focalblade 1.02 preview window accurate?

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pierre

focalblade 1.02 preview window accurate?

Post by pierre »

Hi,
It seems that the preview window in focalblade shows an effect which is more pronounced than when the filter is actually applied to the image. I use photoshop v7 and focalblade 1.02. Applying undo/redo in photoshop shows an effect which appears to be much less than what the preview window showed.
Am I seeing things? Is the preview window just an approximation of the effect and I shouldn't rely on it for actual results? Is there a problem here?
Thanks
Pierre

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Post by HaraldHeim »

I think the FocalBlade preview shows the image at 100% zoom whereas you have the image displayed at a smaller zoom setting in Photoshop. Is that correct?

ianR

preview window

Post by ianR »

Harold
I sent you an e-mail the other day about this exact problem.
I included screen shots of the preview window and the resized layers from PS with before and after side by side.
Here's the Fblade preview window screenshot with the sharpening on the left.
Image
Here's the before and after in PS with the Fblade sharpened layer also on the left.
Image
It's absolutely clear that the preview window does not at all reflect the changes that take place.
In fact, it's very difficult to see any changes at all in the second one.
Very frustrating and disappointing.
Ian

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Post by HaraldHeim »

I used the same image that you posted above and ran it through FocalBlade 1.02b. I can't see any difference between the preview and the effect applied to the image.

I'm not sure what is causing this on your computer. Maybe you use a special setting in FocalBlade. Can you save your setting as a preset file and email it to me?

Are you using FocalBlade 1.02b? Previous versions of FocalBlade applied a less intense effect in Cloak Mode. Did you run FocalBlade in Cloak Mode?

ianR

Post by ianR »

Hello Harold
I think I understand what's happening.
The preview window is only applying the sharpening to the preview window- which I think is about 600x600. This'll be roughly 350kb
So, if the preview is at 100% or then the result is the same in the final image because it's effectively a 1:1 crop.
But, if you've viewed at a preview of say 30% so you can see the whole image then that's like resizing your image to about 350kb , and then applying that shapening setting back on the whole image. I think that's pretty much what you've said elsewhere.
In this case If the original image is fairly small- say 2mb, then the difference won't be so great, but my images are 12mb so the resulting effect has been diluted to almost nothing.
Similarly, if you take my image posted above and run it through Fblade it's at 1:1 so you'll get a view which will look like the result.
If this is the way it works then it begs the question, why have a preview window that can be resized at all as only on 100% can you get predictable results
I had hoped that the preview would somehow reflect the way it would look on the final image at the same size as in the preview, as this is the way most programs work, but it dosn't seem to.
I think it's quite a normal practice to examine at 100%, then to resize to see how the whole image looks before deciding to hit the proecess button, but if I understand correctly, in this case the resizing will produce a different result than when you look at 100%, not show you the same thing at a different size.
This is a severe limitation of the program if it is the case.
Ian

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Post by HaraldHeim »

ianR wrote:I had hoped that the preview would somehow reflect the way it would look on the final image at the same size as in the preview, as this is the way most programs work, but it dosn't seem to.
So you want that e.g. the 25% zoom in FocalBlade looks like the 25% zoomed image in e.g. Photoshop?

I can't think of a good reason to have such a feature. You can't judge the sharpness that an image will have as a print when viewing it at e.g. 25% in Photoshop. So it is no help to have the same view in FocalBlade.

FocalBlade only adjusts the sharpening radius when zooming in and not the sharpening intensity. That way you can better judge the sharpness of the full image even at 50% or 25%.

Anyway, your comments made me think. It would surely be nice to have an option to adjust that behaviour. And maybe even more usefull would be to have some options to simulate how the image would look if printed with various printer types.

Anyway, I would like to check if it isn't a bug that you are experiencing and that only occurs at certain settings. Can you send me the image (as a JPG) that you used for the samples and a preset file with the settings you used? Thanks.

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