Originally posted by normhead 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)...
Originally posted by normhead 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.
Originally posted by normhead 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...
Originally posted by normhead 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
Originally posted by normhead 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...