Frequently Asked
Questions
1.
I use the Unsharp Mask filter for sharpening my photos. What
advantages does FocalBlade have?
2.
What is the difference between FocalBlade and Photoshop's Smart
Sharpen filter?
3.
How does FocalBlade compare to the sharpening options of Adobe
Camera Raw?
4.
How does FocalBlade relate to other special sharpening methods?
5.
Is it better to deactivate in-camera sharpening if I know that
I will use FocalBlade later?
6.
Should I use a one, two or three-pass sharpening workflow with
FocalBlade?
7.
I am often working with CMYK images. Should I apply FocalBlade
in CMYK mode?
8.
I have some bad quality photos with a lot of noise that I want
to sharpen. Can FocalBlade help in this case?
9.
I want to sharpen some of my JPG files again with FocalBlade...
10.
I want to create a master image for various print sizes and
papers. I would therefore like to save the sharpening on a layer
rather than apply it to the image. Is this possible and if so,
how does one accomplish this?
11.
Should I use the Plugin or Standalone version of FocalBlade?
12.
What is the difference between the Standalone and Lightroom
version?
1. I use
the Unsharp Mask filter for sharpening my photos. What advantages
does FocalBlade have?
The Unsharp Mask
filter, which is available in many image applications, has some
disadvantages that Focal Blade doesn't have. Unsharp Mask amplifies
color noise which becomes very obvious if you compare the original
and sharpened version at 200% or 300% magnification. FocalBlade
does not increase color noise when sharpening. Even more, you
can reduce it with the Color Noise sliders on the Fix tab sheet.
A second problem
of Unsharp Mask is that the Radius slider doesn't only increase
the radius, but also dramatically increases the sharpness. So
changing the Radius slider also forces you to readjust the Amount
slider every time, which can be annoying. In FocalBlade if you
change the Radius slider, you don't have to readjust the Sharpen
slider, because the Radius slider doesn't increase sharpness.
Unsharp Mask
does not sharpen with high intensity at radius values below
1.0, which FocalBalde does. At a radius of 0.1 pixel Unsharp
Mask does not even apply a visible sharpening effect anymore
whereas FocalBlade can still sharpen at full intensity. FocalBlade
even sharpens at a 0.0 pixel radius, which is in fact not an
absolute zero radius, but a 0.05 value.
Another weak point
of the Unsharp Mask tools is its Threshold slider. It can easily
produce artifacts if you aren't very careful with it. These
artifacts might not be very visible for the untrained eye, but
if you take a closer look you can easily see them. If the image
contains noise, it will be even more obvious. FocalBlade doesn't
need a threshold slider because it sharpens the edges and the
surface differently. So FocalBlade doesn't produce any artifacts
like Unsharp Mask and gives you much more control over the sharpening.
Additionally, the Threshold slider of Unsharp Mask doesn't apply
any sharpening to some parts of the image while other parts
are sharpened at full extent. FocalBlade on the other hand lets
you apply different sharpening intensities to different image
parts.
Another problem
of some Unsharp Mask filters is that they sacrifice quality
for speed. They use an algorithm that renders faster, but produces
a less accurate sharpening result. FocalBlade doesn't use an
imprecise algorithm for radius values below 6.1 pixels and therefore
provides the best possible sharpening quality without sacrificing
speed.
FocalBlade offers
much more convenience and control over the sharpening process
while avoiding the side effects of the Unsharp Mask tool.
2. What
is the difference between FocalBlade and Photoshop's Smart Sharpen
filter?
The Smart Sharpen
filter in Photoshop is an enhanced version of the Unsharp Mask
filter. In addtion to the Gaussian Blur option of Unsharp Mask
it also offers a Lens and Motion Blur option. The Lens Blur
option produces a finer sharpening and the Motion option is
meant for reducing motion blur. FocalBlade does not offer an
option for reducing motion blur, but on the other hand Smart
Sharpen is not as effective for recovering photos with motion
shake as many photographers would wish.
You can also
reduce the sharpening effect in shadows and highlights in Smart
Sharpen. Whereas Smart Sharpen offers three sliders for adjusting
the shadows or highlights, FocalBlade offers only one. That
is because FocalBlade defines shadows and highlights according
to the tonal range whereas Smart Sharpen creates a mask for
defining them. Basically you have more control over removing
the sharpening effect from shadows and highlights in Smart Sharpen,
but on the other hand it is also more complicated, because it
is hard to judge the effect of the additional two sliders. Unfortunately
there is no shadow/highlight mask display available in Smart
Sharpen, which would make it easier to use.
There is one
disadvantage of Smart Sharpen compared to Unsharp Mask: it does
not render as fast as Unsharp Mask. FocalBlade is also not as
fast as Unsharp Mask, because it performs much more sophisticated
operations, but FocalBlade is still much faster than Smart Sharpen.
When working with very large images, you will learn to appreciate
FocalBlade's faster rendering compared to Smart Sharpen.
Smart Sharpen
has similar problems as Unsharp Mask: The Amount and Radius
sliders are not truely independent of each other as in FocalBlade,
which also means that with lower radius values you are not able
to sharpen as strongly as with higher radius values. The Lens
Blur option is usually the better choice in Smart Sharpen, because
it lets you adjust lower radius values stronger. The "More
Accurate" check box of Smart Sharpen produces finer and
stronger sharpening, but also amplifies noise even more. All
in all, Smart Sharpen is not able to achieve as strong and artifact-free
sharpening effects (especially at lower radius values) like
FocalBlade.
Smart
Sharpen neither offers the following essential feature of FocalBlade:
auto sharpening, multi-pass workflows, edge/surface sharpening,
multiple radius sharpening, halo suppression, softening surface
areas, color noise reduction, color protection, softproofing,
split views, preview tab sheet, grain and other special effects.
3.
How does FocalBlade compare to the sharpening options of Adobe
Camera Raw?
Camera
Raw offers four sharpening sliders called Amount, Radius, Detail
and Mask. The Amount slider of Camera Raw offers a maximum sharpening
intensity of 150% whereas FocalBlade can sharpen up to 2000%.
150% is not sufficient for sharpening for print. The Radius
slider of Camera Raw is limited to a range of 0.5 to 3.0 whereas
FocalBlade offers radius values between 0.0 and 32.0, which
means that it can produce much finer as well as much wider sharpening
effects.
The
Mask slider of Camera RAW allows you to gradually apply the
sharpening to the edges only, but you cannot adjust the edge
mask itself. Even worse, the Radius slider does not only influence
the sharpening radius, it also makes the edge mask wider at
the same time. FocalBlade allows you precisely fine-tune the
edge mask with various sliders and also makes it possible to
sharpen the surface areas with a different sharpening intensity
and radius.
Lower
values of the Details slider of Camera RAW suppress halos, but
at the same time also remove the sharpening from surface areas,
which makes you ask why this task is not left to the Mask slider
in the first place. Too much halo suppression in Camera Raw
additionally makes the sharpened edges look aliased and pixelated.
FocalBlade on the other hand does not produce a pixelated look
when suppressing the halos and also lets you suppress white
and black halos independently. FocalBlade offers two slider
pairs for halo suppression, which allows more precise and effective
adjustments.
FocalBlade
additionally contains several other features that are missing
in Camera Raw, e.g. removing the sharpening effect in shadows,
highlights and certain colored image areas, using multiple radius
values and suggesting sharpening values.
Camera
Raw can only be applied to image files and not to images opened
in Photoshop. As a consequence you cannot apply it to layers,
record its settings in actions, use it as a smart filter as
it is possible with FocalBlade. So you can only use Camera Raw
sharpening at the beginning of your workflow whereas FocalBlade
can be used any time in your workflow.
4.
How does FocalBlade relate to other special sharpening methods?
FocalBlade uses
a sharpening technique that is similar to Unsharp Mask, which
is best suited for sharpening photographic images. However,
FocalBlade's sharpening is much more sophisticated than that
of conventional Unsharp Mask tools.
Some tools force
you to apply sharpening two or three times per image. With FocalBlade
you can decide yourself if you want to sharpen each image once,
twice or three times. If you decide to sharpen only once, you
can save quite some time and avoid accidentally oversharpening
the image.
Another technique
is called Deconvolution and is extensively used in astronomy
and microscopy. These deconvolution methods aren't very suitable
for normal photos and are in fact deblurring and not sharpening
methods. They reduce blur, thus increasing the visual information
in images, but they don't produce optimum photographic sharpening
results.
Other techniques
try to reduce the gradients around the edges in photos in order
to improve the sharpness. They can be helpful for a few photos,
but they can easily corrupt edge lines and reduce the photographic
quality of the photo thus giving it a painting-like look. FocalBlade
on the other hand sharpens photos effectively while keeping
the look of the photos natural.
5.
Is it better to deactivate in-camera sharpening if I know that
I will use FocalBlade later?
Digital cameras
only have limited processing capabilities. They don't apply
sophisticated sharpening methods to avoid blocking the camera
for taking another shot. In-camera sharpening can be especially
destructive on high-ISO shots that were taken in low light conditions,
because in-camera sharpening unnecessarily amplifies the ISO
noise.
It is generally
recommended to switch off in-camera sharpening or at least reduce
it to the available minimum. Unfortunately many low-priced digital
cameras don't offer any option for influencing the in-camera
sharpening. In such a case you have to live with the result
or buy a more expensive camera. Switching off internal sharpening
also lets you take more JPG photos with the same memory card,
because file sizes of photos without sharpening are much smaller.
6.
Should I use a one, two or three-pass sharpening
workflow with FocalBlade?
Whether
you choose to sharpen your image once, twice or even three times
is mainly a question of taste and your personal requirements.
In many cases sharpening your images only once will do just
fine and save you time. Multi-pass sharpening is not a must,
it is an option. You have to decide yourself if multiple sharpening
benefits your workflow and the end result.
Sharpening
more than once can make sense under the following conditions:
1. You are working with a RAW file and want to pre-sharpen it
to get a better feel for the final result.
2. You need to sharpen the same image for different output devices,
e.g. web and print or different printer types.
3. You want to dramatically resize your image and minimize the
softening effects of the process by sharpening the image before
and after resizing.
4. You want to apply different sharpness effects to different
image areas.
Some
people may claim that sharpening an image more than once increases
its print quality, but that is a myth. In fact if you sharpen
an image more than once, the risk of degrading the image increases.
FocalBlade offers various features for keeping sharpening artifacts
low, so using its two- and three pass workflows is no problem.
With two or three pass sharpening there is also a higher tendency
of oversharpening the result, because you do not see the final
result until the last pass. But you can master this risk with
increasing experience.
Basically
you can achieve the same sharpening result in FocalBlade whether
you use one, two or three sharpening pass. However, using similar
settings with one, two or three passes may still produce slightly
different results on the same image. That is because with a
two/three pass sharpening approach you usually apply the sharpening
passes to different image sizes whereas a one pass sharpening
is applied to the final image size only. The image scaling can
additionally amplify or weaken the sharpening a bit and depending
on the used image scaling algorithms you get a more or less
sharp scaling results. Additionally the three pass approach
involves a creative part which can be quite individual. So you
usually get the most consistent results with one pass sharpening
and the most individual results with three pass sharpening.
7.
I often work with CMYK images. Should I apply FocalBlade in
CMYK mode?
It
is generally better to do as much image processing as possible
in RGB rather than in CMYK mode. CMYK was developed for printing
purposes and is highly dependent on the print profile, whereas
RGB is more independent and offers advantages for image editing.
FocalBlade and other image processing tools often achieve higher
quality results on RGB than on CMYK images. Additionally FocalBlade
misses two features in CMYK. So better keep your image in RGB
as long as possible and only switch to CMYK at the end of your
workflow. If it is not possible otherwise, you can also apply
FocalBlade in CMYK mode.
8.
I have some bad quality photos with a lot of noise that I want
to sharpen. Can FocalBlade help in this case?
If you have a noise
reduction tool, please try it before using FocalBlade. Also
correct the colors, brightness and contrast of these photos
before using FocalBlade. Even if you don't do that, FocalBlade
can still help, but you have to do some manual adjustments in
FocalBlade to get a better result. One method is to use FocalBlade's
Soften slider from the Manual tab to suppress noise or at least
keep it from getting too visible when sharpening. With the Shadows
slider from the Fix tab sheet you can avoid sharpening the shadows
where most of the noise is located. You can also reduce the
value of the Surface Sharpen slider on the Manual tab or set
the Surface combo box on the Auto tab sheet to a more moderate
setting to keep the noise down.
If your image is
too noisy or contains too many artifacts, there is no tool that
can help you. Then the only way to improve image quality is
to size it down to e.g. 50% or even 25% of its original size.
9.
I want to sharpen some of my JPG files again with FocalBlade...
There are three
problems. If your JPG files are already sharpened by another
tool, you may decrease the image quality when sharpening them
again. If the images were oversharpened, you can use FocalBlade's
Soften slider (while setting the Sharpen sliders to zero) to
decrease the sharpening effect. If they are only weakly sharpened,
you nevertheless have to use a very light sharpening setting
in FocalBlade. If halos become too visible, you can use the
Halo sliders from the Fix tab sheet in FocalBlade to suppress
them.
A second problem
is that a high JPG compression may produce white halos in images.
These halos are usually made even more visible by the sharpening
process. FocalBlade lets you suppress these white halos with
the halo sliders on the Fix tab sheet. A third problem are the
8-pixel blocks that are produced by JPG compression. They can
become quite visible when sharpening, too. FocalBlade lets you
suppress them with the help of the Soften slider.
So it is generally
better to use a very low compression or high quality setting
for your JPG files if you know that you may want to sharpen
them later.
10. I want to
create a master image for various print sizes and papers. I
would therefore like to save the sharpening on a layer rather
than apply it to the image. Is this possible and if so, how
does one accomplish this?
You can duplicate
the background layer as a new layer and only apply the sharpening
to it. You can use a new layer for each paper type, but for
different sizes you should better save different files. The
disadvantage of this method is that the file size is getting
larger with each new layer.
Another option is
to save the FocalBlade settings as a preset file that has the
same file name as the image plus the paper type as a suffix.
For example if the image is called IMG_1001.tif, the print size
is A4 and the paper type is photo glossy paper you can save
the preset files as IMG_1001_A4_photoglossy.fbp. But it would
be better to create standard presets for different sizes and
papers, so you don't need to create a new preset file for every
new image. The advantage of this method is that you don't need
to save big files. You just need to open the original image
and apply the sharpening again by opening the preset file in
FocalBlade.
You
can also turn a layer into a smart object in Photoshop and apply
FocalBlade to it. That way you can non-destructively change
the FocalBlade settings any time you want. The disadvantage
is that you will be creating even bigger files than when using
regular layers.
11. Should I use the Plugin or Standalone
version of FocalBlade?
If you mainly edit your images in an application,
e.g. Photoshop, Elements or Paint Shop Pro, you should choose
the Plugin version. For quick image processing without extensive
editing, you could additionally use the Standalone version.
If you do not have or use a plugin-compatible application, you
should go for the Standalone version.
Here are some points that should help you
find a decision:
Advantages of the FocalBlade standalone:
1. The standalone runs on its own. The plugin requires that
you have a host application, e.g. Photoshop, installed.
2. The standalone starts up faster. Launching Photoshop (or
another host applications) and running the plugin takes much
longer.
3. The standalone lets you edit multiple images non-destructively
and save the results in one pass with the Batch command. In
Photoshop (or other host applications) you usually only work
on a single image and need to exit and rerun the plugin for
every new image. If you batch process images in Photoshop, you
cannot go back and edit the effect of a previous image.
4. The standalone consumes less memory than Photoshop (or another
host applications).
Advantages of the FocalBlade plugin:
1. You can open and save all image files that Photoshop (or
another host application) supports.
2. You can use other features of the host application, e.g.
layers and brushes, that the standalone does not offer.
3. The 64-bit plugin lets you use more than 3 GB of RAM. The
standalone does not allow that at the moment.
4. The FocalBlade plugin is able to process images in Photoshop,
even if the image size exceeds the RAM size. That is not possible
with the standalone.
12. What is the
difference between the Standalone and Lightroom version?
Essentially, the Standalone version is more
flexible, but does not cooperate seamlessly with Adobe Lightroom.
The Lightroom version is more convenient to use in connection
with Adobe Lightroom. So the main point is whether you are using
Lightroom or not.
If you use the Lightroom version, you need
to select images in Adobe Lightroom before you run the FocalBlade
Lightroom version. You also cannot change the image format or
location where the images are saved. That is handled by Lightroom.
The Standalone version on the other hand lets you open and save
images from/to any location as you please. You can also close
and open images any time without exiting.
It may take more time for the Lightroom
version to start up, because Adobe Lightroom always converts
RAW files to TIFF before it runs external editors like the FocalBlade
Lightroom version. If you are editing TIFF or JPEG images in
Lightroom, there is no start up delay. The Standalone version
lets you open RAW files directly without any delay.
