Focal Blade vs Focus Magic

FocalBlade specific discussions
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BlackRhino

Focal Blade vs Focus Magic

Post by BlackRhino »

I have been a user of Focal Blade for about 6 months now, and I have always extolled its virtues.

But recently I installed a demo version of Focus Magic, and tried it on a few sample image, just for sharpening. I was surprised,(and disapointed) to find that, on many images Focus Magic actually did a better job of sharpening than did Focal Blade.

I use a Canon 10D, and I find that for most images, a simple 2 pixel adjustment does as good a job as any tweaking I can come up with using Focal Blade. I should say that this is with low to moderate ISO images that don't require to much fuss with noise.

I don't know why I'm really posting this here except to let you know that I hope focal Blade can intoduce similar technology as Focus Magic.

HaraldHeim
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Post by HaraldHeim »

Can you please send me an example that demonstrates what you mean. The example should contain the original image, the image with Focus Magic applied and the image with FocalBlade applied. That would help me to understand why you think that FocusMagic is better.

FocalBlade is mainly for sharpening while FocusMagic is aimed at deblurring, so they work a bit different and can't be compared in all aspects. Anyway, FocusMagic supports the deblurring of motion blurred photos, but other than that it contain only offers two or three simple options, while FocalBlade offers dozens of fine-tuning tools. My tests also indicate that FocusMagic boosts color noise when sharpening, which FocalBlade doesn't do. FocalBlade lets you sharpen up to 2000%, while FocusMagic only goes up to 300%. FocalBlade also let you do some very fine sharpening with a Radius of 0.1 pixel, while FocusMagic starts from 1.0 pixel.

I'm keen to improve FocalBlade, so it will be interesting to see if FocusMagic is better in a certain aspect.

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