Affinity Photo Deconvolution sharpening

[Bail]

I have used Affinity Photo for two years since leaving Photoshop and am very satisfied. Recently a professional photographer suggested that one of my images below could be improved by using a deconvolution sharpener on it. This image was taken at Chester Zoo on my X-T2 with the 100-400 lens at 600mm, full frame equivalent. I sharpened the image by modest use of the High pass Filter and am pleased with the result. However, I realise I have almost no knowledge of deconvolution sharpening which I thought naively was more about removing the blurring associated with AA filters which of course the X-T2 sensor does not have.

 

Can any one help?

1What does Deconvolution sharpening actually do?

2 Does Affinity Photo enable such sharpening? If so how?

3 If not what software do people use? Does anyone using Fuji cameras use it?

 

Any guide on these issues would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[John Rostron]

Affinity does not offer deconvolution sharpening, but other software does. I use Astra Image which is available as a free-standing program or as a plug-in. It offers a variety of sharpening techniques including deconvolution and wavelet sharpening. You can set the scale of sharpening as you see fit. I posted a message on this at Cambridge in Colour: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/forums/thread60777.htm

 

There are other programs which offer this. Some are mentioned in that post.

 

Your Cheetah looks pretty sharp to me. I met it last November!

[Bail]

John

Thanks this very speedy response. I visited Cambridge in Colour and read your post there. Astra is PC only and I have a Mac but I have downloaded RAW Therapee and will have a look at that. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Glad you like the Cheetah. I wasn't pleased to be told the image needed improvement but if it can I will have a go.

Best wishes

[Bail]

John

Thanks to your help I am now trialling Topaz Infocus for a month. It seems to do something additional to and different from my normal High Pass sharpening in Affinity Photo. It also seems to do some of the same kind of sharpening and detail enhancement

I am still trying to understand the best adjustment to workflow.It would seem to be sensible to do the following:

1 Develop RAW as normal in AP

2 Use Topaz Infocus for deconvolution sharpening and very modest sharpening and detail enhancement

3 Finish off at end of layer process with very gentle High pass sharpening if more required.

Does this make sense?

Edited November 12, 2017 by Bail
Mistaken press of enter key too soon

[John Rostron]

I do find that sharpening is a black art. What works for one image fails miserably in another. In the link I posted, the Fritillary image did not respond to the usual USM filter, but did so for wavelet sharpening. In the larger version of my avatar https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/50007-my-avatar/  neither wavelets nor deconvolution worked, but USM did!

Have you looked at the book Real Word Image Sharpening by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe? It is fairly heavy going and very Adobe-oriented, but it covers a lot of ground. It does focus almost entirely on USM though.

[v_kyr]

See also Advanced Post-Processing Tips: Three-Step Sharpening, much of what is said and shown there is of course also applicable to other software like Affinity Photo.

[Bail]

John and V Kyr

Thank you both for very helpful suggestions. I shall start with the three-Step Sharpening article to get myself ready for Real World Image Sharpening .

As ever I am so impressed by the knowledge and kind assistance provided by the advanced members on the Affinity Forum. Thank you one and all.

I have been doing my bit to advance the cause of Affinity Photo through my local photography club and also by a recent article I have posted on Macfilos blog

 

http://macfilos.com/photo/2017/10/30/image-processing-affinity-photo-adobe-the-way-forward-for-fuji-fans