My alibi is that I stated, "As a general rule, sharpening shouldn't be done more than once...." and even Bruce Fraser indicates that my comments are in agreement with "conventional wisdom." Nevertheless, you and Michael Shaffer are quite correct in pointing out that there are more sofisticated sharpening techniques that may give improved results compared to the "sharpen once just before printing" method that I usually use. I've tried Bruce's method, and another extremely involved multi-sharpening method, and wasn't able to make them work well for me (probably my fault). Also, I have a certain bias against the Silverfast sharpening since Silverfast seems to default to sharpening in some random fashion whether I want to use it or not. I don't even recall if Silverfast allows for the adjustment of the sharpening level. Thanks for your comments.m I'm sure the person who posted the original question appreciates the discussion as well.
In a message dated Fri, 26 Oct 2001 10:51:13 AM Eastern Daylight Time, "Maris V. Lidaka, Sr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > > > > I respectfully disagree - scanning inherently > results in unsharpness, which can be dealt with to some degree by initial > sharpening with Silverfast, Vuescan (which I use), or even in > Photoshop. > > I follow the recommendations of Bruce Fraser as he > lays them out at > http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/12189.html > > Maris > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 12:01 > AM > Subject: Re: filmscanners: Silverfast > Unsharp Mask > > In a message dated > 10/24/2001 12:00:46 PM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > > > > How are folks using Silverfast unsharp mask vis a vis Photoshop? > I'd like > to do some sharpening on the scan side but leave a little > final sharpening > to be done in PS. I don't know if this is a good > idea or not. In any case, > what looks fairly good to me in > Silverfast seems crude and unusable by PS > standards once the image is up > in PS. I've just tended to turn off USM in > Silverfast altogether. > > > Thanks for any suggestions. > > Joel W. > > > > Sharpen only in Photoshop and not at all in > Silverfast. As a general rule, sharpening shouldn't be done more than > once and it should be one of the last things done to an image. I usually > sharpen as the last step just before printing, and I save the image to a file > just before I do that sharpening. That way, I can later resize it if I > want another print of a different size, sharpen for that new size, and then > print. By saving an unsharpened image, I can always do more work with it > in Photoshop without violating the general rule I just gave you. Keep in > mind that a lot of things you do in Photoshop, including resizing, can mess up > the sharpening you did on it, so save sharpening for the last step. > > > For what it's worth, I believe it was Ian Lyons who told someone that > Silverfast had a good unsharp masking algorithm, much better than that in > Photoshop. My personal view is that they are probably equivalent, but > it's all irrelevant anyway since you should not be sharpening in Silverfast if > you are later going to work with the image in Photoshop. I assume the > reason that Silverfast even has a sharpening mode is that many Silverfast > users may want to go directly to press with a scanned image without using > Photoshop on it.
