Do you have opinions on smugmug's sharpening?

Baldy

There's a persistent opinion at dpreview that we add too much unsharp mask when we resize photos to take them down to medium, small, etc.

My opinion is we should try to match the sharpness of the original, but clearly on this one of Andy's, we made it sharper. Here's the original:



And the version we resized (unsharp=40% radius=1)



Here are progressively less sharpened versions. Does one look right to you?

30% radius 1:



25% radius 1:



20% radius 1:



10% radius .4:



Any favorite images you want us to try this with?

DavidTO

I'd love to see what would happen with no sharpening. For reference, if nothing else.

Baldy

DavidTO wrote:

I'd love to see what would happen with no sharpening. For reference, if nothing else.

Your wish is my command. Here it is with zero sharpening using our resize algorithm (Lanczos, which preserves a lot of detail and doesn't require as much unsharp mask after as Photoshop's bicubic).



Here it is with no unsharp mask after using Photoshop's bicubic resizing:



By way of history, we know we can't get away with no unsharp because customers tell us we made their images fuzzy.

dkapp

I prefer the last one (10% radius .4) The colors are very close to the original.

Look at the difference between the default Smugmug sharpening & then the last one.

Smugmug Default:


10% radius .4:


This is just my personal preference.

Dave

DavidTO

I say: the less the better.

Baldy

DavidTO wrote:

I say: the less the better.

One thing we've wanted to do for a long time but there are always higher priority things is to enable pro accounts to set their own unsharp parameters.

It seems that portrait photographers want less than car photographers do, and pros want less than consumers.

In the meantime, I think our inclination is to reduce it but not by so much that we get the my original was sharper help messages coming in again.

flyingpylon

Being able to set our own unsharp parameters would be great. The other thing I would like is a little less compression or again, the ability to set compression. But I realize that's another topic.

Baldy

Here's a car original:

Baldy

Unsharp 40 radius 1:



Unsharp 30 radius 1:



Unsharp 20 radius 1:



Unsharp 10 radius 1:



Unsharp 10 raddius .4:

ginger_55

Is this an eye test?


I can't see any differences, just had my eyes checked, too. And with no hearing I am very visual.

Actually in sharpening my own photos, sometimes I notice a difference and sometimes I don't. I try not to push it.

ginger

Andy

thanks for doing this, baldy
question and comment

so do i understand that no matter what, you'll *always* have some amount of sharpening added to -L, -M and -S images on smugmug?

boy, the pro feature of having sharpening on or off sure would be nice.

i have had numerous comments over the past year that my -M and -L images look too sharp, or show halos, or otherwise aren't right. and i figured it out, that smug was sharpening ontop of my sharpening. that's when i went waaaaaaaay down on my standard usm in post - i usually use (100, .4, 0).

funny thing about the guitar man, that was shot with canon's fifty f/1.4, really sharp glass - the -O you've linked has no sharpening whatsover

i would suggest that you sharpen all basic accounts, and let intermediate and pro accounts apply their own sharpening as they wish. i know this may take a big effort, but the rewards will be there. sharpening for basic accounts is in order, as many folks will upload shots with little or no ps.

snapapple

Sharpen everything?
Wow! I hate what you did to Andy's guitar man. It looks fine with no sharpening. I agree that the car looks better sharpened. Cars need sharp lines and sparkle, faces don't. I only have a basic account, but I don't think my pictures need sharpening for the most part. I use unsharp mask to get them where I like them. If it's low resolution JPEG and the person orders a very large print, sharpening might be needed. But, that's not most of us here. Do I have to switch to a more expensive account just so you won't sharpen my pictures?

onethumb

andy wrote:

question and comment

so do i understand that no matter what, you'll *always* have some amount of sharpening added to -L, -M and -S images on smugmug?

boy, the pro feature of having sharpening on or off sure would be nice.

We should note, this is the way it was on Day One (no sharpening at all). And we got tons of complaints (with only like 100-200 customers) about it, because everything looked way too "soft" after being resized down to Large, Medium, etc. Everyone, pros included, *demanded* that we add sharpening.

Now, we have sharpening on, and we rarely hear complaints (with tens of thousands of customers). Of course, rarely != never.

If there's a happy medium we can come to that causes even less complaints than we get now, that would be ideal, hence this thread.

Don

Baldy

andy wrote:

question and comment

so do i understand that no matter what, you'll *always* have some amount of sharpening added to -L, -M and -S images on smugmug?

boy, the pro feature of having sharpening on or off sure would be nice.

i have had numerous comments over the past year that my -M and -L images look too sharp, or show halos, or otherwise aren't right. and i figured it out, that smug was sharpening ontop of my sharpening. that's when i went waaaaaaaay down on my standard usm in post - i usually use (100, .4, 0).

The issue is that when you downsample, as we have to do to make smaller images, it loses sharpness. So if you sharpen your original, if we add no unsharp mask, your photos would look less sharp in L and M (and all the other sizes) than the original.

Right now they look more sharp, so my tendency is to lean toward a lower sharpening setting that would keep it about the same.

Make sense?

Andy

i'm hip, don and chris .. furthermore,
you'll not find a better group of measurebators than those that congregate at dpreview forums.

so, i'm liking what baldy and you have just said, and i git it....

zero-zero

I'd say bring it down a notch or two, with the prior understanding that you will never find the way to please everyone. As you mentioned, some subjects beg for more USM while others need less, combine that with each user's personal tastes and you're done for no matter what algorithm you use.

Maybe an optional "sharper/smoother" (never say "softer" ) resize option upon upload would be the way to go. Gives people the power to choose and I suspect it wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

Baldy

zero-zero wrote:

I'd say bring it down a notch or two, with the prior understanding that you will never find the way to please everyone. As you mentioned, some subjects beg for more USM while others need less, combine that with each user's personal tastes and you're done for no matter what algorithm you use.

Maybe an optional "sharper/smoother" (never say "softer" ) resize option upon upload would be the way to go. Gives people the power to choose and I suspect it wouldn't be too difficult to implement.

Okay, good advice. We just set it to 20%, which is half of what it was and the setting that seemed about right in the images we tested. It will go live on the site that way in a day or two, probably.

Then we'll wait and collect feedback to see if any further adjustment is necessary.