Mike Chaney's Tech Corner

You tease, you :)

Terry and I had the privilege of a sneak Peak at Ultimate 2013.

Very interesting and huge breakthrough change to the sharpening of an image.

It is called *DFS*  That stands for Deep Focus Sharpening.

The halos from over sharpening are virtually gone!!
That means you can increase the Radius numbers and the strength to sharpen landscapes backgrounds to be so clear as to appear that your Depth of Field increased dramatically.
Of course you can sharpen any image better than before, but the Name: Deep Focus Sharpener, came from that feature above.

You will still have the old USM at one click away if you take a while to get used to the new sharpener.

Another great feature:   You can pop back and forth from the editor back to the Raw refine screen, and back to the editor without having to close the editor.

Loads of great new stuff....

One more... just to get your appetite whetted .... Remember that CLEAR button in the editor that we don't use because we just want to clear the crop and nothing else, and that button cleared everything?
Well, try it now! Don't be afraid of it...
It now offers selective Clearing!!

I better stop here.  Where's my Valium?

Wait for it!

Fred

 

It's been an interesting week or so following this development. I would not have believed the well established USM for digital images could be improved so much. I'd always assumed we were stuck with USM as it was with halos and the limitations that causes. Mike has done a great job and enabled us to add to our creativity, not only with images that we find difficult to sharpen without artefacts but all our images.
Terry

Just found another sample

Halos/ no halos pushed to a 7/400  (7 Radius and 400 strength)  Little ot no artifacts

Fred, I have upgraded to win 7 and need Qimage Ultimate 2012 for my printing needs.

When Qimage Ultimate 2013 becomes available, what will the cost to upgrade be from Qimagee Ultimate 2012?

Richard

There is no charge... your membership must be current. That's all
The membership is 19.95, to renew if it has expired.  It lasts a year before you should renew it again.

Fred
PS and it's out! an hour ago!!

and here's two more samples... Man, this is fun!
You must see the difference...  and remember, only Q-Ultimate has this..

Another example that I used for evaluation, see attached below.
If you can't quite see the numbers:
EQ mode, 6 rad, 120% and the EQ slider at 20%
The first image is USM and the second DFS.
What you probably cannot see from the editor screen shot is how DFS has enabled foreground (notice, fence etc.) and background (church spire) to be sharpened, without artefacts, and enhance the depth of field. As you can see, the sharpening values used are high, much higher than I could use for USM.
Is there such a thing as smooth sharpening, is this a contradiction in terms? Apparently not with DFS  :o  ;)
One other point, no sky noise, it seems blues skies are left out of the sharpening process in EQ mode  :)
Terry
 

Another example, see attached. below:
1. Blue & yellow "parrot" crop of full image.
2. Approx 100% crops of USM and
3. DFS versions
Note the halos on the USM version around the small black feathers on the birds face, none on the DFS version.
Settings:
TTS; "Except RGB" on background to avoid any noise there; slider at 90%
Radius 5; 200%

Terry
PS. I almost forgot, a print at 217ppi looks terrific  ;D

Qimage is getting some much deserved notoriety!!

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=71495.0

In Case you still don't see the big deal about DFS,

Look at the red rectangle and the white artifacts inside.
Now look at the DFS  same sharpening; same everything, except I flipped the switch from USM to DFS

Fred