nik Sharpener Pro 2.0 Software

[lepremier]

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Does anyone have any experience of this software? After struggling to focus an active child with my 'Noctilux" and failing woefully, I downloaded a free demo version of the nik program and was impressed with the results. I notice that there is a "suite" version containing other goodies I guess but unfortunately is not downloadable which the Pro 2.0 is.

Any comments on it's usability would be most welcome....thanks

 

I've just done a quick search through the forum again and come up with another piece of software....Photo Kit Sharpener...any good comparisons??

[Annie135]

No software in the world can 'focus' an 'out of focus image'. Yes the image might appear less 'out of focus' but 'in focus'.....no.

 

Brian

[lepremier]

Yes point noted thanks. Otherwise I guess the developer of such would be an extremely popular and rich guy!

[luigi bertolotti]

I think that navigating in the Web one can find a lot of tools... many of them for free: keep in mind that :

 

- Many pictures' file formats are "public" : for instance jpeg and TIFF are standard formats which a good Software developer people can learn how to interface to with external custom programs.

 

- Algorhitms for image processing are nothing expecially mysterious : they are a classical field of study in many High Grade schools of programming, in various disciplines : when I was a University student in Electronics (end of '70s...) I developed some routine to "sharpen" (the term wasn't so popular at that times) the satellite images for terrain evaluations (the goal was to distinguish the phisycal properties of some kind of rocks). The '70s, I said... Fortran Language, batch processing, strong memory limitations, incredibly long processing times... but the base algorhitms are anyway still good.

 

So, it's rather easy to write some program that do well a certain job: as always in the Software world, the real problem (and COST) is to implement this on the various HW/SW platforms, following the updates of them, provide a decent end-user interface, integrate different programs into a "suite" etc...

 

And, as Annie said, "sharpening" is only partially related to "focusing" : if you have, say, a red rose with green foliage in the background and the rose is a little OOF, a sharpening tool can make easily more "quick" the transition from red (borders of the flower) to green (background foliage, probably OOF by definition and photog choice) :

you have a certain impression of "best focus", but the texture of the flower itself remains not well rendered : this texture is mainly composed by different values of a basic color (red): sharpening it will make the trasition between the different grades of red, again, more quick... but you often simply obtain a "fine-dotted" patch... with red dots that tend do be casually positioned, the more you sharpen...and this is not focusing neither texture rendering...

In general the simple principle is that when You have WRONG BASIC INFORMATION (incorrect focus is a form of acquiring a wrong information flow) is almost impossible to "compute-back" the right basic information, IF YOU HAVE NOT SOME KIND OF OTHER BASIC INFORMATION that provides you a "knowledge base": with this concept well in mind, you can develop Software that, at certain levels, CAN "refocus" an out-of-focus digital image: but the Software has to be feeded with informations about what is in the image : it's the face of a person ? Ok, I (program) do know it has eyes, nose, ears, hairs... let's work on this basic data...; it's a tree ? Ok, I (program) do know it has ... blah blah ... ; it's a buiding ? Ok...

A well known example : the photo taken on Mars: the originals (digital: no people, no Hasselblad.. ) are a lot OOF, but Software "knows well" what is a rock/terrain environment... and can do a very well job of refocusing. I think that someday in the Digital Photo market shall appear some commercial solution than can do refocus for specific subjects (people's faces and bodies, dressed or not, is a obvious choice): maybe something is already on the market... don't know...

 

( I made the above "flower example" for I posted 2 days ago the picture of a rose... my first Macro test with M8... )

[Laki]

Does anyone have any experience of this software? After struggling to focus an active child with my 'Noctilux" and failing woefully, I downloaded a free demo version of the nik program and was impressed with the results. I notice that there is a "suite" version containing other goodies I guess but unfortunately is not downloadable which the Pro 2.0 is.

 

i'm using the nik sharpener 2.0 pro, i find it very easy to use and it has lots of options for different output media and printers.

as mentioned no sharpening software will be able to correct oof photos in any way.

[hofrench]

There may be serviceable free software out there, but the Nik sharpening products are really first rate, and offer a great deal of control over how you decide to sharpen an image, depending on whether it is for printing, web display, etc., (and much more).

The flip side is that this companies charges a pretty penny for its products. I have no hesitation recommending them, though, and would also suggest taking a look at their PhotKit suite.

 

Howard French