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01-11-2022, 09:54 AM   #31
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QuoteOriginally posted by luftfluss Quote
This entire post was great, Norm, but especially this line.


And I feel it, too.
It reminds me of that stage in painter's portrait art, when children were portrayed with the proportions of very small adults instead of children and how it was accepted at the time, though it looks a little strange to modern viewers. I wonder if this sharpening thing will become the societal norm, or if 10 years from now art historians will be discussing a phase where everyone went gaga over sharpening.

01-11-2022, 10:11 AM   #32
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
Often being the word I find distressing. In the age of computer design, I would expect all of them to be excellent.
In this continuing age of manufacturing there are three general characteristics of lenses, be they computer-aided design or not:- A. Optically highly corrected. B. Wide-aperture with creamy bokeh. C. Relatively affordable.

Pick two out of three, because that’s how it’ll be for many years yet.
01-11-2022, 10:22 AM   #33
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QuoteOriginally posted by c.a.m Quote
Not to criticize the second, sharpened image of the Blue Jay, but I noticed some strange artifacts in the highest-res version at your Flickr. Seems to be some funny business going on at the peanut directly below the bird and at the snow in the left side of the image.
Masking can be used to sharpen only the bird, excluding the other out of focus area of the image. Doing it properly also takes more time. For me, there's a choice between spending more time in PP behind a computer, or spending more money on camera/lens equipment.
01-11-2022, 10:28 AM   #34
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
There is distinct social pressure in favour of sharpening.
There's likely a distinct social pressure in favour of northern cardinal, too. Some images benefit from dodging and burning. Is 36 light bulbs on dimmers in a lamphouse analogue AI, and is it 'wrong'? How about if one scripts out a batch processing routine with auto levels? Photographic image making has always been about manipulation, and always will be. All sharpening routines are manipulations. All digital images have been manipulated. Did you or an algorithm make all the choices between image capture and image presentation (at any stage)? Have you ever gone to a bank of public computers at a library or big box computer store and viewed your work? I recall going to a gallery I had sent work to for exhibit and being appalled at how my stuff (and some other works) looked because, while they did use some half decent spot lighting, about 1/3 of the light came from really bad reflected fluorescents. Metamerism.

01-11-2022, 10:46 AM   #35
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
If I had Raw Therapy and was any good with it, I'd do a comparison.
Wavelets are an interesting hill to climb but can produce some really great results once mastered. I'm no where near a master yet but a lot of the planetary imaging you see was processed with a lot of wavelet editing usually in registax and those are some great images.
01-11-2022, 11:35 AM   #36
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
This is an issue that keeps coming up.
My suspicion and many's is that the lenses on some camera systems are really not all that good, but that there is heavy correction inside the camera.

So I wondered if some of my old cheap disreputable lenses might benefit from AI. Enter my recent purchase of Topaz AI.

So today, went out and took some test shots with my FA 28-200, arguably one of the worst Pentax lenses ever. This lens is rated 7.65, I generally don't like to use lenses rated less than 10. I have successfully used this lens in the past simply by cropping, to make the out of focus areas smaller.

So today I threw it on the camera and off I went. I had to go find it buried in closet and it wasn't easy. I had to remember which storage bin it was in. Anyway here we go.

Tia with my regular software.


Tia Sharpened in Topaz.


Misty




Chase




Maybe the most interesting....one. This one was decently sharp when I was done with it in PP, but still improved. I'm wondering if it would improve the images of my sharper lenses, although sharp images tend to produce artifacts very easily when applied, but the software has the ability to dial back from the suggested setting until it meets you taste.

Original image.. almost good enough to post, by far the best of the 30 I took (low light and motion blur).




Another Jesse from another time. K-3 DA 18-135 (FF equivalent of 28-200.)


My conclusion would be, if I want to shoot the 28-200 I can make it work. And coming to the conclusion, other companies are employing this type of software in their processing in camera pipeline. I can't even explain what the difference is, but, I've always noticed a certain look to my 1'sensor images. With this software I can make my Pentax images look like theirs.

Last example, posted because Chase hs is terror face on. When he gets that look on his face, someone's is going to get attacked. Playfully off course.





It make me wonder, if I can do this with one of the worst lesnses ever sold by Pentax, just how bad are the actual lenses made by companies who've already adopted that tech. The artificial AI has a distinctive look.

SO, a few questions....

Do you like the AI sharpened look of the images or the look of un-AI-processed images? (Your own, not my FA 28-200 images, those are terrible.)
Do you have any old lenses that might have a second life because of something like this?
Do you think this software is already being used in some cameras?
Do you think there is a possibility companies are using this tech to make inferior lenses look sharp?



Feel free to add questions, as well as answering the ones that appeal to you.

It was one of the "I wonder if..." moments while out for the afternoon dog walk, so it's still at the "what does everyone else think and why?" stage.

Who knows? Maybe we'll have poll.

Oh, if you can't tell, the AI Sharpened images have a "-S" in the title.
I also have the Topaz Denoise and Sharpen software. I love them. I often use the both of them on one image if it's high ISO. And, this is with my K-1 and Pentax HD FA 24-70mm lens which does a decent job anyway. I will have to test it out using my K-3 and my Sigma 18 - 250mm lower quality lens.
01-11-2022, 11:58 AM   #37
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Does modern post processing AI make old lenses good again.

QuoteOriginally posted by luftfluss Quote
This entire post was great, Norm, but especially this line.


And I feel it, too.

Guilty.
No argument from me, ever since switching to serious monitor viewing from casual looking.
Monitor calibration is a subject that intersects here?

I tend to oversharpen due to staring at a part, on too small of a screen, and then like what happened.


Hang up and DRIVE!

01-11-2022, 01:13 PM   #38
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QuoteOriginally posted by Joe Dusel Quote
I also have the Topaz Denoise and Sharpen software. I love them. I often use the both of them on one image if it's high ISO. And, this is with my K-1 and Pentax HD FA 24-70mm lens which does a decent job anyway. I will have to test it out using my K-3 and my Sigma 18 - 250mm lower quality lens.
Given that we got some decent images with our 18-250 I would think it would be the perfect candidate. The IQ is almost there, you can probably get away with 10-20 sharpening and it's a way better lens than the FA 28-200 I used for this test.
01-11-2022, 02:49 PM   #39
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QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
I remember an older Pentax exec. interview when they talked about softening some of their telephotos a bit so that bird images would look more natural. I'm still aware of that. A few years I stopped sharpening bird images at all and went to micro-contrast instead, which gave a much more natural type image.
Very interesting re the Pentax interview... but I believe it. Some of my favourite lenses - those in my own kit, at least - are far from my sharpest. They're not my softest either, of course... they're decently sharp where it counts for my use-cases, but it's the overall rendering I'm more concerned with.

I do sharpen, as I think I already mentioned, but subtly. I generally prefer micro / local contrast to bring out detail (again, subtly)...

QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
Then the last few weeks while applying Topaz AI I noticed I'm getting a lot more likes , here on Flickr and on Facebook. There is distinct social pressure in favour of sharpening.

An un-AI-sharpened Jay


The image is plenty sharp enough....AI Sharpening actually changes the image.


It just looks different, and not as much like the bird.
Both look great, Norm. If you'd posted either version here on PF I'd "like" them, and I'd happily hang either on my walls... but I prefer the non-AI-sharpened version. That's just my personal taste, of course.

QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
But, based on my limited time with the software, more people prefer the sharpened image than the un-AI-Sharpened one. I'd be amazed if a poll showed anything else. I agree with the Pentax engineers, the second looks overly sharp, the feathers look like wires, not feathers.

I suspect part of what has happened here is the Topaz people have done some research into what people interpret as sharpness, and catered to it. You cannot see detail like the second image sitting in the blind watching the bird hop about. And yet people seem to find it more pleasing than the softer image. The Topaz AI image is as much a filter that give the image a certain look. In my mind it's gone way beyond sharpening. It's crafted micro-contrast where none existed. I believe it has done this largely by taking the soft edges around physical features, and taking the transitions between the hard edges, and making them bigger by turning the transition values into one of the two solid values on either side. This increases both the thickness of the fibres, and the apparent contrast by removing transition values. I have also seen the software take an out of focus lettering on the side of a truck that was unreadable and make it legible. It has to have something to work with, I suspect part of it's work is to remove transition values while emphasizing the more solid colours.
I wonder if it has something to do with younger folks being brought up with what I would describe as over-sharpened smartphone images, most often viewed on small-screen smartphones and tablets. I dare say if that's what you grew up with, it becomes a baseline standard, and our preference for more natural-looking images must genuinely appear soft to them. My Redmi Note 9 Pro Max phone takes good raw photos, but much better JPEGs (because of its super-quick HDR capability) except that they're horrendously over-sharpened. I actually have a preset I created for RawTherapee that reduces the "Contrast by detail" levels to compensate for that over-sharpening and make the images look more like the output we get from our SOOC Pentax JPEGs. To me, the photos look so much better after applying those adjustments... but I guess a lot of younger folks would find them too soft...

QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
Given that analysis I'm totally on the fence. I believe the Pentax approach is more in keeping with nature, but I think the Topaz people have done a really good job of researching how people perceive sharpness and helping create the images many people like to see. It's a conundrum. And having gone off sharpening for about about 5 years and doing everything possible to avoid what I consider to be an artificially sharpened look, I'm torn. Feathers should like like feathers, not wire constructions, but it would seem, a lot of people prefer the wire construction, what's person to do?
Well, you can have your cake and eat it. For your commercial work, you can sharpen with the Topaz AI app, and keep copies with more natural sharpening for your own and Tess' enjoyment

QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
All that being said, I'm thinking most of what I send to the printers will soon be sharpened. The sharpening doesn't do anything for sunsets and pastel scenes. You have to be careful not to create artifacts. But I suspect for images like the above, it will make more compelling prints. Even if it's art, not documentation. For digital images, I'm not sure it would be worth the effort. It generally takes me about 3-5 minutes to apply this "filter." Save as full size tiff, sharpen or d-noise, load the image into preveiw, resize and convert to jpeg. I recently archived my best 52 images of 2021 and sharpened every one that went into that folder,(except for the sunsets). so I've started understanding what I'm doing. Nothing increases understanding like repeating the process on different images. But I'm still a little on the fence about when I should do it. I suspect everything I post from now on will be at least run through the software, even if I use very low values more in keeping with my own philosophy or as in most sunsets, choose not to sharpen at all. Sharpening on water ripples is just wrong. But for wildlife animal , streetscape, etc. I think over -sharpened has become a style. Anyone interested in selling their work is probably going to have to get on the bandwagon or suffer.
I can absolutely see the benefit for printing. I'm just starting to learn about sharpening for print, and whilst I expected there'd be some softening of detail, I wasn't prepared for just how apparent that can be... so yes - this looks like a much more effective way of sharpening for print whilst avoiding the often heavy-handed results from, say, a classic unsharpen mask filter...
01-11-2022, 03:06 PM   #40
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I have Topaz DeNoise AI which has very good sharpening software with it. It was fun to play with but I'm not sure I'd use it to "rescue" a not-so-sharp photo, though my big takeaway from this thread and another thread about sharpening is that Photoshop automatically gives 40% sharpening by default when you open it... then I print screen it, downsize it and post it here!

The real fun is opening a film photo in Topaz and cranking the sliders way up!
01-11-2022, 03:18 PM - 1 Like   #41
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QuoteOriginally posted by RedRuff Quote
I have Topaz DeNoise AI which has very good sharpening software with it. It was fun to play with but I'm not sure I'd use it to "rescue" a not-so-sharp photo, though my big takeaway from this thread and another thread about sharpening is that Photoshop automatically gives 40% sharpening by default when you open it... then I print screen it, downsize it and post it here!

The real fun is opening a film photo in Topaz and cranking the sliders way up!
I recently did that for scans I did for a 50 years canoeing commemorative book. I found running the image twice produced better results than completely cranking it in one go.
01-11-2022, 08:12 PM - 3 Likes   #42
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even with the sigma 70mm post processing can help/
. The question is how much?

I could focus stack way more than I did and you would see way more of the mold. The question is did you see what I was trying to show you?

ALL media is about showing. If media shows what I don't want it is bad. If media shows what I want better, it is good. What do I want to show? You tell me what I want to show and then tell me what lens would work better. Tell me what you want to show and I can tell you what lens is best.
01-11-2022, 10:40 PM   #43
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QuoteOriginally posted by swanlefitte Quote
ALL media is about showing. If media shows what I don't want it is bad. If media shows what I want better, it is good. What do I want to show?
Very good answer . Where's the "I like" button?
01-12-2022, 05:06 AM   #44
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I think that not just sharpening but other types of correction can be applied to greatly improve the quality of photos. I took an example of a sigma mini wide II 28mm macro. It had terrible lateral CA not sure if it was my copy or the lens generally, but I used a correction tool that changed the magnification of each of the three color layers, and suddenly the images popped. I think all makers do this with their lenses with in body profiles to get the best out of the lens.

As for sharpening, and noise reduction, I find a lot of over processing of images aimed at posting and viewing on the web, they look fine on a tablet but when you zoom in, you can see they are over processed with both sharpening and noise reduction.

Can these tools help, sure but there has to be a limit, I’m sure you’ve heard the expression making a silk purse out of a sows ear. It simply can’t be done.

---------- Post added 01-12-22 at 07:07 AM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by normhead Quote
I recently did that for scans I did for a 50 years canoeing commemorative book. I found running the image twice produced better results than completely cranking it in one go.
I have also found processing through sharpening twice with lower settings gives better results than pushing for the final result in one go.
01-12-2022, 07:24 AM   #45
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QuoteOriginally posted by swanlefitte Quote
ALL media is about showing. If media shows what I don't want it is bad. If media shows what I want better, it is good. What do I want to show? You tell me what I want to show and then tell me what lens would work better. Tell me what you want to show and I can tell you what lens is best.
That's a good point as far as it goes. But, good composition is about taking advantage of the endorphin producing genetically pre-determined predisposition towards various shapes, forms arrangements and interplay between those elements. Product photography, and some documentary photography show things. But a larger part of the photography market is art, and not about showing things, but creating pleasing compositions in which the things shown are shown in a pleasing context. Showing things is a subset of the whole. The best photographers do both. They show things, and they show them in a way people find pleasing to look at.

Last edited by normhead; 01-12-2022 at 10:51 AM.
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