High Quality Sharpening

[gbquant]

I'm a little confused about the HQ sharpening when doing raw conversion. I was under the impression that using that gives me the same sharpening as the Breezebrowser viewer.

I usually convert to JPEgs which look quite reasonable in Breezebrowser. The problem is if I view the image in any other viewer (e.g Irfanview, Qimage or PS) the image doesn't look anywhere near as good.

For a long time I've noticed that the images that I post to the web don't look as good as in breezebrowser. I'm now wondering if I haven't been making a mistake in using HQ sharpening.

Why do my converted images look good only in Breezbrowser?

Thanks
Greg

[Gary_Berg]

Do you have BB Pro displaying your JPG files with HQ Quality on? If so, it's sharpening the images on display, which other viewers probably don't do.

[gbquant]

I always have BBPro set to display in HQ mode. If the raw images are processed with HQ sharpening shouldn't I expect to view or print the images with the same or at least similar quality to what I observe in BBPro. Once the images are sharpened shouldn't other ways of displaying the images give me sharp images?

[Peter]

I'm a little confused about the HQ sharpening when doing raw conversion. I was under the impression that using that gives me the same sharpening as the Breezebrowser viewer.
That is a frequestly asked question. See my response here:
http://www.breezesys.com/forum/showthread.php?p=6684#poststop

[gbquant]

OK I understand that. Now I have a related question that perhaps is also answered in some older thread.

I'd like to get sharpening similar to HQ-75 from other programs such as PS after editting or Qimage while printing. What settings in unsharp mask are equivalent to HQ-75 (BB's default).

Thanks
Greg

[DavidB]

There are a number of sharpening methodologies. Unsharp mask is the most widely offered, but it and HQ are treated as alternatives in BB Pro. Photoshop also has several methods, but I do not know which of them, if any, is the equivalent of HQ; the nomenclature is confusing, to say the least.

If you like HQ, why not use the Proofs function of BB Pro (which can be set to use the HQ method) to do the sharpening? As we are normally advised to sharpen only when other image processing is complete, this would seem to be a feasible option.

[gbquant]

It seems to me that I need to rethink my workflow. I like the way HQ sharpening looks but it apparently is not making through to my printer program, Qimage. I probably need to apply the sharpening step there. I just need to figure out which seetings to use.

Thanks to all for their responses.

[Dan_Honemann]

I'm the guy who posted the same question in the thread to which Peter pointed.

The short answer to your follow-up question is that there's really no perfect solution... at least none that I've discovered thus far.

The problem is that sharpening wants to happen after sizing, but sizing wants to be the last step in the workflow, just before displaying or printing. So let's say you shoot a wedding and want to deliver a CD to the client... you need to have one folder sized and sharpen just for display purposes so the client can review the images and have them look as good as they do in BreezeBrowser with HQ on (unless you want to buy a BB license for every client!). Then you need to have another folder with the full-sized images for printing... but at what size? You'd need to create separate folders for every size the client might want to print, one for 4x6, 5x7, 8x10, 10x17, 13x19, etc.... all sharpened after sizing... that's a bit unwieldy.

The same problem applies to online galleries that allow for printing... do you have separate galleries by size so that you can pre-sharpen for 4x6 vs. 13x19 output? That's also unwieldy.

And of course if you want to get really perfectionistic about it, you'd sharpen each image separately and use masking to ensure only the areas that you want sharp get sharpened. Couple with this the fact that images that look over-sharpened on screen often look properly sharpened in prints, making it difficult to determine proper values by proofing display versions. While using various actions or plug-ins can help with all of this, you still have the problem of having to sharpen after sizing, which means knowing in advance all the possible sizes you need and offering versions for each one.

I wish some smart gallery site (like smugmug or zenfolio) would offer a print service that would run the original-sized images through qimage with both the sharpness equalizer filter on as well as smart sharpening (these are two different processes in qimage) to size and sharpen the images before transferring them to the lab. Assuming the gallery also sizes and sharpens display versions (thumbnails and larger) of the original, this would allow uploading just the original-sized image and letting the gallery software handle the rest. Doesn't solve the cd problem (if a client wants delivery of a cd of images), but makes the gallery image solution work.

Dan

[gbquant]

I've been thinking about this since my original post. I view/display images in 3 ways: BBpro, HTML, and prints. If I understand it correctly, with HQ viewing set, BBpro sharpens on the fly as the images are being displayed. For web pages, I use the BBpro HTML generator, which doesn't seem to have HQ sharpening as an option. Presumably, USM sharpening, which is available is done after resizing.

I use Qimage to spool my prints. Qimage has an option to sharpen prints at the time the print is spooled after final resizing/cropping.

So, it seems to me that I have to change my workflow such that I no longer sharpen during raw conversion, but instead wait until the final step. My only problem is that I don't know which USM settings to use to get my images to look like the BBpro HQ display.

[Chris Breeze]

In general it is best not to sharpen images when editing and only sharpen them for each final image. Different output methods require different sharpening i.e. what looks right for displaying screen sized images won't necessary be best for printed images. The HQ sharpening option in BBPro's proofs works the same way as the HQ display option in the main browser window.