Sharpening

[Chris Bell]

I'd be curious to hear about favored methods of sharpening. Where do you set the OLPF compensation? Low, Medium, or High detail? No sharpening in RedCine...do you sharpen in post with the tool in Final Cut?

Advice welcome....

Chris

[michael zaletel]

Hi Chris:

Sharpening is tricky enough for still images. There are so many variables to consider. My preference is to leave sharpening until the very last step after grading even. Reason being that when you make any changes to color balance, gamma, contrast, tint to match shots, you modify the edges of images. If you do the sharpening prior to grading, you run the risk of emphasizing or downplaying your sharpening in certain parts of the image. Also, just like with still images for print, you want to apply different sharpening settings (or unsharp mask or smart sharpen settings) for different output resolutions. For example, you would use different settings for the HD version than you would for SD version or web resolution versions. Also, compression for web can do crazy things to pre-applied sharpening. Therefore, my advice is to avoid sharpening, unsharp masking or smart sharpening until you've finished the master, then apply sharpening based upon how you are planning to output or display the footage and remember to use different settings for different output sizes, resolutions, compressions.

EDIT: Also, many times it is best to sharpen locally within a feather-edged mask or use same method to apply varying levels of sharpening.

-shooter

[Chris Bell]

What software are you using to perform sharpening?

[Costelloe Michael]

Hi Guys,

This is a topic that I'd quite like to hear more about and therefore post this reply as a way of getting it back onto the top of most recent posts.

Where are your favoured methods of sharpening aplied and what do you find gives best results. (I find my workflow is based on whatever the client is most used to and a lot of the time I have little control over paying jobs.)

So come on guys get with the replies!

Mike C

[Shawn Booth]

What software are you using to perform sharpening?

I follow the "sharpening" whenever it is brought up. I believe most employ the After Effects>Unsharp method. At the end of all work. Final step before output.

[Chris Bell]

Shawn,

What settings do you use in Red Cine? Detail setting? OLPF?

[Ramesh Jai]

I follow the "sharpening" whenever it is brought up. I believe most employ the After Effects>Unsharp method. At the end of all work. Final step before output.

What settings have you found to be good in AE's unsharp mask? Thanks

[Dan Hudgins]

I would add that you should only sharpen up at the final output size, if you sharpen a 4K image then down res to DVD size you can get worse aliasing.

In fact before you down size you may need to blur the image to avoid aliasing in the smaller version.

If you sharpen early on too much you can get the video look and worse noise in the images.

Sharpen/unsharp mask can help with using fast lenses like f/1.2 since they have a halo around the image details.

[Brad Stoddard]

When using Red Alert to output 2k ProRes HQ for pre color grading, what settings should be used for Chroma Denoise/De-Moire and PLPF Compensation if I want to maintain a pristine workflow and not introduce artifacts?

The default setting are maximum and high respectively. Debayer Detail is also default at high.

Thanks

Brad

[Shawn Booth]

Shawn,

What settings do you use in Red Cine? Detail setting? OLPF?

RC -

Sharpen - leave on default 50.00
detail: Medium
NR: Enabled

I'm the first to admit though, I'm still learning.
I also believe though, every shot requires its own settings. "This shot gets HIGH Detail" while "That one gets 0 Sharpen"....

Honestly, I don't know...