Making very slight sharpening adjustments

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mikea
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Making very slight sharpening adjustments

Post by mikea »

This is probably difficult to discuss without an actual image on display, but I'll try this anyway...I spent quite a while during my first sessions with FocalBlade trying to get the settings optimized, but knew that of course you just can't tell from the screen image -- since inkjet dots on paper are so much different from pixels on the screen. Viewed on-screen, an apparently over-sharpened image might be just right in the print...

It looks to me as if I did oversharpen the image a bit. It's hard to tell considering the particular subject-matter, but I'm seeing what look like unnaturally slightly jagged edges in very thin lines. The lines appear to be breaking up a bit, that is. But the rest of the image looks ok to me.

In a case like this, if you were to select "undo" and then go back to FocalBlade to make a very slight adjustment in the previous settings, with the intent being to reduce sharpening only in the finest detail: what would be the best approach, to start with? Which setting, that is, would you recommend trying to change first? As mentioned in a previous message, I'm not seeing obvious results yet from changes in the mask, so I'd guess changing some other setting would be a better approach. Whatever the setting is I wouldn't want to change much of anything else in the image (the surface areas look fine, for instance).

HaraldHeim
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Post by HaraldHeim »

Well, if you want to reduce the sharpness in FocalBlade, because the print contains visible think lines (known as halos), then you should reduce the value of the Sharpen slider of the Edges tab.

Alternatively you can also try to increase the White Halo and Black Halo slider from the Fix tab. That will reduce the halos, too.

mikea
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Post by mikea »

HaraldHeim wrote:Alternatively you can also try to increase the White Halo and Black Halo slider from the Fix tab. That will reduce the halos, too.
I guess that's the best place to start. I don't think I would want to back off on the sharpening, overall. Or maybe this would be a good situation for testing how fine-tuning the mask affects the look of the prints. I guess it's time to do some small test-strip prints. Otherwise I'll spend a fortune making full-sized prints. :-) Thanks.

HaraldHeim
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Post by HaraldHeim »

When using the White Halo and Black Halo slider you are decreasing the sharpness, too. It just happens much differently then when reduding the valie of the Sharpen slider(s). The two Halo sliders usually only affect the edges, because that's where the halos appear.

Setting the Sharpen sliders to extreme values and then using the Halo sliders to reduce the sharpness is a method you may like to try if you want maximum sharpness without visible halos.

mikea
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Post by mikea »

HaraldHeim wrote:When using the White Halo and Black Halo slider you are decreasing the sharpness, too. It just happens much differently then when reduding the valie of the Sharpen slider(s). The two Halo sliders usually only affect the edges, because that's where the halos appear.
Thanks, Harald. I'll try that first. I can imagine there are a lot of approaches, given how many options are in the program. (I would assume that on setting the sharpen slider to a high position, you then have to back off the sharpness setting in the surfaces panel, or else you'd get a lot of noise.)
So many sliders, so little time. :-)

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