Possibly on a related note, but I thought I read someplace on this forum and the unsharp mask is effectively a local contrast operation, and if so then applying local contrast, the contrast equalizer and then sharpening could easily run the risk of overdoing things, even if those modules operate on different scales.
LOL! 
4 Likes
No wonder! How many “dpi” were there in a “simple” 35mm film frame?
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
1 Like
Why sharpness?
Why not?
Not all raw files are taken with the goal to produce art. Some are produced with the goal to record the scene, especially if they are taken to record heritage or astro stuff. Does that not count?
2 Likes
It seems most of you treat sharpening like another creative tool. It’s not.
Sharpening tries to recover the original sharp image by flawed methods. The thing is, it is when you need it most that it will fail the most, because dramatic changes only exhibit those flaws.
Algorithms that behave well as long as you are gentle with them are the definition of non-working algos, because if you can afford to stay gentle on the settings, it’s most likely that you don’t need them in the first place.
3 Likes
But if blurring is a creative technique, then why couldn’t sharpening as the inverse serve a creative purpose?
Granted that most of the time sharpening is utilitarian, but if I had an image where I wanted to emphasize fine details then wouldn’t that serve as creative purpose?
And yes, pushing sharpening will lead to ugly results, but I’ve seen plenty of over done blurred pictures as well.
3 Likes
Of course all sharpening methods are flawed, since they attempt to reverse an imperfectly known, noisy system.
However, an algorithm may be flawed and still be useful. What do you see as problematic in this example: Sharpening Experiments in Gimp Unsharp and "Smart Sharpening" - #4 by heckflosse ?
In my opinion the image is clearly improved by sharpening, and I don’t see any obvious flaws.
2 Likes
I think there might be room for a bit of creativity with a sharpen tool. When doing monochrome, I’ve run across textures that I found could be beneficially altered with a dose of of agressive sharpening. I’ve never actually kept it, however, due to the lack of masking in my hack software… 
The overuse of an image manipulation tool may be unpleasant. I get that.
Awesome photos are not always technically good. I get that too.
What I don’t get is:
The only real issue with lack of sharpness is with focusing mistakes.
Why?
All the more since the atmosphere diffuses light a bit.
So, may one use a bit of sharpening to enhance a well-focused montain lots of kilometers away?
It seems most of you treat sharpening like another creative tool. It’s not.
What are non-creative tools?
Algorithms that behave well as long as you are gentle with them are the definition of non-working algos, because if you can afford to stay gentle on the settings, it’s most likely that you don’t need them in the first place.
That definition is subjective and kind of weird. When a parameter value stops being gentle?
If I find gentle go “exposure +2eV”, and then my image is ruined: should I conclude the algorithm behind that tool is non-working?
Anyway, I completely agree with your main idea.
I may add that: in most cases, technical quality is overrated.
If one is not doing some scientific research, conveying an emotion is more important than get a sharp, noise-free image.
2 Likes
I did not read everything here, but sharpness usually has to do with technical image quality, not artistic quality. Sharpening, noise reduction, highlights reconstruction etc are important and probably a lot of progress still can be made in those areas, but in the end they are boring technical issues. From my point of view, truly and artistically innovative tools are features such as color balance rgb, parametric masks or the local adjustments in RT. Yet, if you think a bit about color balance rgb for instance, it is actually relatively simple (in the positive sense, I don’t mean to insult anybody), nevertheless so handy for creative people. I think it does not require as high maths as noise reduction or highlights reconstruction, does it?
1 Like
Hmm. But what is “sharpness”?
I suggest it is a perceptual quality, measured by high local contrast and only small spreading of edge detail (ie making gradients the real-life scene did not have). So the process of “sharpening” increases local contrast, or narrows edges, or both. The opposite process lowers local contrast, or increases the spread of edge detail, or both.
We might sharpen an image to:
-
compensate for an AA filter
-
increase clarity
-
focus a viewer’s attention on a region of the image
-
add punch to an image
-
anything else.
I wouldn’t disparage any of those reasons.
True, I frequently see images that I consider over-sharpened. I grew up in the era of film, when sharpening was a difficult/expensive process. Now it is easy/cheap, so it is overused, for my taste.
4 Likes
You’re doing Aurelien misthinking again. Getting confused by your own theory of why something exists* and deriving obviously false universal truths from it.
Sharpness has very clear anvantages for a range of image types. Texture is great in many images, just not all portraits. Sharpness is used creatively all the time in the choice of lens and aperture . Software is a way to adjust that interactively and cheaply but not perfectly .
Yes lots of online images are oversharpened and oversaturated but thats besides the point.
- I’m guessing the physics behind the algorithms are making you think they exist only for the purpose of handling that case.
6 Likes
Camera manufacturers have used sharpness of the images their products produce as a marketing point and drew a parallel with quality. By that extend most of the big and famous photographers on youtube, Instagram and other social media are sponsored by camera manufacturers. And they are basing their content on showing the capability of the camera, not the art of photography.
Their content gets viral and that’s how non photographer people end up learning wrong what a high quality image is. They actually don’t learn it but they develop a skewed taste and perception of quality because of overexposure to one particular style and that style being reaffirmed with thousands of likes. It’s a domino effect.
Now why all photographers care about that look? It’s actually pretty simple. The people that developed their artistic taste using Instagram and social media end up being our clients and they demand the same or similar style of photography that they’ve seen become viral so many times.
The other thing is; most of us are not artists at all. Only rare people live off of artistic photography and of doing their own thing. But all others are in the same boat that I’ll try to describe. We’re in the boat where we want to hear positive feedback on our photos from our family, friends, random strangers etc. When I take a portrait of my friend I like when he/her goes: “OMG! It’s just like what Peter McKinnon does or even better! Thank you so much!”. And while I know Peter McKinnon is a youtube reviewer and not a photographer, my friend thinks Peter McKinnon is the best photographer that ever walked this earth because he has idk how many subscribers. He puts my photo as his profile pic, tags me, gets a few hundred likes and the next day I get a paid photography gig from someone. But the trick to getting recognized was to be another brick in the wall, do a simple dramatic portrait with a blurry background and oversharpen it only to go over it again and destroy the entire skin by smoothing it as much as possible.
So there you go. Most viewers don’t actually recognize a high quality shot and edit. They have a skewed perception of quality which is not critical or artistic. And most photographers are not artists. We are the DJs in your local club spending 6h on Facebook and wasting our life while fading tracks in and out instead of being real musicians perfecting the craft and finding expression.
The more you present people with particular think eventually they’ll come to love it. It’s the same with music. It’s just about following trends and playing that same 4 chords, essentially beating that dead horse until it stops spitting out money.
7 Likes
I fail to see how something trying to make the picture look more like reality (while actually making it look more synthetic) can be called creative. For creativity, there is composition, colors and framing. I’m just as suspicious with synthetic blurs, because in real life, the thickness of the blur will vary with distance, and the large majority of the software blur operators don’t use a depth map.
I can see how creativity linked to distorting reality, but not in making carbon-copies.
1 Like
Your post is one of the most depressing things I’ve read lately. I guess I’m lucky to be just an amateur…
1 Like
Remember, in your initial post you mentioned sfumato to make your point. This is a creative technique. Yes, to create blur, but sharpness is the inverse of blur. So why can one be thought about creatively and not the other? An artist need not limit their tools merely to achieve a technical perfection. If that were the case no one would even be shooting Digital, with the issues of debayering inherent and unremovable from the process.
1 Like
It’s the truth tho. I spoke to many of my photographer colleagues and everyone thinks he’s the best and that he has his own stye but in reality those differences are so minor that they can be disregarded because we all stick and follow the same trends in order to make our subjects happy and get more customers. Most of our clients are not cultured people with a trained eye. They want us to do the same stuff that they’ve seen on Instagram because that’s something they do recognize and perceive as quality since they have been exposed to that look a lot in various media. They don’t want us to experiment or be creative. They pay us to make them an image worthy of a cover on a cheap tabloid newspaper. That means oversharpened features with extremely smooth skin.
And it is depressing, that’s why I’ll be closing shop soon and making photography just my hobby too.
3 Likes
Sharpness is used creatively. If I blur a leaf in the foreground to focus on a frog in the background you will look at the frog. If I blur the frog and focus on the leaf you will look at the leaf. We draw our subjects attention where we want it. Sharpness and blur in editing can work the same way, albeit within the confines of what was initially captured - so it tends to work on a more subtle scale.
1 Like
When we create things, we are being creative. I don’t see what it has to do with sharpness and the endless debate on what is or isn’t creative.
2 Likes
If I may add another thing. Sharpness was always the key thing in the world of product photography. If the product is sharp then it’s robust, has high quality construction etc. And today with all those image sharing platforms and social media people have come to see themselves as products and they are presenting themselves as products.
They want photos that will project a certain message clearly and that is “I’m as sharp on this image on my profile as this expensive, high quality Bosch electric drill is sharp on this product photography image”.
I think BlackMagic Design is really the king of that mindset, just look at this image from their website:
Look at this one, it’s falling apart from all the sharpening:
Everything si sharp, I think that the logic behind it is if you see something sharp it’s better because blur is considered an optical imperfection and vision imperfection.
3 Likes