Comments on: Use Bicubic Sharper for Web Resizing

By: Aeruz

Aeruz — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 03:49:00 +0000

its useful for ui designing
it really depends

By: Stuff You’ll Like | Chuqui 3.0

Stuff You’ll Like | Chuqui 3.0 — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:02:16 +0000

[...] Michael Zhang: Use Bicubic Sharpener for web resizing [...]

By: Riccardo Melillo

Riccardo Melillo — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:24:09 +0000

oversharpening sometimes can be acceptable, sometimes not, mostly depends on the subject

By: Feb 18th « Blog Archive « A Photo a Day

Feb 18th « Blog Archive « A Photo a Day — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:59:30 +0000

[...] Very basic edits on this one with a slight vignette thrown in to frame the image a little. No cropping or rotating at all this time, man, that feels good! The biggest change I have made recently to my photo editing process is explained in this post. [...]

By: Miles

Miles — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:32:30 +0000

Supposedly yes but in practice I've never found it satisfactory. OOF areas often have fine detail, especially in bokeh and highlights, and if an image has grain in open areas unsharp mask can turn it into artifacts. Applying sharpening selectively through a masked layer takes a minute and provides far more consist and intuitive results, at least for me, mileage may vary.

By: nathanyan

nathanyan — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:11:10 +0000

Tools like unsharp mask already take care of this. That is what the “threshold” parameter does.

By: Miles

Miles — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:02:53 +0000

You should always control sharpness and apply it as the last step in any image export. Never sharpen originals. Control over sharpening means duplicating the base layer and applying it selectively using a layer mask. Applying sharpening to OOF areas can make them look ugly (Flickr does this) and subtle differences in focus that add depth to an image are wiped out by universal sharpening (as in the image in the linked “sharpening photos like Flickr” post). There are some instances where you might wish sharpness across an image but it's worth thinking before you apply sharpness, even with deep focus landscapes there are areas that can be spoiled by sharpening, for example sharpening areas of blue sky, or any other flat colour or gradient area, can increase noise and add artifacts.

I guess I'm just trying to say that sharpening should only rarely be just whacked on a whole image.

By: mnovaes

mnovaes — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:40:34 +0000

Sorry if I've been a bit too harsh, but IMO there are plenty of better alternatives, in a lot of ways. Best regards!

By: mnovaes

mnovaes — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:39:12 +0000

Not a great post, seriously. There are many better solutions for this. Lightroom sharpening is great (and as much as automatic/simple), as it is the awesome Smart Sharpen filter from Photoshop. Even the old Unsharp Mask works better than this…

By: Michael Zhang

Michael Zhang — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:12:52 +0000

I think the “oversharpening” was due to the post-processing of the photograph rather than the method outlined in this tip though. Mainly I was trying to show the difference between Bicubic and Bicubic Sharper. Thanks for the feedback!