plug-in "Quantum Mechanic" and it is capable of controlling the sharpening radius, amount, and threshold, as well as noise reduction (chromatic or luminance de-speckle), but we have not "exposed" the parameters to the user interface yet.  Its on the long list of features to add.

Regards,

--dennis

[dennis]

Further to my message above, I found that v4.6.8 often tended to sharpen too much, especially for grey scale images for which I often had to turn sharpening off.

However, it seems to be more noticeable in v5.0. Could be my imagination or the result of beginning to process 36MP images at about the same time as v5.0 was released.

Peter,

If you are using a D800E then you probably don't want sharpening on Save As.  The particular sharpening parameters chosen are meant to combat the anti-aliasing filter that most sensors have (but the D800E doesn't have), and provide for some detail recovery when resizing.  Also, perhaps the D800 is noisier (at a given ISO) than previous models since the sensor buckets are that much smaller.

PS - how are you getting grayscale images?  Are these images processed by some other application like Photoshop, and if so did you do any sharpening in Photoshop?

--dennis

[Luiz Muzzi]

Dennis,
Is the sharpening on Save As comparable to what is got when converting and saving as in DPP, for instance?
Is it useful to have the sharpening on in PM when viewing images that have already been converted to jpeg in DPP?
TIA,

-Luiz Muzzi

[pshrutpark]

Peter,

If you are using a D800E then you probably don't want sharpening on Save As.  The particular sharpening parameters chosen are meant to combat the anti-aliasing filter that most sensors have (but the D800E doesn't have), and provide for some detail recovery when resizing.  Also, perhaps the D800 is noisier (at a given ISO) than previous models since the sensor buckets are that much smaller.

PS - how are you getting grayscale images?  Are these images processed by some other application like Photoshop, and if so did you do any sharpening in Photoshop?

--dennis

Thanks Dennis.

Yes. I think you are correct about the sharpening requirements of a D800E relative to, say a D700. But the difference in requirements is, to a large extent, reflected in my post-processing steps before exporting to web or to print.

For web JPEGs, I think some sharpening is still required. 

The greyscale images are produced within Capture NX2. When I convert an image to a web JPEG in NX2 (ie don't use PM) I find some additional sharpening in appropriate. Of course the amount varies.

Hence I think that a sharpening level slider in PM's Save As would be useful. 

Peter