Auto sharpening tool for the web, preferably Unix

I am looking for an automated tool which will do a good job

of sharpening images for viewing on the web. A tool which can

be run in batch mode on PS7 is OK if not too expensive (this

excludes Nik) but I would much prefer something which can be run

from the command line in Unix (OS X).

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I am aware of Imagemagick, however the -unsharp radiusxsigma

option doesn't let you specify all the three classical parameters,

as it looks like "amount" and "threshold" are hard coded, while I

am not sure "sigma" is. I also think that an edge-aware sharpener

would be necessary to get good results on a variety of images with

the same settings.

If you're looking for a cheap edge-aware sharpener, let me recommend Fred Miranda's EdgeSharpenPro

 

http://www.fredmiranda.com/ES_PRO16bit/index.html

 

For less than $20 it runs in a batch mode inside PS 7 as an action (and it's tweakable).

 

Somebody else asked a similar question as yours: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=003non&unified_p=1

Shourya, I have seen the thread you mentioned, and checked that

webpage. I was disappointed to learn that this sharpener relies

on Photoshop's "find edges" filter, which in my experience is a

rather poor edge finder.

Gimp (also xv) has a sharpen tool that I use with a pretty much constant setting of 40-45%; for web images I like it better than USM. I think gimp can be run in batch mode, I just don't know how.

Gimp can indeed be used in batch mode. Information and examples can be found on the extensive Gimp user's manual (http://www.gimp.org/)

 

Cheers,