billbachman
03-08-2005, 02:59 AM
Here's one I have not seen in the various forums to date: I have been a very cautious user of the digital hi-res sharpening modes because I do not always like what they do to an image (and yes, I know you can choose wide/medium/narrow etc, but sometimes none of the choices produce results that look all that good to me).
The other day I was sharpening some uncropped RAW images from my Canon 20D and mistakenly applied the "35mm positive film" setting to a couple of them, and guess what? I liked the results a whole lot better than many of the results I have been getting using the digi hi-res settings. Basically the effect is more subtle than the digi hi-res modes - if I can describe it without showing examples, I would say the digitally captured images sharpened using the matching digital sharpening modes look, well, sharpened, and sometimes overly so. The same images sharpened using the "35mm positive" setting - ie, the mode you would use for scanned transparencies - look nice and crisp and are definitely an improvement on the unsharpened version of same - but don't look quite as - and I will use a word here that I have come across before on the forum, imprecise as it may be - crunchy.
OK, one expected response to this is, "If it looks good, do it." But I of course have this nagging feeling that by breaking the rules, so to speak, I am doing something nasty to my image that I can't see. In other words, I am wondering if the PK algorithms for sharpening scans and for sharpening digitallly captured images are so very different that there is a good reason why one should stick with the menu, or conversely if there is no good reason why not to.
This interests me for reasons that may interest others, foremost among them, as has been discussed before on the forums, the fact that Alamy.com submission specifications are very clear about the need for images to be presented "unsharpened". This is all very well, but as many of us have experienced, there is a need to sharpen to some extent, especially if a noise reduction filter has been applied to an image. To my way of seeing (and I am quick to admit that I have not tested this exhaustively, but have done so enough to at least form an opinion), the application of the "35mm positive" sharpening setting produces a result that is not obviously "sharpened" but if compared with its pre-sharpened state, is a great improvement.
Apologies for the length of this, but any feedback would be appreciated, with thanks.
Bill Bachman
The other day I was sharpening some uncropped RAW images from my Canon 20D and mistakenly applied the "35mm positive film" setting to a couple of them, and guess what? I liked the results a whole lot better than many of the results I have been getting using the digi hi-res settings. Basically the effect is more subtle than the digi hi-res modes - if I can describe it without showing examples, I would say the digitally captured images sharpened using the matching digital sharpening modes look, well, sharpened, and sometimes overly so. The same images sharpened using the "35mm positive" setting - ie, the mode you would use for scanned transparencies - look nice and crisp and are definitely an improvement on the unsharpened version of same - but don't look quite as - and I will use a word here that I have come across before on the forum, imprecise as it may be - crunchy.
OK, one expected response to this is, "If it looks good, do it." But I of course have this nagging feeling that by breaking the rules, so to speak, I am doing something nasty to my image that I can't see. In other words, I am wondering if the PK algorithms for sharpening scans and for sharpening digitallly captured images are so very different that there is a good reason why one should stick with the menu, or conversely if there is no good reason why not to.
This interests me for reasons that may interest others, foremost among them, as has been discussed before on the forums, the fact that Alamy.com submission specifications are very clear about the need for images to be presented "unsharpened". This is all very well, but as many of us have experienced, there is a need to sharpen to some extent, especially if a noise reduction filter has been applied to an image. To my way of seeing (and I am quick to admit that I have not tested this exhaustively, but have done so enough to at least form an opinion), the application of the "35mm positive" sharpening setting produces a result that is not obviously "sharpened" but if compared with its pre-sharpened state, is a great improvement.
Apologies for the length of this, but any feedback would be appreciated, with thanks.
Bill Bachman