hello i'm robin whalley welcome to lenscraft today i'm looking at topaz sharpen ai this is something
i've been using quite a bit myself these days but i've never covered it in a video actually that's
not quite accurate i find myself using topaz denoise ai a lot because of its sharpening feature
when i turn to topaz sharpen ai it's because there's a specific problem i want to address
this image is a good example of where i might want to use sharpen ai i shot it using a panasonic g9
with a leica 12 to 60 lens although i had the aperture set to f9 i had the point of focus set
too near to the camera because of this i've not achieved the depth of field i wanted in the image
when i realized my mistake i moved the point of focus but by then the light had faded because i
can't reshoot the image i want to use this one but i'll need to fix the depth of field problem
first now this image has already been sharpened as part of the raw processing when i magnify it
to 100 you can see the foreground is sharp but if we look a little further out you can see things
soften up quite a bit despite having already been sharpened this is an ideal situation where i like
to use topaz sharpen ai let's fire up the software and i'll walk you through some of the features and
how i use them the version of sharpen ai that i'm using for this is 3.1.2 and which i updated
just before the recording of this video when the software first opens the preview is set to 100
magnification you can change the zoom level using the drop down at the top of the interface
but if you do be aware that lower zoom levels can take longer for the preview to actually render
and it can make it quite annoying if you find the automatic preview is taking too
long you can temporarily turn it off in the sharpen ai preferences
in the current version of sharpen ai there are three different sharpening modes depending on
what you want to achieve these are motion blur which fixes problems caused by camera shake
out of focus which is usually best for problems with focal length as we have in this example
and there's the two soft option which is the recommended setting for general sharpening
at the top we also have the auto switch which analyzes the image and suggests the best
option to use interestingly this doesn't always suggest the mode you might think it should but
it usually produces a good result let's zoom in on the image to 200
and look at the area around the lighthouse that we want to improve if we compare the original we
can see that there isn't enough depth of field in the image to make the latex appear sharp
using the guidelines i mentioned i would probably select the outer focus mode to sharpen this image
below the modes section i then have three options for the type of image that i'm sharpening these
are normal very noisy and very blurry i usually start with the normal option unless i can see
there's an obvious problem with the image being blurry or noisy then below the image types we have
the setting sliders to control the strength of the blur removal and the noise reduction
i tend to use these set to auto until i decide on the best option to use for the sharpening
with these settings you can see that light out has snapped into focus even though i'm viewing
the image at 200 percent but the problem i can't see with the current settings is that
it's exaggerating the noise in the sea around the island at this point you might be tempted to
adjust the noise reduction and sharpening controls don't instead check the other image types when i
try the very blurry option the problem isn't as bad but i can now see a stronger sharpening halo
around high contrast edges on balance i prefer the normal option now let's compare this with the
very noisy option this seems to produce an image that's just as sharp but which is a bit smoother
out of the three options here i would pick very noisy for this image even though it looks a
little smooth it's then worth checking around the image to see if there are any other problems that
you haven't noticed checking at 100 magnification and comparing the image to the original i'm happy
with how this looks and i like the result now you can tweak the noise and sharpening sliders if you
think you need to most of the time i find that leaving them set to auto produces a great result
it seems to me that picking the right sharpening mode an image type makes the biggest impact on
the image quality now earlier i said the auto tries to pick the best sharpening mode and with
this image it picks motion blur this is a little odd because the problems we've been looking at
have been caused by depth of field rather than camera movement but when i switch to that mode
with the normal image type it makes a good job of sharpening the detail unfortunately
it's also producing quite a lot of artifacts or noise in the sea area around the island
now if i switch to using the very blurry option the sharpening is even better and the noise has
gone but look there's now another problem which you can see in some of the waves around the area
if you look closely the pattern in the waves is being reproduced giving the appearance of fine
detail by duplicating small details in this way it makes the area look like a bad cloning repair
to me now let's test the final option with very noisy which produced the best results previously
it looks to me like this also produces the best results when using motion blur sharpening as well
at this point i would be happy to use either the motion blur or auto focus sharpening with
the very noisy setting ideally at this point i would like to compare the two next to each other
the way i can do this is to switch to the comparison view this produces a four-way
split screen to compare the original image with the three different sharpening modes
clicking on one of the segments allows me to then see and if necessary change the settings
now i can clearly see that the motion blur and outer focus sharpening are better than the too
soft option comparing the two together though i think that the outer focus option looks a little
too smooth where motion blur is retaining more fine detail i'll therefore select that option and
go back to viewing the image at 100 for a final check around the frame if you find there are still
areas that don't respond well to sharpening try adjusting the settings alternatively though you
may choose to mask out the sharpening from that area of the image let's say in this example that
i wanted to reduce the strength of the sharpening applied to the foreground using the mask feature
i'll start by turning off the auto preview update in the preferences so that it doesn't
slow things down now i can zoom the image to show the entire image in the preview i'll then select
the mask option so that i can use it to remove the sharpening from the foreground with the brush set
to around 40 opacity i can paint over the area where i want to reduce or remove the sharpening
now i must admit that i don't like the red overlay that appears after i've painted
and i'm not sure that it's even working properly what i tend to look at is the mask thumbnail
just to confirm what i've done i also find the mask brush in sharpen ai a bit of a blunt tool
given that i'm using sharpen ai in photoshop i prefer to use photoshop masking tools instead
after i've painted my mask i can apply it and zoom to the foreground area to check it still
looks good to do this i'll click the button to update the preview then i'll remember to turn on
the auto preview option again in the preferences it would be much nicer if they put the option
at the top of the interface and i'm sure that it used to be there in an earlier version the
results of the sharpening look good to me so i can click apply to return to photoshop of course you
don't have to use topaz sharpen ai from photoshop you can also run it as a standalone application
the benefit that gives is that you have access to a batch sharpening mode but i'll look at that in
another video instead i want to show you something that's really surprised me which is using sharpen
ai with film images i shot this image almost 20 years ago using a pentax 67 medium format camera
and fuji velvia slide film i've then scanned it a couple of months ago using my old epson perfection
v700 flatbed scanner magnified to 100 you can see that the image is sharp but soft
looking at the castle it's probably also at the limits of the depth of field i used what i found
is that when processing film images like this in topaz sharpen ai the results can be amazing this
time i just use the auto settings to select the mode rather than spending time comparing them
as you can see this brings out lots of detail in the image and the image doesn't look like
an old film image scanned using a 15 year old flatbed scanner now let me show you a problem
by moving up to the castle area once the castle is sharpened up nicely the sky looks terrible
this seems to happen where the software picks up faint film grain and tries to sharpen it as detail
when the film grain is more pronounced like in a black and white negative it doesn't seem to
do this although i could spend time masking out the sharpening from the sky changing to
the very noisy image type may be easier now i get a lovely clean sky and excellent detail
if i move over to the beach area you can see the image is clean and very sharp
overall despite your problem i've been consistently surprised at how good
topaz sharpen ai is it certainly saves some of my shots that would otherwise
have ended up being deleted and for my flatbed film scans i think it's essential
if you've never used the software it's well worth downloading the trial version i hope you found
this video helpful i'm robin whalley you've been watching lenscraft i'll see you soon for another
video