Sharpen - Turn on - Turn off in viewer

[Menace]

Hi Mario,

unfortunately I can't decide, if I my photos are nice or ugly, when I watching them in the viewer because of the strong sharpening. It looks very strange on my monitor. And when I choose 100%, I can't see all of the photo. I don't want to use allways a second party Photoviewer.

In PhotoMechanic 5 I can turn off the sharpening and this improves the imagequality on my monitor a lot. Maybe this on/off-possibilities in preference --> viewer isn't to complicated to solve?

Kind regards!

[Mario]

I would like to see a screen shot of what you see in the Viewer, and an orignal file.
IMatch does not sharpen much, only a bit to counter the softness introduced by scaling down an image to fit-to-view in the Viewer.
In 100% scale mode, IMatch does not sharpen at all. I don't see "ugly" images when I look at the viewer. And image quality can only be assessed in 100% mode only, because all software sharpens images in one or other way.

[Menace]

Because of the "one or other", I would like, if i can choose.

I cut (?) the original, so that it is similar the same view (sorry, for my terrible english). But if tiff or jpg, it looks all the same.

The original can be found in https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jxjp5d6xcpxj0f4/Bl-tCsEViF

[attachment deleted by admin]

[ubacher]

I found that my high ISO (noisy) images looked bad on the Imatch viewer.
I took this as incentive to make sure I suppress grain sufficiently during processing.
Now I have no complaints.

[Menace]

For me, this can't be a solution.

First: In printing, grain is not allways a problem (it's more a problem for pixelpeeper at 100%) ;-)
Second: Even in Low-Iso pictures I have the edges and stairs (just in the viewer, not in the pictures itself.

[HaWo]

Die Schärfung ist auch für mich zu stark und als Bildbetrachter finde ich IM5 nicht so angenehm. Da sind FixFoto, XnView, Faststone Viewer wesentlich angenehmer.

https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=678.msg3968#msg3968

[Menace]

Ich finde Photo Mechanic sehr ansprechend, da ich auch dort gleich die Bewertungen durchführen könnte, aber er ist mir allein dafür etwas zu teuer.

Nein, ich möchte da schon eigentlich diese Arbeit mit IMatch 5 machen.

IMatch-Workflow:
1. Import
2. Viewer --> Bewertung + Löschen (dafür brauche ich aber ein Bild (komplett innerhalb des Bildschirms und ohne Treppchen)
3. Taggen in der normalen Ansicht (IMatch ist da einfach unschlagbar genial).
4. Verschieben in die entsprechenden Verzeichnisse.

[Photon]

If an image is scaled down, there is ALWAYS sharpening (=resharpening) required. This is due to mathematical/engineering basics (I studied this). If you do not resharp, (when downscaling) the quality (blur) turns definitively too bad.

BUT: The level of resharpening is highly dependant on display/printing technology (Plasma, LDC, OLED, LCOS, DLP, paper, ...)! It is also highly depending on display size and on the viewing distance to display/paper and finally a little bit on the individual capabilities of human eyes. So either you have to know the real output display/paper/distance or you have to make assumptions. These assumptions can vary between different software tools and a configuration of resharpening level would be certainly fine. Finally the result of such discussion and research was leading to the current export resharpening options of Lightroom (which is also a compromise for non-engineers/physicians).

May be the resharpening compromise in Imatch Viewer is too strong or was developed on or for a certain kind of display?

[Menace]

But why can I turn of the resharping in Photo Mechanic 5, if there is allways resharping?
And on my monitor, all photo-viewer show the pictures without artefacts. I just see, that one other programm shows also artefacts: "Windows Fotoanzeiger". Use IMatch this programm?

[Photon]

I wrote, that resharpening is basically required. If you can turn it off, it is just turned off. Then the result is not as sharp as it could (should) be. Nevertheless an option to turn it off could not not bad. Finally you have to know, that the downscaling principles and results can also be different between image software.

[Menace]

Ok. But I prefer not as sharp, but no artefacts. 

[Photon]

If there are visible artefacts (I did not check) the resharpening might be too strong for your or other individual display technologies and viewing distances.
Both, the downscaling and the resharpening method contribute like a chain to processing speed and visible output.

By the way, your small images (screenshots?) indeed look like a strong downscaling issue in Imatch images and not like a resharpening issue. Seems you are right with your complaint about the viewer and my above remarks about resharpening are not wrong, but just academic. The visible effect looks like aliasing effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing (DE: Treppeneffekt). See there the capital A letter aliased and anti-aliased.

[Menace]

Yes, this are screenshots. Trees with leafs looks also terrible.

I thought it's a resharping problem, because, Photo Mechanical have also a bit artefacts, when I turn on the resharping. If it is a AA-Issue, maybe there is just missing a *.dll or codec which use windows photo viewer and IMatch?

[Photon]

You see the alias-look-like effect best in the branches without leaves in your first photo. May be you can provide the original image for testing by others in this forum? But I cannot imagine that there is are specific reasons in your windows system or missing DLLs.

Seems that your screenshots are JPGs, which does result in quality loss. Best would be to provide screenshots always as PNG files. PNG files are still quite well compressed, but completely lossless coded.

[Menace]

Ok, I try to save in png too, but it looks like the jpgs. Thank you for your help. 

[Mario]

Display sharpen can now be adjusted for the Viewer/Quick Preview and the slide show.
I used a level approach and an internal sharpen ramp. The level the user choses is mapped to sharpen parameters used internally.

Build 5.0.142.