Sharpening...good or bad...discuss (1 Viewer)

[bpw]

I`m a bit late to this thread but I have a question if I may. I have found that uploading piccies to a gallery or another Forum often results, for me at least, in a softening of the image. Hence if anything I tend to oversharpen. I don`t think it is to the degree of halos, haloes ?, round the subject but sometimes a bit too much. Advice would be appreciated. Please bear in mind that I am a numpty with PP`ing.

Hi John,

I can’t think of any reason why an image would be softer when viewed after uploading and I suspect that if you open the image from your hard drive in your browser it will look the same as the online version.

I can only think that your editing software is giving you a different, perhaps ‘distorted’, view of the finished image. You don’t say which software are you using? Do you have any examples for us?

One difference that can occur is with colour space. For the Web you should use sRGB, but I think this is unlikely to affect sharpness.

 

[mjmw]

Hi John,

I can’t think of any reason why an image would be softer when viewed after uploading and I suspect that if you open the image from your hard drive in your browser it will look the same as the online version.

I can only think that your editing software is giving you a different, perhaps ‘distorted’, view of the finished image. You don’t say which software are you using? Do you have any examples for us?

One difference that can occur is with colour space. For the Web you should use sRGB, but I think this is unlikely to affect sharpness.

Shouldn't you chaps in the UK be in bed by now?
I think Paul is right, viewing an image in a browser may make it appear softer than within PS (or PSP for Keith and John R). Some sites, Yahoo albums for example, seem to assume that you are uploading an image direct from a 2 or 3 megapixel 'point and shoot', so just automatically resample, resize and sharpen...leading to some quite nasty results.

 

[bpw]

Shouldn't you chaps in the UK be in bed by now?
I think Paul is right, viewing an image in a browser may make it appear softer than within PS (or PSP for Keith and John R). Some sites, Yahoo albums for example, seem to assume that you are uploading an image direct from a 2 or 3 megapixel 'point and shoot', so just automatically resample, resize and sharpen...leading to some quite nasty results.

Yes Mark, you’re right, I should be in bed. I’m sat contemplating a ‘let’s see if we can get the last word with Keith Reeder’ action group, but I realise I’d be wasting my time! (I’ll include a smiley to soften the blow).

Keith, RAW files are never sharpened, either by the camera or after leaving the camera. Now, I know you know that, and wouldn’t ordinarily have picked you up on it, but…

I remember reading somewhere that Internet Explorer doesn’t render certain colours accurately (don't know about IE7?), so there may always be a slight difference with this browser. My monitor is calibrated and I process pictures using the sRGB colour space, but there is still a colour difference between the image in PS and the image in the browser – a little ‘flatter’ in the browser. I wouldn’t say there is a difference in sharpness though.

 

[gordon g]

Wow - it's a more popular topic than I thought when I replied initially.
I'll try to pick up on the points I think are important, having read the whole thread.
Firstly, how and when you apply sharpening depends on what the end product is to be used for. For myself, files which are for submission to Alamy must have NO sharpening, therefore it is of vital importance that I understand what the camera and the processing software do. As I understand it, canon RAW files are not sharpened in the camera, only after download if using software that can read the attatched picture style data. (Picture styles are simply presets for sharpness, contrast etc that Canon think suit particular subjects - I sometimes differ!)
When saving images as jpegs in camera, picture styles, sharpness etc are applied to the image - these settings can be varied in camera, but once the image is recorded, you are stuck with it. (Please note - I am not recommending one format over the other - it all depends on what you want out of it.)
For prints, slide shows, web views etc, sharpening is necessary. The extent to which an image is sharpened is an aesthetic decision. I dont think that it is possible to have 'preset' sharpening values for the simple reason that each image is different, and will require different settings to get the desired effect.

 

[mjmw]

Back to sharpening: one thing that continues to baffle me about USM (apart from the seemingly contradictory name! ) is the inconsistency in terming the available value settings.

Mark very kindly explained his USM settings and I rushed to PSP to have a go at the multi-pass low USM method.

Initially I couldn't really relate the values he had quoted - "100%, 0.2, 0" - to the parameters in PSP's USM dialog.
:h?:

Sorry! I should know better.

So, by dialling in the same values into PSP - Radius 0.2, Strength 100, Clipping 0 - I've tried the multiple pass approach.

And I can't see any difference between the unsharpened version and the 5x USM one!



Back to the drawing board.

I know - I was daft to think that "one size fits all"..!

Evenin' Keith. Reading this prompted me to start up PSP 10 and check (yes, I have been a closet PSP user for many years). You are right, it doesn't work...and I could not get any kind of half-decent sharpening done with PSP USM, no matter what I did. This must be why I bought the Focalblade plugin! To be fair, I stopped using PSP earlier this year and have been using CS2 exclusively - am I glad I made the switch!

 

[Atricapilla]

Some good 'plug ins' for Photoshop for sharpening and noise are Focus Magic and Noise Ninja(despite the name it's quite good)or maybe try Quantum mechanic pro which does both jobs,as for halos I just zoom in to 600% and wipe them away with the blur tool !!!