Digital Light & Color

I have been most impressed by Den's multi-stage sharpening process.

However, I do want to learn how to use Bilateral Sharpening on its own.

I have the white paper, but need more help.

What should be the start point for all the sliders before one tries to optimise them in the order suggested by the white paper?

I think that an out-of-the- box installation of PWP comes with the sliders set at 5 40 1.5 and 7.84

Using the supplied bird.jpg as a start image I can move the top slider from 0 to 15 and see almost no difference in my Preview Box which is set to 1:1

I'm guessing that it because the effect of the top slider (Blur Radius) is being negated by one, or more, of the other three sliders.

The white paper suggests settings of 5 25 2 and 2. Is this where one should start and then re-visit the sliders in the order suggested by the white paper?

Foregive me if this has been discussed to death by my search for the two words bilateral sharpening tells me the words are too common. Sorry.

Tony

Tony...

PWP5's BilateralSharpen can be used for (1) Local Contrast Enhancement; (2) Edge Sharpening; and (3) Noise Reduction/Skin Smoothing...

Settings for each of these techniques are different and the Blur Radius and possibly the Sharpen Threshold should be "scaled" when possible depending upon the image pixel dimensions... a full sized image, 3500x2333 pixels or web sized, 800x533 pixels...

Try this for the "bird.jpeg" [1432x952 pixels] image located in C:/Program Files/Digital Light & Color/Picture Window Pro 5.0/ ... without 'mid-tone only' or 'luminance only' considerations:

Step1: Adjust "bird.jpeg" to full range and color balance. Click on "bird.jpeg" and open the Color Balance transform; click OK using the default transform settings and Amount=100.

Local Contrast Enhancement:
Step2: Click on the resulting Step1 image and open the BilateralSharpen transform, making settings: BR=20; BT=100; SF=1.25; and ST=0. Amount=100 or preference. Click OK.

Edge Sharpening:
Step3: Click on the resulting Step2 image and open the BilateralSharpen transform, making settings: BR=5; BT=20; SF=1.50; and ST=0. Amount=100 or preference. Click OK.

Noise Reduction/Skin Smoothing:
Step4: Click on the resulting Step3 image and open the BilateralSharpen transform, making settings: BR=5; BT=5; SF=0.50; and ST=0. Amount=100 or preference. Click OK.

If you want to see the BilateralSharpen transform adjustment effects: initially set all to 0 and Amount=100 and:
then set a BR, monitor Preview 1:1 and scroll around the image;
then set a BT, monitor Preview 1:1 and scroll around the image;
then set a SF, monitor Preview 1:1 and scroll around the image;
then set a ST, monitor Preview 1:1 and scroll around the image; and then
Adjust Amount to preference for any one of the Step2 through Step4 suggested settings.

Should add: to switch from 100 to 0 transform Amount in Preview, mouse shift-click-hold and release on the transform Mask button.

Thanks Den,

Scope for plenty of experimenting.

Tony

Tony,

To experiment with the Bilateral Sharpening settings, as Den has suggested, and to get a reasonable idea of the results in something approaching 'real time', I recommend using Maciej's tip which is to crop a small section out of the bird picture - say a square 200x200 pixels (make sure the Resize check box in the Crop transform is NOT checked). Of course you should choose the crop carefully. I choose a square covering the top of the beak, some of the feathers and some of the background.

Mike.

While MikeG's suggestion is what I do at times... consider using the largest 1:1 crop image area that your patience and computer system processor will tolerate... as for example in Preview-ing a 200x200 pixel 1:1 crop particularly for BilateralSharpen in LCE mode where the BlurRadius/Threshold are set to 20/100... this translates into an image area radius change of 40 pixels which is nearly 25% of the size of the 200x200 crop... so you may not really see the changes on the scale that will occur for the full sized image...

Additionally, one can save time by un-checking the transform's Auto Preview box, then clicking the Preview button after making setting changes; and/or changing Default Preview in File/Preferences to Manual [although this will affect all transform Previews].