DT sharpening is questionable

In the screenshot are those your settings…just wondering. I recall seeing on more than one video that Aurelien had them both set to bicubic so I did it… blindly and have never really checked on this to see if I have a preference or can see a difference… “old-eyes” so probably not…ie me not you :slight_smile:

Those are the defaults. I don’t pixel-peep, and Aurélien also did not seem to care too much about sharpening (beyond the basics). diffuse or sharpen was originally created to diffuse/blur; either in one of his videos or one of hist posts he mentioned that it only occurred to him later that he could ‘run the process backwards’ for sharpening.

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@kofa

here is my settings…

So, also the defaults.

Have you studied the topics, if so, have you found a sharpening method / some settings that you like? Do you have specific questions?

Yes!

No, havent done yet but seems I would need to for sure.

Yes, I am part of some photography groups on Facebook and some people post their pics of family/wedding photo shoot and they are crystal sharp, probably they are advanced LR users or may be using some AI tools who knows! It leaves me wondering if at all it is possible to achieve that level of sharpness in DT?

Probably has more to do with the lens quality than anything else. Also a small internet sized photo is probably a bad way to judge.

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If only some brave and skillful soul would port RT/ART Capture Sharpening to DT. I read somewhere that it should be doable.

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Hello @tankist02

If only some brave and skillful soul would port RT/ART Capture Sharpening to DT.

This has been requested also on YouTube :slight_smile:

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Perceived sharpness is affected by contrast, as well.

You have posted a photo, some have responded. Did you like the results?

Some people sharpen again after downscaling for export.

You may want to try darktable lua documentation - RL_out_sharp.

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Sharp enough?

_6I_4800.CR3.xmp (16,1 KB)

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Very nice edit! For me most of the perceptual improvement in sharpness comes from the local contrast modules in the display-referred part of the pipeline.

I am wondering if there is a solution that gets the same effect using scene-referred (linear) modules (not that there is anything wrong with local contrast, I just want to learn).

I tried disabling local contrast, and combining contrast equalizer with tone equalizer, but you get nicer transition in leaves (left: yours, right: mine).

screenshot_2024-10-11-140928

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I think sharpening this image created some side-effects, where the edges of bokeh were also sharpened.

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That’s obviously true. But I think it is in an acceptable range. And there is a rule in life, there is nothing for free. And here you pay with the side effects for the improved sharpness. Life is always a compromise. Isn’t it?

Edit:
Here is a more bokeh preserving version. Still not perfect, but
I already wrote about compromises:


_6I_4800_01.CR3.xmp (33,1 KB)

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@sherebiahtishbi The lens was shot wide open, the whole image is quite soft to start with. Stop it down, try f/2.8 or so – you had enough light, the photo was taken at 1/500s. The less resolution you lose when taking the image, the less you’ll have to sharpen.

Here’s an edit with multiple masked diffuse or sharpen instances + default local contrast.
The first two D/S instances are just masked versions of sharpen demosaicing: no AA filter, sharpen.; plus, there is a third instance where I took the settings from the long thread I have referenced above. Top: (over)sharpened, bottom: original.


_6I_4800.CR3.xmp (10.3 KB)

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I love the local contrast module. Not only for sharpening. For me it is one of the most important and most used modules. Without it I would be somewhat helpless. I don’t care if it is part of the display-referred part of the pipeline. :flushed:

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My version…

_6I_4800.CR3.xmp (17,6 KB)

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As far as I know that module is recommended even in a scene-referred setting. It should go after filmic/sigmoid. I remember AP talking about it but I don’t remember where at the moment…

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Display-referred is not a swear-word, don’t be ashamed of using display-referred modules. :smiley: Plus, even if it were, swearing has health benefits. (Those two words link to two separate studies. :slight_smile: )

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It took me a while to understand this (ie that some transformations just work better / are easier to work with in display-referred space).

I started using Darktable around 3.x when scene-referred was introduced and was under the impression that it is more “modern” and should be used exclusively; clearly that is a misunderstanding.