sharpening drum scans

[adrian tyler]

i need to apply some selective sharpening (photoshop cs - mac os 10) to some recent drum scans, i need to work carefully as the original negs are colour 400 asa and prone to get some nasty grain effect when applied in excess.

does anyone have any favorite sharpening actions that work well?

thanks again

adrian

[tim atherton]

adrian, I just emailed you some - let me know if they don't get through

[Martin Drozda]

Convert to Lab, sharpen only the L channel, then convert back to RGB. In RGB you can try sharpening per channel but the problem is that it often creates some color artefacts; sharpen more the channel that has less grain. Also apply different sharpening to highlights, mid tones and shadows. Check your photo carefully after sharpening, you never know what it can cause.

[Scott Rosenberg]

tim,

would you be able to post here what you emailed adrian?

if not, could i trouble you to email them to me as well?

thanks!
scott

[tim atherton]

I emailed them because they aren't up on the web at their original site anymore

[robc]

There are some here worth taking a look at.

aboutdigicam.com/download.html (http://aboutdigicam.com/download.html)

digiedge action

load it and take a look at the steps to see what and how it does it...

its only good for big files even on the light version

[Scott Rosenberg]

thanks, tim!

[Doug Dolde]

Photokit Sharpener. $100 but worth it.

[paulr]

I'd buy Real World Photoshop for whatever version of the program you're using. A whole chapter on nothing but sharpening and it's all been useful to me for getting great, natural looking results. Most of it's a lot more sophisticated than what I'd been doing in the past.

[Kirk Gittings]

The DigiCam action produces allot of haloing. Something that I find unacceptable. I have a High Pass Sharpen Action that works in an adjustment layer. HPS to me works best with LF scanned images, because it sharpens the detail without introducing allot of artifacts. The sharpening can then be almost infinitely adjusted with the Opacity slider and by changing the Blend mode from Softlight to Hardlight. There is virtually no halo with this approach and the smoothness of LF tonality and edges are preserved even on very close inspection with a loupe. I usually do HPSA at my maximum print size. This usually 16x20 with 50% opacity in the Softlight Blend mode and let the Imageprint RIP downsample for smaller prints with no change in the settings (you do not have flatten layers for Imageprint).

[Mark Carstens]

A second endorsement of Photokit Sharpener. It's versatile, flexible and well thought out. I bought it shortly after it launched. There's a trial version, and you can navigate to it from here:

http://www.pixelgenius.com/store.html

That said, here's a link to Deadman's Sharpeners (possibly the one Tim refers to, as its location has been moved) which I have also used, and swore by before PK Sharpener. My only suggestion is that you edit the actions to begin with making a new layer and then "merge visible" to that layer so that you can leave your image otherwise unaltered. If you don't make another layer, the changes are made directly to the image. On my Mac, I hold down "shift-option-command" keys and hit "e." The new layer made from all selcted layers appears on top.

Another bonus to new layer is that it also allows you to control the sharpening somewhat by applying a mask to the layer or making tweaks to opacity and fill settings.

http://www.pinkheadedbug.com/links.html

Once you're there, scroll down to near the bottom of the page.

Good luck!

[paulr]

No matter what approach you take, it's important to work in relation to final print size. If you you emphasize detalin in the 5 lp/mm range (1/10 mm at final print size) you have the potential of getting beautifully sharp images with no visible artifacts.

[Kirk Gittings]

I do not believe there is any "formula" for the right amount of sharpening. Anything in art that you do purely by mathmatical formula is contrary to personal expression.

When I first got into digital printing I was enthralled by Photokit Sharpener, but after a couple of years I have become a minimalist when it comes to sharpening and I no longer like the look of PKS and never use it. I think it oversharpens the edges and gives prints a digital look. As a matter of fact, though I greatly respect the knowledge of Bruce Frazer, I have never seen an original print by him that was not to me obviously oversharpened. I am one of those geeks that take a loupe to shows. This is a highly personal judgement of course, but as a lifetime large format user I think my standards are different than small format people like BF no matter how much more digital knowledge they have than me (which is considerably more of course).

[robc]

If you use the "Variable" digiedge sharpen action and experiment with settings you will get NO haloing.

Expecting the default settings to work on any image is wishful thinking.

Kirk, have you ever noticed that mathematics is often found within the arts faculty of a university. You might want to have a little think about why that is...

[robc]

I don't think my last post came across quite as intended. I was trying to point out that mathematics is as much an art form as any of the other recognised art forms. Also that using using a formulaic or mathematical approach as part of a process to achieving an end result is as valid as any other approach.

see www.complexification.net/ (http://www.complexification.net/)

[adrian tyler]

thanks for all the advice...

i think that possibly the deadman has not been updated for a while as it is incompatible with my cs 8.

definetly mathematics... but what particular math to apply to which particular image is personal and subjective.

i've been playing around with the trial version of photokit and it seems that there are some more subltle options in the "creative sharpener" menu that don't seem to be blasting my 400 asa negs too much, which is what i'm after.

so thanks again, great help as always.

adrian

[tim atherton]

Adrian - on the actions not working with CS/CS2 - they will (Adobe did something weird with that messed up importing actions made with older versions...) but I can't exactly remember how to do it.... i found the workaround on the net somewhere by searching on Google for photoshop's CS and actions not loading

[adrian tyler]

thanks tim, good news, i'll scout it out...

[Ed Richards]

Qimage is worth a try, esp. as it is a free trial. It does print time sharpening, based on the print size and the setting you give it. It has been critized for not doing a great job at scaling up digicam files, and that might be true, but I have good luck with it for large format black and white. I find I can get a good looking image in many cases with no sharpening other than Qimage. In this sense I am trying to use it to restore the sharpness lost in scanning, but not to enhance the sharpness over that in the negative. Since it sharpens differently based on output size, you do not need to tinker with the file for each print size.

[Kirk Gittings]

Rob, Obviously, I was not talking about mathmatics as a subject of art. I was talking about a sense of sharpness being defined by "5 lp/mm range (1/10 mm at final print size) ". The next phase of the discussion would be about how that relates to view 24" of viewing distance and then his eyeglass prescription blah blah.

In the 4 university art departments that I have been involved in, I have seen some interest in mathmatics as subject mater by professors (2), but like most art of that type it was based on a very dilitant level of understanding that may have been visually interesting, butreally about intellectual posing.

[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.