Digital Light & Color

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With the recently added feature to save a mask with a transform setting, one could easily develop a 'script' that would perform High Pass Sharpening that simultaneously adds large area contrasts [local contrast enhancement] and small detail contrasts while controlling the amounts for Light and Dark Halos... ...terrific effects for nature landscape type images.

This is not to take away from the sophistication of 2Pass Bilateral Sharpen and/or Advanced Sharpen... ...I just have not been able to find a relatively generic approach using them to achieve preference effects...

Currently, I will create a preference High Pass Filter image in PWP7 and import it into PWP8 to use with its Composite-Hard Light transform and a Luminance [0,0] [50,0] [50,100] [100,100] step curve mask to limit Light and Dark Halos...

Should a High Pass Filter transform be added to PWP8, I will be happy to provide a 'script', examples, and document its use.

...den...

How are you generating high-pass images with PWP 7?

Generally a high-pass image is obtained by subtracting a blurred image - normally using Offset Difference - from the original. You can do this in PWP 8 now. If this is what you are looking for, it would be relatively easy to add as a transformation.

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I will:

1) create an initial High Pass image with a large radius, say 50: 2) then depending upon small detail, subsequently sharpen the resulting 1) image with: Sharpen, Heavy Sharpen, or USM with a small radius, perhaps 2 to 5 and threshold 3.

[edit added] For Sharpen, Heavy Sharpen, or USM, I will set their Halo limits where Light is 2/3's or 1/2 of Dark, ie., Light=67; Dark=100 or Light=50; Dark=100 with Amount = 100.

3) use the resulting 2) image as Overlay in Composite-Hard Light transform where Input is the starting image. Halo limit control is achieve by taking the Luminance channel of the resulting 2) image and applying a [0,0] [50,0] [50,100] [100,100] step curve mask, then use the mask as the Overlay Amount Mask where the white slider limits Light halos and the black slider limits Dark halos. Adjust Input Amount to preference.

...den...

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Thank you Jonathan...

...with the 181005 PWP 8.0.exe update, a High Pass filter was added to the Sharpen transform listing.

Here is a High Pass Sharpen script for your experimentation. It utilizes High Pass with a suggested radius of 50 for a starting image with 4000x3000 pixel dimensions, followed by Sharpen More for the small detail... ...Color Management/Profile settings have been removed... ...yours will be auto-loaded if you sequence through the OK warnings and select YES to convert.

Copy the text and paste to Notepad or BabelPad with UT-8 encoding; then save the file with a *.script extension to the Scripts folder. The script text for 181005 High Pass Sharpen.script:

script 1.0
color_management enabled 0 on_mismatch 0 acs_profile ″″ gray_acs_profile ″″ wcs_profile ″″ gray_wcs_profile ″″ monitor_curves_file ″″ monitor_curves_enabled 0

image index 1 caption ″START IMAGE″ parent -1 bypass -1 same_size 0 size_specific 0 n_inputs 0 n_masks 0 command ‴file_open pathname ″″ filetime ″″‴
end_image

splitter index 2 parent 1 n_branches 2 caption ″Splitter″

side_branch index 4 parent 2 branch_number 1 caption ″Branch 2″

image index 5 caption ″High Pass″ saved_as ″″ saved_on ″″ parent 4 bypass 0 same_size 1 size_specific 0 n_inputs 0 n_masks 1 command ‴high_pass 0 radius 50 amount 1 -1 0 0 ″Amount: ″ ″Mask″ display 1 sync_scroll 1‴
end_image

image index 6 caption ″Sharpen″ saved_as ″″ saved_on ″″ parent 5 bypass 0 same_size 1 size_specific 0 n_inputs 0 n_masks 1 command ‴sharpen 0 kernel 1 maxovershoot 1 maxundershoot 1 threshold 3 strength 1 amount 1 -1 0 0 ″Amount: ″ ″Mask″ display 2 sync_scroll 1 auto_preview 1‴
end_image

side_branch index 3 parent 2 branch_number 0 caption ″Branch 1″

image index 7 caption ″Composite″ saved_as ″″ saved_on ″″ parent 3 bypass 0 same_size 1 size_specific 0 n_inputs 1 n_masks 2 command ‴composite 0 operation 6 alignment 0 nalign 0 label 1 overlay_color ffffff overlay_amount 1 0.6667 0 0 ″Overlay Amount:″ ″Overlay Mask″ amount 0.4250 -1 0 0 ″Amount:″ ″Base Mask″ display 2 sync_scroll 1 auto_preview 1 ‴
input base_image 7 input_number 0 index 6 caption ″Overlay″
mask base_image 7 mask_number 1 base_input_index 0 initial_image -1 initial_mask_index -1 initial_level 0 caption ″Overlay Mask″ command ‴mask 0 nx 4896 ny 2754 mask_color 0 mask_transparency 2 initial_level 0 n_op 1 command1 operation 9 mask_mode 0 mask_operation 9 channel 0 curve 3 0 0 0 128 255 255 255 ‴
end_image

end

You may find that the default Composite-Hard Light Input Amount is a bit aggressive resulting in too obvious Light/Dark Halos... ...just lower the Amount from 42.5 and/or adjust the Overlay black/white Amount sliders as they will also control halos.

Ask if there are questions...

...den...

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1) As there is a modest interest in this topic, I need to advise a correction to the previous post:Once you have run the script, re-Save it to retain your Color Management and Profile settings.

2) As by way of apology... ...an updated HighPass Sharpen.script:

This script provides additional Light/Dark Halo control by using a Input Amount Mask comprising the Input image’s Luminance channel where the white slider controls the amount of Light halos and the black slider controls the amount of Dark halos… …note that at the suggested settings, the Composite-Hard Light blend is biased towards darker halos for both the Input and Overlay images as Dark halos are less objectionable then Light halos…

The updated HighPass Sharpen.script in text format:

script 1.0
color_management enabled 0 on_mismatch 0 acs_profile ″″ gray_acs_profile ″″ wcs_profile ″″ gray_wcs_profile ″″ monitor_curves_file ″″ monitor_curves_enabled 0

image index 1 caption ″Start Image″ saved_as ″″ saved_on ″″ parent -1 bypass -1 same_size 0 size_specific 0 n_inputs 0 n_masks 0 command ‴file_open pathname ″″ filetime ″″‴
end_image

splitter index 2 parent 1 n_branches 2 caption ″Splitter″

side_branch index 3 parent 2 branch_number 1 caption ″Branch 2″

image index 4 caption ″High Pass″ saved_as ″″ saved_on ″″ parent 3 bypass 0 same_size 1 size_specific 0 n_inputs 0 n_masks 1 command ‴high_pass 0 radius 50 amount 1 -1 0 0 ″Amount: ″ ″Mask″ display 1 sync_scroll 1‴
end_image

image index 5 caption ″Sharpen″ saved_as ″″ saved_on ″″ parent 4 bypass 0 same_size 1 size_specific 0 n_inputs 0 n_masks 1 command ‴sharpen 0 kernel 1 maxovershoot 1 maxundershoot 1 threshold 3 strength 1.2500 amount 1 -1 0 0 ″Amount: ″ ″Mask″ display 2 sync_scroll 1 auto_preview 1‴
end_image

side_branch index 6 parent 2 branch_number 0 caption ″Branch 1″

image index 7 caption ″HighPass Sharpen″ saved_as ″″ saved_on ″″ parent 6 bypass 0 same_size 1 size_specific 0 n_inputs 1 n_masks 2 command ‴composite 0 operation 6 alignment 0 nalign 0 label 1 overlay_color ffffff overlay_amount 1.000 0.6667 0 0 ″Overlay Amount:″ ″Overlay Mask″ amount 0.5000 0.3333 0 0 ″Amount:″ ″Base Mask″ display 2 sync_scroll 1 auto_preview 1 ‴
input base_image 7 input_number 0 index 5 caption ″Overlay″
mask base_image 7 mask_number 0 base_input_index -1 initial_image -1 initial_mask_index -1 initial_level 0 caption ″Base Mask″ command ‴mask 0 nx 4896 ny 2754 mask_color 0 mask_transparency 2 initial_level 0 n_op 1 command1 operation 9 mask_mode 0 mask_operation 9 channel 0 curve 2 2 0 0 255 255 ‴
mask base_image 7 mask_number 1 base_input_index 0 initial_image -1 initial_mask_index -1 initial_level 0 caption ″Overlay Mask″ command ‴mask 0 nx 4896 ny 2754 mask_color 0 mask_transparency 2 initial_level 0 n_op 1 command1 operation 9 mask_mode 0 mask_operation 9 channel 0 curve 3 0 0 0 128 255 255 255 ‴
end_image

end
...den...