Good Article on Unsharp Masking for Those Confused By It

[GDPR-354025]

Radius and Threshold Explained--with Highlighting! :)

Just thought I'd post this. I watched all of Affinity's videos on the subject (and some excellent ones by other Youtubers). I recommend the Affinity video on LAB Color on this subject, because you will not think to watch a video on LAB color to better understand Unsharp Masking. Also, watch Affinity's Defeating Filter Limits

[John Rostron]

Useful! I much prefer descriptive text to videos. However, I would like to have seen some before and after images.

John

[GDPR-354025]

Thank you! Whenever I watch any photo-editing video at all, my eyes glaze over when subsidiary terms start popping up. The counter-intuitive modifier "unsharp" is just the beginning of abstract, intellectually overwhelming concepts users' brains must deploy in succession or in tandem to achieve one--and only one--editing improvement. "The mask you must create to shrink the blurry radius of out-of-focus, or un-sharp, images" is an oxymoron that took me 10+ years to understand. A Google search of "oxymoron phrases" helps. One needs to do so very very much to achieve so very little--and it isn't the work that's so discouraging, but the mental energy expended in attempting to grasp the rationale behind each little chess-like decision.

But then an amateur, already uncertain of the editing minefield he/she enters by deploying an oxymoronic tool, is faced with even more intellectually overwhelming terms and choices. Radius...of what? The blur that already exists and the user knows full well exists? Or the radius of...something else? Threshold of...the radius...of unsharpness? Gah. I wish Affinity would hire a grandmotherly lady with an afghan and kettle of tea, who uses terms of endearment liberally, to define for moderately intelligent people--in which cohort most aspiring photo-editors probably think they belong--every.single.photo.editing.term. S-L-O-W-L-Y. 

The riotous plethora  of editing menu choices is redundant anyway (and then some !). I think it turns potential photo-editors away from photo-editing. 

[firstdefence]

Making a cup of tea is a complex process if you want to understand every action and the background processes that get you to that enlightened state of the first sip but not everything within that procedural process requires understanding, knowing that a tool does what you require of it when applied is sufficient to use it to an acceptable level of competence.

[GDPR-354025]

35 minutes ago, firstdefence said:

Making a cup of tea is a complex process if you want to understand every action and the background processes that get you to that enlightened state of the first sip but not everything within that procedural process requires understanding, knowing that a tool does what you require of it when applied is sufficient to use it to an acceptable level of competence.

When you're right, you're right. Photo-editing may be my 21st-century version of chess, and either you get it, or you don't. But this wonderful world exists in Affinity if only certain among us had the competence to grasp it. And I am certain some rosy-cheeked Dickensian matron exists in your shire who would gladly volunteer to make warm hand-holding videos about Affinity terms and operations. I've begged Alfred to do it, but of course he is not a rosy-cheeked matron... So I'll have to give up English photo-editing tutorials in favor of the dark world of French true crime. But certain of your American users besides me will almost certainly be turning to the forums in the coming months as an escape from political hopelessness. I'd bet my unsharp mask on it, because the forums feel, or used to feel, like a social network.