Diffuse||Sharpen module - wow

Hi all,

I presume that it will take half a lifetime to “master” the diffuse||sharpen module.
The more I play with it, the more I like it.

No. I am far from being able to handle it all — but I just found a special setting
that can be of great use for many forumers: the simulate line drawing pre-set.
No. Not by using its default values, because they are far too harsh, but…

Here is the before:

And here is the after:

Only difference is that I have turned on the diffuse||sharpen module, selected
simulate line drawing and changed the iterations default down to 5. (Most often
a value of 1, or 2, might be sufficient.)

This is a great method to make flat, uniform surfaces more visible.
Imagine black cats in the shade…

Another example. Before:

After, using iterations = 2:

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

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The Lens presets are also great, although they introduce a lot of noise in low frequency areas. I’m still trying to find a good mix of the preset+a mask that only applies it to details.

Can you say which ones you mean?? I find tweaking iterations and the edge settings is enough in most of the presets if needed and actually I rarely need to … I like the dehaze preset to add some real crispness but it can at times intoduce a bit of grain…easy to manage…

I would be interested and it might be useful to the wider audience to share an example of what you are observing in your use case??

Sure, here’s a pic of a goldfinch, not a particularly good one but illustrates the point well.

File without diffuse & sharpen

Lens Deblur: Hard with no mask (You can see the added clarity in the bird’s feathers, but also a lot more noise in the background, granted some was already present as it’s a high iso shot)

Couple more instances with fast sharpness and local contrast + color correction and a detail threshold mask on the lens deblur(+53%)

De-noising before using diffuse or sharpen is very helpful to keep it really clean. Overall this module is really great in my opinion.

_DSF0802.RAF.xmp (16.2 KB)
_DSF0802.RAF (30.4 MB)

I feel the same and as I usually throw on profiled denoise the diffuse module is great at countering the softness introduce without having to tweak the denoise module…

EDIT I did a quick edit…no really too far off what you have in the end…

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I agree that the new diffuse or sharpen module is great. By default I use the sharpening demosaicing preset for initial sharpening. The module is complex to understand. I have watched AP’s video on it, but I feel it will take me a long time to master. Luckily the presets are a good start for using this module. I have also used some of the lens deblur presets.

@hatsnp I am sure you have already considered using a drawn mask around the bird to avoid revealing noise in the rest of the image. I would just use the paths tool to draw a rough mask, apply some feather and blur to mask to make for an invisible transition and noise in background would be avoided. But yes it is a great module.

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If it gets really rough I do double-denoising. I use the denoise (profiled) module early in the pipe and then an instance of diffuse/sharpen in denoise mode after my sharpen instance.

Thats generally something like what I would do and then you can actually invert that drawn/details mask as a raster mask in a new instance and hit the noise and not kill the details…

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Indeed, I do that sometimes. Unfortunately I’m very lazy so I just use the detail threshold and accept it as is.