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Not convinced by latest "smart sharpen" tool from

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 1:20 am
by mehdi
hi, i've just discovered that cs2 has a "smart sharpen" tool.
i'm just not convinced by the results ...
don't see what makes it superior ...
noise is enhanced, halo can still appear ...
i may be dumb ...

also what do you think about the noize reduction program ? does it kill some products on the market ?

Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 9:17 am
by HaraldHeim
I am also not convinced by both tools. The noise reduction tool is one of the least effective I have ever seen. Even the simple Surface Blur filter in CS2 seems to be better. The Smart Sharpen filter offers a lot of control over shadow and highlight sharpening, but that is only necessary for really noisy images. Other than that it works just like the old Unsharp Mask.

Photoshop offers a lot of filters, but many of them are only average quality and never get updated after they were added. That's quite good for plugin developers like us, because we can come up with better tools.

Only two Photoshop filters impressed me so far. The Shadow/Highlights and the Replace Color filter. But my LightMachine plugin produces even better results than both of them.

In CS2 the Vanishing Point filter is a very nice addition.