[filmscanners] Sharpening and Grain

["Howard Grill" <hgrill1@verizon.net>]

Hi Art,

I am sharpening using what I feel is a superb product...PhotoKit Sharpener.
The results I am getting are better than when I 'self sharpened' with USM.
The prints, when enlarged, seem to have too much grain for my taste prior to
the image being what I feel is sharp enough.  The slides are quite sharp,
taken with quality equipment on a tripod.  The Photo Kit sharpener uses
masking etc to limit sharpening to edges far better than I ever could.  I
can back off a bit on the sharpening layer, and have done this with quite
reasonable results but was wondering if there was a way to get the images a
bit sharper without bringing out the grain.  Again, it only seems noticeable
when I get to larger image sizes.

Howard


How are you sharpening the images?  Do you sharpen the RGB image or go
into lab mode and sharpen the luma channel? That method may lessen
apparent grain for large prints.  Is it possible you are oversharpening
the image.  Many of the programs you speak of use smoothing algorithms
which just counteract the sharpening process.

Do you use the threshold adjustment in unsharp masking for broad areas?
The problem is all sharpening process exaggerate artifacts.  Have you
tried backing off a bit on the unsharp masking and see if the results
might be more pleasing?  If the "grain" mainly shows up as the result of
unsharp masking processing, it might be better to lower the amount of
this rather than trying to fix the problem with another filter process.

Art


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