sharpening drum scans

[tim atherton]

Kirk,

the sharpeners I sent Adrian were the "Deadman" suite - perhaps getting a little old now. They do include a couple of Hard Light High pass or High Pass sharpeners, but the one I find I use most is an edge sharpening tool

I find that this works very well for me on 4x5 and 8x120 scanned imaged - especially if they are images (which mine tend to be) with lots of edges in them - buildings, trees, grass, interiors etc etc.

With this action, it just selects the edges in the image and them you can sharpen those to whatever degree you want (depending on the pritn size usually between 35-125%), without having unwanted sharpening etc showing up in skies. blank walls, faces etc. (I've never got halos using it).

I find what this does is give back some of the crispness that the LF neg (or tranny) has that is often lost in scanning, but without it looking "digitally" sharpened. It gets rid of that slight softness, but doesn't look like a "digital images that has been sharpened" at the end of it all.

[Kirk Gittings]

The High Pass I use I think I got from Caponigro or George de Wolf originally. It is also very similar to the one that Mark Nelsson uses. I would describe its effect similar to what you talk about. Email me if you want to try it it. I am a big believer in simplicity. With this action and an opacity adjustment. I can get what I need 90% of the time.

[mitch brown]

go to the lights right page and download their sharpening kit it sharpen in 3 different ways and is great to use i haven't used it for scans but have used it for my canon 20d for over a year with fantastic results.
mitch

[paulr]

I should have prefaced the 5 lp/mm idea by saying this is a radius that will give a very photographic sense of sharpness without digital artifacts. It's an ideal starting point if that's what you're looking for. If you're looking for something else, there's a world of options.

I was also only refering to final output sharpening, which is less a creative endeavor than an attempt to compensate for sharpness lost in the printing process. For capture sharpening or any kinds of creative sharpening, there are better approaches.