Tips for Good Results

Here you will find a few tips for using FocalBlade more effectively.

In-Camera Sharpening vs FocalBlade

Digital cameras usually apply a more or less simple sharpening effect on photos. Sophisticated and time-consuming sharpening algorithms aren't used, because digital cameras don't have such fast processors as PCs and manufacturers try to reduce the time between two shots. Side-effects of this simple in-camera sharpening are increased noise and artifacts in the photos, especially on photographs taken in low light conditions.

If you shoot RAW files with your digital camera, there is no sharpening applied to them. But sharpening is usually applied by RAW conversion tools when converting the RAW files to JPG or TIFF files. Unfortunately many of these RAW conversion tools apply a similar bad sharpening as digital cameras do.

FocalBlade offers much more sophisticated sharpening methods than digital cameras and RAW conversion tools. So we generally recommend that you deactivate in-camera sharpening or at least set it to the lowest possible value. That way you will achieve much better results when using FocalBlade later on them. Unfortunately many low budget cameras don't allow you to deactivate in-camera sharpening. In such a case you have to live with it or buy a camera that offers such a feature. In the case of RAW conversion, you should also deactivate the sharpening option if you want to use FocalBlade later on them.

Of course if you don't have the time to edit your photos on your PC with FocalBlade, it is sometimes better to use the bad in-camera sharpening on daylight shots than no sharpening at all. However, on night shots you will be more happy if you have in-camera sharpening deactivated, even if you don't plan to sharpen your photos on your PC.

When To Use Focal Blade in your Work Flow

Correcting photos usually involves several steps. It is best to apply FocalBlade as one of the last steps during photo correction. For some images it can help to adjust saturation or do some manual retouching after sharpening.

It is not recommended to sharpen before applying noise reduction, because that will bring out even more noise and make it harder for the noise reduction software. On the other hand it helps to sharpen a photo before you change its size, because that helps to fight the blurring that is caused by the resizing. Lens and perspective corrections also blur the image, but much less than image resizing, so sharpening before these steps will not help much.

It is also a good idea to use FocalBlade AFTER one of the following steps:

• Color Correction
• Contrast Correction
• Brightness Correction
• Highlights/Shadows Correction

If the photo doesn't need a very strong color, contrast and brightness correction, you could also apply FocalBlade before these steps if there is no other way. But strong color, contrast and brightness corrections can increase or decrease the sharpening which is probably not what you want.

Keep the Preview Zoom at 100%

To achieve good results, please always keep the preview zoom at 100%. Only with this setting will you see the sharpening effect as it will be applied to the image. Additionally at settings lower than 100% the auto sharpening of FocalBlade may not work perfectly.

Backup the Unsharp Versions of your Photos

It is highly recommended to keep the unsharp versions of the images as backups. So you should save your edited photos with another file name and not overwrite the original files. Another backup possibility is to sharpen a duplicate layer and save the untouched as well as sharpened layer as one file. You may need the unsharpened version in future again, because an new version of FocalBlade with better sharpening became available or you want to apply a different sharpening effect for printing on a different device.

Non-Destructive Sharpening

Although you should always keep a backup of your original photo, it may be useful to store the original image together with the sharpened image in one file. To do that you can duplicate the original image layer in your graphics application and only apply FocalBlade to the dublicate layer. This also allows you to blend the sharpened layer with the unsharp original to adjust the sharpening intensity. You can also add more new layers and sharpen them for different output devices or papers, but for different output sizes you should better save different files. The disadvantage of this method is that the size of the saved file gets larger with each new layer.

Another option is to save the FocalBlade settings as a preset files. For example if an image is called IMG_1001.tif, the output size is 2048x1536 pixel and the output device is an inkjet printer, you could name the FocalBlade preset file as IMG_1001_2048_inkjet.fbp. However, it would be better to create standard FocalBlade presets for different sizes and devices, so you don't need to create a new preset files for every new image. The advantage of this method is that you don't need to save big files. You just need to open the original image or edited unsharp file and apply the same sharpening again by opening the preset file in FocalBlade.

Unfortunately Photoshop doesn't support adjustment layer plugins, otherwise it would be much easier to solve this problem without having to save big files with a lot of layers or creating different FocalBlade presets.

Sharpening Tips for Landscape, Portrait and Night Photos

Here are some recommeded settings:

Sharpening Twice

The Auto Feature of FocalBlade is intended to be used on photos that have only been slightly sharpened or that have a soft look. If you use FocalBlade's Auto features on photos that are quite sharp, FocalBlade will sharpen these photos too much with a "Medium Sharp" setting. In this case please use a "Light Sharp" setting or manually set the two Sharpen sliders.

Two or three very weak sharpening applications, won't reduce the image quality, nevertheless sharpening twice doesn't work better. You don't have so much control of the effect and it needs more time. When sharpening twice the risk to add too strong halos is larger, especially if you change the brightness and contrast of your image after sharpening. So better apply FocalBlade as the last step with appropriate settings.

Some people still prefer to sharpen photos right after they scanned them or transferred them from their camera. Doing that lets you remove the low pass filtering (blurring) - that was applied by the scanner or camera - to see the quality of the photo more clearly. Nevertheless you also have to sharpen the photo again at final print size. In such a case it is recommended to apply a very light sharpening at the beginning, e.g. by using a "Very Fine Details" setting or low radius of 0.2 to 0.5 pixel. Additionally you should better use "Light Textured" setting or low surface sharpen value for both sharpening steps to avoid too much noise in the surface areas.

Undoing Sharpening

Sometimes you may want to undo a too extreme sharpening effect in a photo that you received or that has been sharpened with another tool in the past. This can be done manually by using the Blur or Selective Blur modes in FocalBlade. If the edges as well as surfaces of the image were oversharpened, you should try to blur the whole image. But don't overdo it with a too strong setting and a too large radius. If only the surface areas were oversharpened, you can keep the edges untouched and only smooth the surface in Selective Blur mode. To do that in Expert mode set the two Sharpen sliders to zero and use the Soften slider from the Surface tab. Another possibility for slightly oversharpenened images is to activate the Antialias check box and to set both Sharpen sliders to zero.

Reducing Halos

Although FocalBlade doesn't produce the extreme halos of other sharpening tools, FocalBlade produces slight halos if you want to apply a very strong sharpening. Here are some tips on how to remove these halos:

1. A too strong JPG compression creates halos. So JPG files saved with a high compression are bad for sharpening. So please only produce JPG files with a strong compression after you sharpened them.
   
   
2. Please reconsider if you really want to apply such a strong sharpening effect. Decreasing the value of the Sharpen slider of the Edge tab or choosing a lower Auto Sharpen setting often removes the halos.
   
   
3. Setting the Smoothness slider to a higher value sometimes makes the halo less visible, but at the same time it also enlarges the edge area, so this method is often not useful.
   
   
4. Reducing the value of the Intensity slider can help. It has a similar effect as reducing the value of the Sharpen slider of the Edge tab, but it might be more effective without decreasing the overall sharpness.
   
   
5. Another good method for reducing halos is to increase the Radius slider of the Edge tab. This may sound paradoxical, because doing that in other tools amplifies halo, but in FocalBlade it reduces halos. A side effect is that it emphasizes larger details.
   
   
6. Last, but not least, use the two Halo sliders from the Fix tab to reduce the halo. They also let you reduce the white halo more than the black halo or vise versa.

After all, even if halos aren't desirable, especially if they are too strong or wide, the mechanism that produces them is essential for the sharpening. Sharpening basically means increasing the contrast between edges and surfaces in photos. So visible halos occur if the contrast adjustment is too extreme. They are more or less a sign that the sharpening applied by FocalBlade is too strong.

Speed Issues

FocalBlade may need up to 6 seconds to update the preview on a 400 MHz computer. But as FocalBlade uses several buffers to store pre-calculated image data, subsequent calculations need only a small fraction of that time that is needed when you first run FocalBlade. Some calculations don't need to be done for every slider change, so FocalBlade's buffer strategy helps a lot to speed up the preview rendering.

If you want to do several adjustments and avoid that the preview is rendered with every control change, you can deactivate the Auto Preview check box and activate it again after your have done the changes.

Additionally if you do the following steps you can increase the rendering speed of FocalBlade:

1. Deactivate the Precise check box.

2. Keep the Soften slider at a value of zero.

3. Keep the Auto Details setting at "Very Fine" or "Fine" or use a very low value for the two Radius sliders.

4. If you don't use the Auto Details feature, you can also save render time by making sure that the Radius slider on the Edges tab and the Radius slider on the Surface tab have the same value.

Additionally you can speed up the preview update by doing the following steps at first:

1. Choose your preferred image area in the preview.

2. Set the values of Auto Details box or Radius sliders.

3. Make sure that the Radius of the Edges and Surface tab have the same value.

4. Set the value of the Smoothness slider.

If you don't change these settings anymore and only adjust the other sliders and features, you will be able to work a lot faster with FocalBlade if you have a slow computer. Especially changing the image area in the preview forces FocalBlade to recalculate all image data.