How to do USM? USM comparisons


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darkness

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Just wondering how do you guys do USM? Do you USM the original pic before downsizing, or downsize before USM? Or other methods?

Also, here are 2 animated gifs (saved in greyscale to preserve all 256 shades of grey). See which one you prefer, I'll reveal the methods for each later.

The animated gif are toggling between the downsized, unsharpened image and the sharpened image in different ways.

Way 1:
way1.gif



Way 2:
way2.gif
 

you only USM the pic in the final size and after everything else is done. never thought there was any doubt?
 

Originally posted by erwinx
you only USM the pic in the final size and after everything else is done. never thought there was any doubt?

That was what I always tot. But tonight somehow got inspiration to try out other stuff, so I tested.

Which way you think produced a better sharpening? Way 1 or Way 2?

If you want to try your hands on some sharpening comparison, here's the full sized pic.
 

frankly speaking i think its better if u dun merge them into animated gifs
makes me dizzy trying to compare :p
 

It's hard to see as it keeps flipping!

Usually, USM should be the LAST step of your workflow. The other way round almost defeats the purpose of USM..... heh.

Regards
CK
 

Originally posted by Mystix
frankly speaking i think its better if u dun merge them into animated gifs
makes me dizzy trying to compare :p

Heh, I tot animated gif makes comparison with the reference easier mah!!

Else you can d/l the gif file and seperate out the 2 pics for urself. :p
 

Ok lah, resaved the files in 8-bit png.

Reference:
ref.png


Way 1:
way1.png


Way 2:
way2.png
 

let me guess, way 1 is sharpen then resize while way 2 is resize then sharpen.
 

1 is better

pls let me know what is what !!!!


1 is def. better... tell me PM me.. email me... need to know it ASAP :)
 

Originally posted by rueyloon
1 is better

pls let me know what is what !!!!


1 is def. better... tell me PM me.. email me... need to know it ASAP :)

1 looks better because 2 is obviously oversharpened. obviously, the USM radius for 2 was too high in this case (suggesting that 2 is USM done after resizing).
 

actually pic 2 is alot sharper than pic 1. Makes me think that sharpening is the last step in eg 2.

However, darkness, did you take in consideration different USM settings for images of different sizes? The USM settings for a smaller picture will not produce as sharp results (or even do nothing) on a larger picture, unless you set the USM settings for the larger picture.. which will make ur entire test flawed already.
 

I know pic 2 is oversharpen, I already tried to use a very low sharpening initially, but it results in some parts looking ok but some parts are very soft.

Pic 2 settings:
Intensity: 150%
Radius: 0.6
Threshold: 5

That's why I provided the full size pic to invite pple to try and sharpen it and see whether anyone can break the myth that sharpening as the last step is the right thing to do?? :dunno: Then you can also play around with ur own settings and compare against my pic 1 and pic 2... :D
 

sorry , i am new to photograpghy, what is ??usm ? what it does?

Thank
Sky
 

Hmm... seems like no one's interested in following up with the thread liao... :cry:

Anyway, the first pic was done with the following workflow:

- resize to 2048, USM
- resize to 1024, USM again
- resize to 640

All USM settings were:

Radius: 0.4
Intensity: 200%

For the second pic, the pic was simply resized to 640 and then directly USMed.

Personally, I prefer the output from method 1, becoz the sharpening seems more smooth and less halo-ing. For a direct USM on the resized image, I could not achieve a balance between a sharp looking image and the sharpening artifacts. Maybe if anyone interested can try out for yourself.
 

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