sharpening in Vuescan

[jim_simmons]

Found a few links referring to this in the archives, but not quite

enough specifics, so... What observations do you have on Vuescan's

sharpen results? Is it subtle enough and smart enough to use as the

first mild pass at sharpening in a 3-stage sharpening process? My

next 2 stages will be done with Focalblade? I could just do the

first stage with Focalblade with the freshly scanned image, but the

idea of doing the first pass simultaneously is appealling.

[ted_marcus1]

Would you care to enlighten us about your "3-stage sharpening process"?

 

<p>The common wisdom is that sharpening is the absolute <i>last</i> thing you do after you've adjusted everything else (and I also use FocalBlade for that), especially since the necessary amount varies with what you're doing with the image. Thus the only use I can see for sharpening in Vuescan is if you're going to print the output of Vuescan directly.

 

<p>That's probably why there are so few references to Vuescan's sharpening in the archives. And I'll bet most of those refer to Vuescan's ability to scan <i>without</i> sharpening. The native drivers for many scanners automatically sharpen images with no option to control or disable it. This sharpening can add noise and accentuate grain, or at least unnecessarily complicate efforts to reduce grain.

 

<p>If you have found a better approach than the common wisdom, we'd all like to hear about it.

[william_john_smith]

PhotoKitSharpener. http://www.pixelgenius.com/sharpener/index.html<BR>Read what

the developers say about sharpening before flaming.

[william_john_smith]

I do argee that sharpening shouldn't be done in vuescan or any other scanning problem

for that matter.

[mendel_leisk]

I think (not at home pc) Vuescan documentation emphasizes it's sharpening is "simple" or "basic", something like that. As other responders have already said, I think it's just for quick-and-dirty results.

[ted_marcus1]

The <a href="http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html">article</a> to which William John Smith apparently alludes indeed describes a three-stage sharpening workflow. The first stage is "capture sharpening," which attempts to compensate for the loss of sharpness inherent in the scanner or camera.

 

<p>The approach the author describes for this stage involves very selective unsharp masking of the Luminosity channel with an edge mask. Ed Hamrick uses quite sophisticated algorithms throughout Vuescan, but I strongly doubt that the sharpening function can do anything like that.

 

<p>I would be interested in knowing how Jim Simmons uses FocalBlade for the second stage, "creative sharpening." I find FocalBlade a powerful and very usable solution for "output sharpening" (the third stage) images for printing, display, or the Web.