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Resizing - Sharpness in Photoeditor vs. PhotoshopCS2 vs. EOSViewer


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I shoot RAW with a Canon 20D and convert it to JPEG (quality = best)

using EOS Viewer utility. And after that I resize the photo to an

800 x 600 pix size for uploading.

 

I was apparently having issues with the photoshop resized JPEG image

(A) being softer than how the RAW image (B) 'seemed' when viewed in

EOS viewer. I then tried a different software MS photoeditor to

resize the jpeg photo and I found the resized image © is much

sharper than the photoshop one, but a little oversharped compared to

the RAW look (B).

 

In a scale of sharpness, this is what it seemed..

 

RAW image viewed in EOS viewer = Sharp and perfect (0)

Photoshop image after resizing the JPG = Soft (-2)

Photoeditor image after resizing the JPG = Sharper (+1)

 

I am using "Bicubic" for PS resizing - Any help would be

appreciated, - I even have to know that whether I am hallucinating :)<div>00E7py-26411484.jpg.f55cfc49258680bd963a736aaeb61900.jpg</div>

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I think when you downsizing the image, you may need to do some sharpening on the image like Unsharp Mask (UMS) or Smart Sharpening in PS by yourself. Maybe Photoeditor sharpening the image when you resize the image by default. For the parameters on UMS, there are many suggestions from the internet...Many people suggest to use 200-300%, 0.3-0.5, 0. I do it for all images from 20D (because it's a little bit soft anyway unless you set the sharp parameter on the camera and shot it in JPEG). Someone suggest to de-forging (adjust contrast) before the sharpening by using USM with other parameter (20%, 40-60, 0). You can try either one of them or both of them and changing a little bit of the parameters. You may get the picture better.
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Please try downsizing in PS with Bicubic-Sharper and share the results here.

 

There are an infinite number of variations of bicubic resampling that one can use and each manufacturer seems to use their own. Adobe offers 3 in recent versions of PS. Those variations on bicubic resampling that tend to retain sharpness better also tend to introduce artifacts (ringing/halos about edges, and etcetera).

 

A way to think about this is that the Canon tools are like a city bus, they get you there and you do not even have to know the way, just what bus to catch. Photoshop is like a sports car with a manual transmission. It can get you there, it can even get you there faster via a shortcut, but you first have to learn how to drive, how to handle a manual transmission, and you need to learn your way about the city.

 

Myself, I think any of those "really easy to use" tools are bewildering as they are busses and they keep missing the turns on the route I want to take (they do too much for me and I cannot use the shortcuts I use).

 

In short, you often need to know more to get the same result in PS, but you can also get better results.

 

I agree that a little digital sharpening would solve your whole problem.

 

some thoughts,

 

Sean

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Thanks for the response. I am posting the image with "Bicubic Sharp" downsizing... it gives a little sharper image, but it still is a different look.. I think the diameter is a little larger. It gives same result as downsizing + unsharp mask. I actually tried this last night itself, but I wasn't happy with the result much.
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I got it !

 

I'll checke the rawshooter elements, thanks! But for now what my problem was, when photoshop downsizes an image, it does not do any sharpening and you need to do Unsharp Mask after that, I knew that.. but what I did not know was that the diameter could go less than 1. So I always used to set the diameter to 1 and used to do 30-50% sharpening.. but Peng, I followed your method and used 150% sharpening with .3 dia and I got the same result as the RAW image looked like.. pin sharp !

 

Thanks everyone .. again, I had to know how how to use photoshop..

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Interesting study, Simanta! If you look closely at the Microsoft

Photoeditor downsample, perhaps using 200% zoom, you can see that it

is total crap. For instance, look at how jaggy the double-yellow

lines are. Looks like Nearest Neighbor or some terrible algorithm.

The EOS viewer isn't quite as bad; the biker's helmet looks good

but the white line is jaggy. Maybe bilinear? The Photoshop Bicubic

sharper looks best in some areas, but the leaves look artificially

oversharpened.

 

I would like to try ImageMagic Lanczos filter on this image. I bet

it'll be an improvement over all posted images. Would you please

e-mail me that TIFF, if you don't have ImageMagick installed?

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I think the ImageMagick downsample is clearly the best, although

photo.netters who just paid $600 for Photoshop probably don't want to

admit it. Compared to Bicubic Sharper, which was previously my

favorite, the Lanczos filter does everything about as well as could be expected. With Photoshop, note how the double-yellow line looks

out-of-focus in the foreground.<div>00EBfP-26494684.jpg.7b50333569ae49ccc3823e3aa55eb977.jpg</div>

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Wow! That's really is the best, - but you didn't do any contrast/color adjustment, did you ? I don't know, it just seems much more vibrant than all other versions, - may be the sharpness itself brought some life in.. I really like this..

 

And it probably is even better than what it is here because the file I sent you was bicubic downsized in photoshop to to 800 pix to begin with.

 

Thanks for following up!

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  • 1 year later...

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