Presets at startup

[jeff.grant@pobox.com]

I thought that I had this sorted but apparently not. I don't want sharpening done in Phocus so I created a preset without sharpening and then set that preset in my preferences for Launch. Having done that, I still get sharpening on when I start. Can someone tell me what I am missing, please.

I just played around a bit more and have found that if I am looking at an image and turn sharpening off, it comes back on again when I switch to another image.

[Dustbak]

Have you set 'save adjustments' to 'always in your preferences? This will take care of that.

[jeff.grant@pobox.com]

Yep, set to always save is on.

[David Grover]

Probably as the image you are switiching too had the sharpening applied when you first exported it?

[jeff.grant@pobox.com]

David, I assume that you mean Import? So if Sharpening is on at Import, it is stored with the image.

[David Grover]

Nope, I mean export as well!

Remember within the 3F files it stores the settings that were on the file when it was exported and any history before that, which could of course as you mentioned, be applied on import.  Perhaps it is an older image before you changed your prefs?

And it is not a case of if sharpening is 'On' in Phocus.  It depends what adjustment set you are have chosen in the Import dialogue.

You could make an adjustment set called "Jeff No USM" and make sure you have that selected when you import from your CF card.

[jeff.grant@pobox.com]

OK thanks, I get it now. I've just never thought of sharpening as an adjustment that I would want to carry around, particularly an arbitrary amount that I need to turn off.

I guess that leads me to the next question. My normal workflow is to export and then use Photokit to do capture sharpening. Is Phocus likely to give a better result? My mind goes all wobbly when thinking of the variables involved with sharpening. I normally take Photokit medium and like the result.

[Dustbak]

There is a large number of ways of sharpening. Somewhere here is a whole thread about it. I find Phocus does a very well job of sharpening. I always use a pretty mild setting in Phocus because I would like to do the majority of sharpening in PS and I will always apply an edge mask to sharpening if possible. There is absolutely no reason of sharpening OOF areas or large smooth areas, on the contrary it will in general worsen your image.

Phocus does not provide an edge mask while sharpening AFAIK. ACR does but it is quit rudimentary and difficult to exactly see the impact of it. IMHO, the only really good way is in PS and apply an edge mask there, one that you can actually see if you want to.

[alexkent]

hi dustbak,

I've understood that the Threshold slider is effectively an Edge Mask. Threshold sets the lower limit of how much tonal difference there must be between two adjacent pixels before sharpening is applied to them. OOF areas or smooth tone will have very small differences in tone between adjacent pixels so setting the Threshold value appropriately (both in Phocus and in Photoshop's venerable UnSharpMask) will limit the sharpening to only edges where there are bigger inter-pixel tonal changes.

I know there are Very Many ways to sharpen images (and religious wars are fought over which is best) but for the precise purpose of not sharpening smooth areas of tone, the Threshold control should cover it.

alex.

[Dustbak]

I know but threshold is very difficult to see what is actually happening. In  ACR you can make it visible though.

I have made several PS actions to make various edge masks. Advantage is that I can use different masks for different types of images and also I can see the masks and if needed alter them with tools like gaussian blur, levels, curves or simply paint on them.

Ah well, indeed a million ways to skin a cat or sharpen an image. I am also continuously searching for better ways or ways that do interesting things.