Bicubic this or that: which is better for what and why?

[anna_nielsen]

Thanks.

[digitaldog]

Bicubic smoother for upsizing, sharper for downsizing.

[ellis_vener_photography]

The why is how the numbers get crunched in the algorithms used.

[KenPapai]

HELP in PS tells you. Also a book on PS is a great tool for beginners and even intermediates. And like Ellis said, it's all mathematical.

[brian304]

I have read a lot on the net about this lately. I bought a CS2 How To book, the author escapes me right now, he says to use bicubic sharper. He even says that everyone is saying to use smoother. I tried it on some large prints and I couldn't believe it. The sharper works far better. Try it yourself to see.

Brian

[colinsouthern]

In theory, sharper will always retain more edge detail - this is something you want when down-sampling. It may be desireable up-sampling, but only if you haven't done your own sharpening.

[mendel_leisk]

I think bicubic without smoother or sharper is still available. Would there be situations to use this?

[eugene_scherba]

<p><i>Bicubic smoother for upsizing, sharper for downsizing.</i></p>

 

<p>Andrew, why is Adobe so clueless? Lanczos downsizing is superior artifact-wise to any

bicubic option. And Bicubic Sharper... Jeez... It looks like it was designed in mid-90s for CRT

monitors.</p>

[bill_tuthill]

Mendel, sometimes it's better to do manual eye-based sharpening

when downsampling with Bicubic. But I agree with Eugene: there are

better algorithms than Bicubic, and computer scientists are still

pushing the envelope with Lanczos, e.g. back-projected Jensen

data-dependent Lanczos 5.