Question ?

[ross]

I've been using focalblade for a while now and am amazed by how much time that it takes to do sharpening process from a photo using the plugin in photoshop CS and am new to this forum and was wondering if there are others that have the same problem and if there are any ideas that have come through this forum that can help me to quicken this process.
I have a 2600 amd processor dual channel motherboard and 1 gig of ram and two hard drive both are serial ata 160's and I have used the page in the adobe knowledge support forum on opitmizing your computer, I'm looking into getting another gig of ram to see if that will help but would like to see if there is another solution that you people have come up with, an help will be accepted.....
Lynn Ross

[HaraldHeim]

FocalBlade applies a higher quality sharpening compared to what Unsharp Mask does. That's basically why it takes longer to render the sharpening effect.

There are some tips in the FocalBlade manual for speeding up the rendering. For example if you choose the same radius from the edges and surface tab, the rendering will be faster. Also choosing a smaller radius value will increase render speed.

Of course there are still performance improvements possible for FocalBlade. I have started working on optimization that will make FocalBlade render 4 to 5 times faster without quality loss. It is also planned to add an option that renders the sharpening faster at the cost of a bit of quality (like it is done in Unsharp Mask).

Adding additional RAM to your computer won't speed up FocalBlade, because FocalBlade processes images in tiles, so it needs very little RAM.

[ross]

Oh! so additional ram is not going to help with focalblade, thanks for that info. And can you explain just what you mean about the radius value I know kind of what you mean but could use a little more info. And when is this speed up going to be availble, just thinking out loud.....
Lynn Ross

[HaraldHeim]

If you set the same radius value for the Radius slider on the Edges as well as Surface tab, FocalBlade needs to calculate the sharpening effect only once. Otherwise it needs to calculate it two times, because of the different slider values. Higher radius values mean longer rendering, because more image data has to be processed.

Here is Speed Issues section of the FocalBlade manual with a few things that I just inserted:

Speed Issues

FocalBlade may need up to 6 seconds to update the preview on a 400 MHz computer. But as FocalBlade uses several buffers to store pre-calculated image data, subsequent calculations need only a small fraction of that time that is needed when you first run FocalBlade. Some calculations don't need to be done for every slider change, so FocalBlade's buffer strategy helps a lot to speed up the preview rendering.

If you want to do several adjustments and avoid that the preview is rendered with every control change, you can deactivate the Auto Preview check box and activate it again after your have done the changes.


Additionally if you do the following steps you can increase the rendering speed of FocalBlade:

1. Deactivate the Precise check box.

2. Keep the Soften slider at a value of zero.

3. Keep the Auto Details setting at "Very Fine" or "Fine" or use a very low value for the two Radius sliders.

4. If you don't use the Auto Details feature, you can also save render time by making sure that the Radius slider on the Edges tab and the Radius slider on the Surface tab have the same value.


Additionally you can speed up the preview update by doing the following steps at first:

1. Choose your preferred image area in the preview.

2. Set the values of Auto Details box or Radius sliders.

3. Make sure that the Radius of the Edges and Surface tab have the same value.

4. Set the value of the Smoothness slider.

If you don't change these settings anymore and only adjust the other sliders and features, you will be able to work a lot faster with FocalBlade if you have a slow computer. Especially changing the image area in the preview forces FocalBlade to recalculate all image data.

Sorry, at the moment I can't tell you a date when the speed improvements will be available.