I have read, that it is recommended not to use sharpen anymore with dt 5
From my search I found out, that there are different solutions, but it looks like that there is not a simple one like before.
Can you give me a short instructions how to sharpen easily please? A tutorial video would be fine too. Often it helps to change the amount of detail in local contrast.
contrast equalizer has a number of presets. If you donât have a GPU, that can be a good module.
diffuse or sharpen is a very complex module, but also comes with presets, and has been discussed many times on this forum.
With 5.4, a new sharpening method called capture sharpening will arrive as part of the demosaic module.
Check YouTube. Some hits from trusted authors:
I have been there and didnât see a good result. No idea, which preset to use when, Can it be said, which of the 3 (luma, chroma, edges) to use most times?
After I use the preset sharpen, is mix then to do fine tuning?
It looks I got as a result the opposite and no idea which preset would be recommended for a little bit sharpening.
I am on 5.2.0, I could install 5.2.1 from Install package graphics:darktable / darktable but I think this doesnât help.
Thanks a lot for the videos.
I want to have something simple, rarely i need to sharpen. Looks like the default values are very good.
Thanks for your patience, I understand, that this have been asked often. The problem is to recognize which sharpenig would be best.
diffuse or sharpen: the two under sharpen demosaicing, also under sharpen, under lens deblur. I also like local contrast|fine. And people on the forum have contributed some for fine details.
This is contrast equalizer with a random, badly focused shot. Fine details are on the right of the tool window. Left: original; right: sharpened.
And this is diffuse or sharpen, 2 instances (sharpen demosaic AA + medium lens deblur):
You can also add a drawn mask, and raise the detail threshold in the refinement section to avoid sharpening noise (this applies to all sharpening tools).
Thanks, this would be too much effort normally.
I make hundreds / thousands of pictures of plants and how they grow. Sometimes the challenge is to recognize a plant desease while the interesting leave is totally out of focus. At the moment of the shot it was not recognized, that this leave could be interesting later.
So the editing must be done very fast and the goal is not to get a prize for the photo. In this situation I would like to know which sharpening does a good job not being perfect.
if the sharpen module works fine for you, thereâs no reason to stop using it.
Yes there are better options, but if you donât have the time to play around with them to find a good initial setting for your images, then itâs better to stay with a working solution.
If you need better results then you will be motivated to invest the time âŚ
It depends on the photo, normally it doesnât make sense to spend a lot time, and in rare case, it can make sense to spend some time. I think a default contrast equalizer value is a good start.
At the end I only want to see, if there is a brown âpointâ (desease) on the leave. This brown point must not be sharp, only recognizeable in a lot of unsharp green.
A few seconds. I just:
enable the drawn mask:
turn on the mask display:
Slowly drag the slider until smooth areas, like the sky, are excluded:
Such a mask can be reused as a raster mask across multiple sharpening modules, or created in inverse (using a low details threshold to only include flat areas) for denoising, and applied as an inverted raster mask (only detailed parts) for sharpening.
Thatâs cool news. Will it work with X-Trans sensors too? I recall Aurelien saying at least once he noped out of implementing a feature for Fuji sensors due to the complexity involved, and this just sounds like exactly the kind of feature that might also be affected.
Also⌠is there any more info available on this at this time?
You have some excellent answers already here. I occasionally use the sharpen module and if it looks good it is good in my opinion. The sharpen module is good on resources if you donât have a graphic card.
My default initial sharpening is the AA filter preset found in the diffuse or sharpen module. I have included that in a style I created to apply to my images at the start of editing processing. My style also includes the denoise (profiled) module. I also use the local contrast module a lot as it also increases the perceived sharpness/clarity of of an image.
I have a pretty fast Intel B580 and I donât care about speed with the B580.
I will try this.
I donât want to use styles at the moment. Some presets are not applied and I wonder why. But maybe I found the solution. Deleting the xmp-file is probably not enough to start from scratch.
I do too, and that is probably the reason, why I didnât miss sharpening a lot.
I have never seen this behaviour. All my presets are applied in my styles. Some of them include details threshold masking for sharpening and denoising modules.
I occasionally use the sharpen module with noisy images because I can set a threshold value to avoid sharpening the noise. I do this because I have a long history of using the same sharpening option in other programs such as Adobe and GIMP pre-darktable and certainly pre diffuse or sharpen module in darktable.
I am still testing. There is a lot strange behaviour with my old dt 2 edits. As already said, I removed all xmp-files of a film roll and see high exposure values, which make the photos look overexposed. I think it is not a good idea to keep the old base curve and use the tone equalizer then.
The next test is, what happens if I delete the xmp-file and then use the purge script. It is clear, if the photo is not recognized as new, it will not apply the settings for a new photo.
I removed all xmp-file of the filmroll and executed the purge-script. The script mentioned no changes.
I renamed the filmroll, simply adding x at the end and the script again said nothing.
After renaming back the old editing was gone, which I wanted and I see my preset values now. This is ok for testing, but I donât want to edit all the other photos again.
The dehaze preset is decent as are the ones mentioned above for DorS moduleâŚ
The two sliders and occasionally the sharpness can be used to tweak any preset and really boost or relax themâŚ
As for the contrast eqâŚone of the best videoâs is an old one when the module was called the equalizer âŚ
One more thing is that the preview in DT can alter the impression of sharpness. There are two modes the default one and the high quality one that uses the full data not a downsampled one⌠Often the default one can look more contrasty and sharp and then if you export it might look different. THe diffuse or sharpen module and a few others look faithful at 100% or if you use the HQ version of the preview but otherwise it might look different than what you export⌠The option is off by default as it slows down the preview but it might be worth testing both modes in your workflowâŚ
You have to click discard history on the lighttable.
then you might try a bit using colorbalancergb and perceptions grading to increase color contrasts:
Also look at parametric masks - so you might be able to isolate these points: darktable user manual - parametric masks
local contrast may serve you better in that case. Also, try the chroma tab in contrast equalizer to enhance colour contrast.
The problem is that the terminology here is rather vague.
There are various ways of âsharpeningâ a photo, depending on what you want to achieve: eg compensating for lens imperfections or missed focus, adding local contrast, and a gazillion others.
The fact that there are so many modules is a consequence of this. While there is some overlap in functionality, each does something different. And you can use a lot of modules not intended for sharpening for visual emphasis, eg color calibration.
If you have a particular photo, why not post it in Play Raw? Then you will get examples.
