Are digital prints oversharpened?

[tapas_maiti5]

Hi

 

Ive recently moved into printing digitally due to becoming allergic

to darkroom chemicals.

 

I have read up on sharpening and I have downloaded sampled images

from Dpreview and Canon's sites to print out as tests to compare

both against my darkroom work and against what I am doing digitally.

 

What I seem to notice from sample images (especially of landscapes)

is that the images seem very very sharp but on closer inspection it

is not resolution that is causing the sharpness but extreme "edge

sharpness" if that is the right word.

 

To my mind it almost seems like stacked cartoons e.g. the building

is pasted onto the sky instead of part of it? whereas my darkroom

prints are definitely sharp (Medium format 6x6 printed using a

Schneider lens) but the sharpness seems more subtle less abrupt.

 

When attempting to print digitally I had tried to match darkroom

prints and was sharpening far less than "recommended".

 

It makes me wonder whether digital camera images are oversharpened

to combat a lack of real resolution/detail or have my standards for

printing chemically been too low? I must admit that it seems a

reasonable trick that uses the absence of grain on digital cameras.

 

An example image might be the samples for the Fuji S2Pro on DPreview.

 

 

Regards

 

Tapas

[scott_blair1]

Whatever works for you. Sharpening does seem to have become a topic unto itself. I have cut way back on sharpening myself, because I think composition is still more important to the casual viewer (meaning non-photographers). I experiment with sharpening parameters for each image, precisely to avoid the noticeable edge halos.

[steve_hovland]

If you're using Photoshop try 150-200% sharpening, 0.5, 1, and 2 pixels, and 0-5 on the threshhold.

[john_demott]

Subject: Response to Are digital prints oversharpened?

 

Sharpening, like everything else in photography, is an art. This means that the skills to do a really first rate job take some effort to master. It also means that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I agree that a lot of the images you see around the web appear over-sharpened. Partly, this may be a reflection of people's tastes, but it is also a reflection of the fact that images on the Web need a fair amount of sharpening to have an impact on-screen. The same amount of sharpening on a print of the same image may be way too much.

 

I don't think there are any formulas for the right amount of sharpening for all photos. It depends on the type of photo (portrait or landscape, high contrast or low contrast, etc.), on the method of reproduction (inkjet, newspaper, Web, etc.), and on the size of the finished print. For this reason, many pros recommend that sharpening be the last step before printing. Make all your other adjustments and then save the file. Then when you want to make a print, open the file and apply sharpening adjustments that are appropriate to the chosen method of reproduction, but continue to save the unsharpened file.

 

Even within a particular photo, the required amount of sharpening can vary. For example, in a landscape photo, a foreground clump of wildflowers might benefit from some extra sharpening to give it some extra emphasis, but if the same amount of sharpening was applied to the entire photo, it could make the horizon line appear unnatural.

 

Two books that have good discussions of sharpening techniques are Professional Photoshop by Margulis and Real World Photoshop by Blatner and Fraser

[._kaa]

<p>Sharpening properly is something that's hard to give advice on. It's different for different photos at different resolutions (screen, 4x6, 8x10...)

 

<p>Go <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/sharpness.shtml">here</a> (luminous-landscape.com) for a very good explanation of what sharpness is.

 

<p>Many people oversharpen their images, especially if it was a bit soft to start with. That's a very common problem, along with oversaturation. But just because many overdo it, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done at all. I think that some sharpening is necessary, at least for cameras with Bayer sensors (as in, not Foveon).

[mike_lepp1]

It seems the responces went into how to sharpen as opposed to what you asked.

 

I find oversharpened images create the 3d/stacked effect you mention. It's my opinion that most digital cameras produce an oversharpened look. Even when set on the lowest amount of sharpening. I'm not sure why. I presume it has more to do with the medium (ccd)) and processing than truely being too sharp. This is because I can produce the same effect scanning film. In other words, I'm not sure how to explain it either!

 

I'm also still struggling with digital and portraits. I've read a lot of portrait photographers on this site and others who now swear by digital. Yet, I haven't figured out how to produce portraits digitally, camera/inkjet print, that match what I can do with film and wet processing. I believe this has a lot to do with what you're bringing up. I find the film images are a lot more flattering than what I can do digitally. I've also noticed this looking at images friends recieved from all digital shops. Maybe most clients don't care or are sold on the digital hype? I presented a client with both recently, and her comment was how much nicer the film looked! I think it was what the effect you bring up! In this case it makes portraits look more flattering.

 

I'd like to here other peoples ideas on THIS. Not workflow or making money, or any of the typical digital forum responces.

[graeme_mitchell]

I see a lot of oversharpened digital prints, but it's a matter of taste I imagine.

 

Mike, I do agree with you on the issue of portraits: it is one area I have a lot of trouble moving away from film - portraits and also my personal 'fine art' photography, mainly B&W.

 

This, though, I beleive is my own fault: because I know the characterstics of a film, I use that film, and I get that effect when I process and print. Whereas on the other hand, my D100 produces really bland raw images, neither overly sharp nor saturated, which are left for me to do as I will in post-processing. And I'm simply not that good or effecient with Photoshop, yet. So film is just easier for me - I mean can't even calibrate my moniter.

 

That overly sharp look could be handled by someone who knew their stuff. And maybe that really creamy look, of say XP2 Super EI 250, good be emulated in Photoshop by someone who really really knew their stuff...or maybe not.

[david_kieltyka1]

> I find the film images are a lot more flattering than what I can do digitally.

 

This probably relates to the comments on oversharpening. High acutance portraits don't give the smooth look most folks expect and want from portraiture. The problem isn't digital per se but rather how the technology is being used.

 

-Dave-

[tapas_maiti5]

Hi Guys

 

Thanks for all the responses; I think I seem to be hitting a chord here. I've been going at this digital lark for a few months now:

 

For scanned images (Blad 66 scanned via a Epson 2450)

 

- Portraits I seem to suffer the lack of smoothness that was so easy with film

 

- Landscapes I have difficulty approaching the sharpness and detail that I know is in the negative.

 

Strangely results from my Canon D30 when printed at a lab onto phot paper the results are quite nice. Maybe digital is best with digital capture.

 

Unfortunately I don't want to spend on an expensive Medium Format film scanner to simply replicate what can be done cheaply in a chemical darkroom.

 

Tapas

[mike_lepp1]

>This probably relates to the comments on oversharpening. High acutance portraits don't give the smooth look most folks expect and want from portraiture. The problem isn't digital per se but rather how the technology is being used.

 

David, I'm willing to listed to any suggestion you have! Please help if you can. Yet, I'm still not convinced. I've seen plenty of digi work from portrait studios that look like what I print, for better or worse. I have tried different diffusion and sharpening techniques. I wonder if the wet processing has something to do with it? The _same_ file printed on a Dursk using a matte/luster paper has a different and smoother look than I can get on my 1280. Yeah, I'm also becoming a collection agency for inkjet papers. I've tried all epson/ilford with varying degrees of success. Again, I'll try any and all suggestions!

 

As an aside, the client I gave both types of images to was more than happy with the digital inkjet images which she recieved right away. She just liked the film images better. These were given to her a week later.

 

Tapas, Who, or how are your images being scanned for landscape? Scanning is a learned art within itself. To the sizes I print to, 16x24, I can't tell scanned film from a d60 in terms of detail.

[andy_piper2]

It wouldn't surprise me at all to find out that the algorithms Epson (and other printer makers) use to calculate the placement of printer dots include a certain amount of automatic edge recognition and edge sharpening - totally aside from what we do to the image file in PhotoShop or in scanning or in the digital camera software.

 

In fact, under some of their controls in the page setup (e.g. "PhotoEnhance" choices) - Epson provides a slider bar for "high sharpness" or "low sharpness".

 

There is always a tension between maximum edge definition and maximum tonal rendition in photography, regardless of whether it's digital or chemical. It starts with lens design (aberrations for 'bokeh' vs. no aberrations for sharpness, etc.), continues into film processing (Tmax vs. Tri-X, Rodinal vs. Microdol, etc.) and no doubt has its counterpart in digital image processing.

 

Some software engineer has to look at the 256 brightness levels available and the "X"-many printer dots available per pixel and make some tough choices about how to generate an image that will be the best compromise between 'crisp' and 'smooth', and most "pleasing" to the general marketplace (which includes not only 'serious' photographers but also the suburban family punching out snapshots for relatives).

[majid]

If digital systems were ideal, sharpening would not be required at all. Unfortunately, things like Bayer interpolation (used to reconstruct a trichromatic RGB-RGB-RGB-RGB image from monochromatic R-G-B-G sensors) soften an image, and some sharpening is required to reverse this effect. Some sharpening is also required to counteract softening induced by the output device, such as "dot gain" on printing processes.

 

The precise amount of sharpening required is a question of taste and depends on both the camera (or scanner+film combination) and the output device. One problem is that images are sharpened on-screen using Photoshop and (most of the time) a CRT monitor as an output device, which is actually less sharp than many printers.

 

The electron beam inside a CRT is not perfectly focused and some of it sprays on the phosphors alongside, so the monitor has its own MTF and softness. If you compensate for the monitor as you would if you sharpen by visual inspection, you are liable to overcompensate and introduce too much sharpening, which looks artificial. Using a LCD monitor at its native resolution helps (but introduces other color management hassles...).

 

To compound all this, many consumer digicams have too much sharpening, probably to give more "wow factor" in the store when people are comparing cameras, but the novelty wears off quite quickly and the oversharpening becomes tiresome.

 

Finally, there is a vinyl-vs.-CD effect. Scanners and laser photo printers like Fuji Frontiers are intrinsically sharper than enlarger lenses, and this can be seen as too harsh by people used to the older technology. Fuji had to introduce code on the Frontiers to detect flesh-colored round areas and selectively blur them because too many people complained their prints were too harsh and unflattering.

[ed_whitney1]

A little off the point of the original question, but I've grown very tired of looking at newspaper photos that look like cutouts. For some reason newspapers don't seem to have a clue how to sharpen images. It appears as if their default sharpening settings are maxed out all of the time.

[scott_eaton]

I'm getting very confused by this discussion since we seem to be on several different topics.

 

The issue of digital capture producing artifacts is hardly something new. Many digicam incorporate upscale interpolation algorithms that produce aliased edges and other anomalies that can be seen in the final print. Turn all this crap off and the problem usually goes away.

 

I'm using an Epson 1640 for most of my MF film work and in many cases it produces fewer artifacts that dedicated films scanners that cost a lot more money. If you can't scan film without producing artificial looking artifacts the problem is PEBKAC - 'problem exists between keyboard and chair'. My ink-jet prints from those same films are just as sharp and artifact clear as my hand made MF prints on color or B/W paper. The only limit is the gamut range of the inks.

 

Overly sharp and artificial looking prints are what you get by the typical off set press/half tone process used to typically print slides for mass reproduction. Not only does it mask grain, but produces a false impression of sharpness.

[neil]

I've been tossing this question around recently. I have a Canon digital camera, and I have been using raw mode whenever possible. For the most possible, control, Canon's converter lets you do a "linear" conversion, which leaves the image quite dark and completely unsharpened.

 

After I changed the brightness, it took an unsharp mask of almost 300% to get from this point to where the image looked "normal." I'm sure all this sharpening being done by the camera or Raw converter has side effects. I would like to try out some different sharping tools and see which ones yield the most natural-looking results.

[ted_kostek]

> What I seem to notice from sample images (especially of

> landscapes) is that the images seem very very sharp but on

> closer inspection it is not resolution that is causing

> the sharpness but extreme "edge sharpness" if that is the

> right word.

 

I have not seen this point from the original poster explicitly addressed, but it is close the heart of the matter. Digital sharpening (USM) enhances only *edges*. I understand this corresponds to "acutance" in the wet darkroom world. This gives an enhanced perception of sharpness in the image, but digital sharpening cannot add more information to the image.

 

For more information on digital sharpening, check Norman Koren's website or the Luminous Landscape. The LL has several articles/essays dedicated to this topic.

[bobatkins]

You can't have a false impression of sharpness, since sharpness is a subjective quality. You can have a false impression of resolution since resolution is measureable, but only if you think sharpness and resolution are the same thing (which they are not).

 

So what this means is that if it looks sharp, it is sharp - by definition. If digital sharpening makes an image look sharper, that's just fine. It can't increase resolution all it can do is increase local contrast at edges, but if you just want a print that looks sharp, you don't care how that is achieved.

 

Of course if you oversharpen, you have, by definition, gone too far - otherwise you wouldn't know you had oversharpened!

 

As for "close inspection", well, yes. If you start looking at prints with a magnifying glass you may well see artifacts induced by sharpening - but so what. Who looks at prints with a magnifying glass and why would anyone do that unless they're analysing satellite photos?