Are you photographer or photoShopper?
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clive said:
Hee... obviously sharpening on ps or any other software isn't the same as a
truely sharp image/image taken with a good set of lens (or else there'll be no point making such expensive lens right?).
Let's look at what we mean't by an image is sharp. Objects in a sharp images have well defined edges and thus has more details. What USM or most other sharpening filters does is to make 'halos'. it tries to look for region of great contrast, which are suggestive of edges and apply 'halos' on both sides... These Halos are region of a lighter colour adjacent to detected 'edge'. This increases the colour contrast and gives the impression of a sharper image. So, in a blur image where details are lost, the lost details will never be sharpened properly, a blurred face is a blur face, no amount of sharpening will put eyes nose and mouth on it. So a sharp image is still worth a million USM.
All the things you tweak in USM affects how often the halos are applied and how much. One way to see the halo effect is to drawa black line on a grey background and apply sharpening, you'll be able to see the halo when you zoom in (i think).
p/s: All the super zooming and sharpening programs in TV/movies are c*ap unless you can teach a computer how to recognise objects in an image and make educated 'guesses' (rather calculations) about what it's really like and redraw the whole image based on these calculations, what is not captured on the image will not appear just because u sharpen it.
jimtong
Senior Member
For DSLR, the image out of the camera will not be as sharp cos the camera manufactuer want to provide the photographer the flexibility to edit the image. Therefore a slight USM is required from DSLR. Digital workflow is part of the digital photograhy process. If one want to do away with it, then it is better to set the contrast, sharpness and color tone from the camera setting instead of using the default.
jimtong
Senior Member
clive said:
if your image is blur or exibit some hand shake, it is not likely that the sharpening processing can help you. USM is not a wonder tools. IMO, USM is there to enchance the already sharped image.
there are some limit as how far USM can go... overdo will cos halo around your image which will make it look very un-natural.
after playing around. here r some of my findings for a jpeg file at highest setting straight out from camera, viewed at 50% (my screen is only 14 inch keke):
this
amount: 175%
radius: 1.5
threshold: 3
will make the pic look sharp when view straight in front of the screen and viewed also at 3m away from the screen :light:
this
amount: 175%
radius: 1.5
threshold: 3
will make the pic look sharp when view straight in front of the screen and viewed also at 3m away from the screen :light:
Allow me to give another perspective on "photographer versus photoshopper".
Implicit in the question is whether you make alterations to the taken picture.
Actually. "Analogue-Photoshop" have been in existence for a long, long, time, way before computers are invented and before somebody made this thing called PHOTOSHOP.
Ansel Adams applied the analogue-photoshop long ago to most of his landscape photos. The reason is that the camera CANNOT capture what the human eye sees accurately. An example, when you look at the sky, your pupils constrict and the dark is darkened. Then when you look at the fields below, your pupils dilate and the fields lighten up. But when you point the lens at the scene, the aperture remains fixed, so you chose to expose for the sky and darken the fields, or chose to expose for the fields, and lighten the sky. You have no choice. So the negative, no matter how well processed, will have this discrepancy. It cannot capture what your eyes (or more accurately, your brain, visualized) So after the negative is developed, post processing is required. Either at the negative stage, or at the printing stage. An excellent example is Ansel Adams well-loved "Moon over Hernandez". For this picture both the negative and the print were heavily "photoshopped".
This tradition of "analogue-photoshop" is carried on today by practically all fine-art photographers, including some of the finest black & white printers (persons, not machines) such as John Sexton and Bruce Barnbaum. The important thing is that the final picture should generally not deviate from the original scene visualized by the photographers. It means that "analogue-photoshop" is applied to allow the photographers to show what they saw.
However there are photographers who do not like the tremendous alterations of the "analogue-photoshoppers". A person who came to mind is Edward Weston with his concept of "Purity of Vision", where all elements will have come together at the moment when the shutter is clicked. His pictures have the simplicity and clarity that is very refreshing. Ansel Adams's pictures are best described as Wagnerian drama. A more contemporary photographer for "clear vision" is Paul Caponigro (the father, not the son)
Today, we have photoshop. Actually what photoshop offers is essentially what traditional photographers have been doing all the time, but on the computer instead of the wet darkroom!
So, that is! For practical purposes, most photographers are "photoshoppers", analogue or digital. But I think the "Purity of Vision" would be what I would like to strive for.
Implicit in the question is whether you make alterations to the taken picture.
Actually. "Analogue-Photoshop" have been in existence for a long, long, time, way before computers are invented and before somebody made this thing called PHOTOSHOP.
Ansel Adams applied the analogue-photoshop long ago to most of his landscape photos. The reason is that the camera CANNOT capture what the human eye sees accurately. An example, when you look at the sky, your pupils constrict and the dark is darkened. Then when you look at the fields below, your pupils dilate and the fields lighten up. But when you point the lens at the scene, the aperture remains fixed, so you chose to expose for the sky and darken the fields, or chose to expose for the fields, and lighten the sky. You have no choice. So the negative, no matter how well processed, will have this discrepancy. It cannot capture what your eyes (or more accurately, your brain, visualized) So after the negative is developed, post processing is required. Either at the negative stage, or at the printing stage. An excellent example is Ansel Adams well-loved "Moon over Hernandez". For this picture both the negative and the print were heavily "photoshopped".
This tradition of "analogue-photoshop" is carried on today by practically all fine-art photographers, including some of the finest black & white printers (persons, not machines) such as John Sexton and Bruce Barnbaum. The important thing is that the final picture should generally not deviate from the original scene visualized by the photographers. It means that "analogue-photoshop" is applied to allow the photographers to show what they saw.
However there are photographers who do not like the tremendous alterations of the "analogue-photoshoppers". A person who came to mind is Edward Weston with his concept of "Purity of Vision", where all elements will have come together at the moment when the shutter is clicked. His pictures have the simplicity and clarity that is very refreshing. Ansel Adams's pictures are best described as Wagnerian drama. A more contemporary photographer for "clear vision" is Paul Caponigro (the father, not the son)
Today, we have photoshop. Actually what photoshop offers is essentially what traditional photographers have been doing all the time, but on the computer instead of the wet darkroom!
So, that is! For practical purposes, most photographers are "photoshoppers", analogue or digital. But I think the "Purity of Vision" would be what I would like to strive for.
So far, none of the cameras I've used before actually captured the images that my eye desires. Photoshop helped me most of the time. Just my two cents.
For those having problems with print jobs being darker, next time, ask the lab 'auntie' to push the brightness up a bit. If it still doesnt work, maybe you should try calibrating your monitor.
Cheers!
PS: I want a mamiya!
For those having problems with print jobs being darker, next time, ask the lab 'auntie' to push the brightness up a bit. If it still doesnt work, maybe you should try calibrating your monitor.
Cheers!
PS: I want a mamiya!
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