This page shows you the
result of sharpening a photo with FocalBlade and similar tools.
We tried to do the photo corrections in the other tools as accurately
as possible and didn't try to cheat by using them wrongly. We
probably even used them more accurately than most users do.
The names of the other tools aren't mentioned (only those of
Photoshop and PSP), but they are sorted according to their price.
Sharpened at
300% with a Radius of 1.0
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Tool &
Comment
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FocalBlade 2 ($70 / $40):
FocalBlade 2 doesn't amplify color noise, in fact it was
even reduced here with the new color noise reduction feature.
FocalBlade 2 also keeps the noise on the blue skirt low
while still giving it a sharp look. The JPG blocks are
as good as invisible. There are no ugly white halos visible
because of halo reduction. All
in all, it manages to produce a high sharpness without
producing side-effects.
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Old FocalBlade 1:
FocalBlade 1
did not have an option to remove color noise, so it is
still there, but not amplified by the sharpening. The
surface areas, e.g. the blue skirt, look softer,
because FocalBlade 1 used less punchy defaults for the
edge mask than FocalBlade 2. You still see white halos
here in the dots and the border of the white blouse. FocalBlade
2 by default uses halo reduction which does not produce
extreme highlights. Nevertheless you can still achieve
this look in FocalBlade 2 with the "Version 1 Defaults"
setting if you wish.
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Photoshop's
Unsharp Mask
($800+):
Photoshop's Unsharp Mask tool seems to do the worst
job of all. It boost all types of noise and also makes the
JPG artifact very visible. A noticeable white halo appear
at the bottom border of the white area. When using the Threshold
slider the noise amplification is less intense, but you
get ugly salt and pepper noise. |
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$300+
Tool:
This product does the sharpening fully automatically as
you can only choose output parameters and not the sharpening
parameters themselves. It amplifies all types of noise and
artifacts that are available in the image. It seems to use
a conventional Unsharp Mask algorithm, but doesn't even
offer a feature for keeping some areas from being sharpened
like Unsharp Mask does. |
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$200+
Tool:
Only allows a maximum sharpening of 200% which isn't enough
for some photos. But even at 200% you can see that the noise
and artifacts are already amplified. |
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Paint
Shop Pro's Unsharp Mask ($100+):
PSP's Unsharp Mask is slightly better than Photoshop's,
but it still makes all the noise and artifacts very visible.
A noticeable white halo appear at the bottom border of the
white area. When using the Threshold slider the noise amplification
is less intense, but you get ugly salt and pepper noise. |
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$100+ Tool:
This tools offers multiple-pass sharpening and only presets
and no preview. It takes quite some time to find the best
sharpening, because the presets are only optimized for
general scenarious, so it is very difficult to adapt the
sharpening to certain images.
If you choose settings that produce a lighter sharpening,
it can do a more or less nice job. If you want to do stronger
sharpening you often get an overprocessed look with a
lot of artifacts, even if no extreme white halos appear.
Another bad side-effect is the reduction of contrast and
saturation in the image.
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$100+
Tool:
No manual sharpening possible, only adjusting the auto
sharpening. You also can't deactivate the automatic color,
contrast and brightness correction. There's only one slider
for sharpening and one for noise reduction.
The tool manages to smooth
the arm, but not the color artifacts at the borders of
the arm. In fact they get even more visible. Additionally
the image didn't get really sharp although the highest
setting was used.
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$100+
Tool:
At lower sharpening settings this tool produces relatively
good results, but if you increase the sharpening, which
is sometimes necessary, it introduces ugly salt and pepper
noise. At least it keeps the color noise constant. |
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$70+ Tool:
Better than PSP and Photoshop, but it still amplifies the
noise and artifacts much more than FocalBlade. |
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$70+ Tool:
When tweaking some settings of this tools, you can avoid
that the color noise is increased. The other noise is
still increased which can't be effectively avoided with
this tool. There is also no Radius option available.
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$50+ Tool:
It doesn't amplify the color noise on the arm, but it
produces a very ugly pattern on the arm. The edges in
the photo are enlarged and unnecessarily emphasized.
After applying this tool
to the whole photo, it looks quite dirty, degraded and
not really sharp.
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$50+ Tool:
This tools only offers a few presets and nothing more,
so you can't fine tune the sharpening at all. It keeps
color noise constant, but increases other noise types.
It also adds a bit of salt & peper noise.
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$50+ Tool:
The color noise on the arm was slightly amplified. A lot
of hard edges were produced, because the gradient around
the edges was removed. Although the surface of the blue
fabric was smoothed, this tool still left several highlighted
pixels which stand out.
When applying this tool
to the whole image the result was much worse, because
it produced chopped edges with strongly amplified color
noise.
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$30+ Tool:
This tool doesn't allow really strong sharpening, only
up to 100%. Additionally some of its features easily produce
hard edges.
It flattens the surface
areas too much and intensifies the edge areas so much
that they look quite aliased.
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$20+ Tool:
Although it manages to keep the color-neutal noise down,
it amplifies the color noise very much. It doesn't sharpen
some areas very much, so many images will still look too
unsharp with it.
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$20+ Tool:
One setting of this tool only sharpens the edges (see
image) and one produces a result that is even worse than
Photoshop's USM filter. The edge sharpen result is quite
bad. It left the surface areas untouched and blurry. Whereas
it didn't sharpen all edges, it sharpened some edges too
much. All in all, the result still looks quite blurred.
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$20+ Tool:
This tool keeps the color noise constant, but it removes
the gradiations along the black lines and makes them stand
out to much. It smoothed the skin area a bit, but several
individual pixels stand out too much.
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Freeware
Tool:
The sharpening is a bit weak and the noise is only slightly
amplified. However, the color noise at the arm has been
spread to a larger area and a blocky pattern runs through
the artifact areas. A similar blocky pattern becomes visible
on the blue fabric.
It works better than some of the
other tools, but as it modifies essential image data,
it should only be used with great care and at low settings.
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Freeware
Tool:
This tool offers no Radius slider. The sharpening effect
is in the same league as Photoshop and PSP.
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Freeware
Tool:
This tool only offers an Amount slider. The 50% setting
was used for this example. It causes the same problems
as the other USM plugins in this round.
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