Unfortunately I find it impossible to properly sharpen an image in scene-referenced mode because the filmic module too much influences contrast and sharpness of the display-referenced intermediate result. Whatever sharpness I have found to be pleasing results in changes that make me change filmic settings which then mess up sharpness again and so the game begins anew. I can’t find a good balance and I never get to a workflow where I can take 10 or 100 images and run them through the same settings. It’s always a tedious, never ending search for a compromize between filmic and sharpness settings.
And don’t get me started on the wavelet madness of the contrast equalizer - that one is a torture for the image. There is no combination of settings between luma/chroma/edge that I would want to use on any of my images - wavelets are a poor choice for sharpening. They would be a good choice for creating a mask for the traditional unsharp mask to limit it to the detailed areas of an image - but to use raw wavelets IMHO is bonkers as there is no setting combination that will not result in artifacts or in an attempt to avoid these in too little sharpening.
@charlyw64 have you tried using the local contrast module? It is recommended to bring back the contrast that filmic nullifies, especially in the shadows and midtones. Then contrast equalizer can be applied gently.
Of course, you can always share frustrating images with us in the play raw threads, and you’ll have a bunch of edits to look at.
What about a highpass filter with a mask in overlay mode. IMHO a good method to achieve a decent sharpness. I couldn’t find any disadvantages with this, are there any?
The deblur presets are not really too bad…Maybe not what you are looking for but the coarse fine and medium on the strongest settings produce a nice contrast bump and certainly appear sharper…maybe not what you are looking for but I would not say they create a mess…
Overlay blend mode expects display referred 0-100% setting middle gray on 50% I believe so its not fully supporting the scene referred modules when you introduce it but like all things if it gives you the result you want then its not a problem…
Hello charlyw64,
unfortunately, I do not understand much about your objection.
To summarize it once again: I get along very well with the settings in RT. Artifacts or not. The result is excellent because RT works very well.
I would like to understand your criticisms better. Please write them in a simple English, because I have to translate them with DeepL and they don’t understand colloquial language.