nik Sharpener Pro! Complete Edition

www.nikmultimedia.com

Reviewed by Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG

Over the past several years, I have written reviews about many filters or plug-ins. Filters are additional products that you add onto your image editing software. These filters increase the productivity of your software and increase the value of your initial investment in an image editor. By adding filters to the image editors, you are expanding your ability to do more professional work. Most filters or plug-ins, as they are also called, say that they are Photoshop compatible. In addition to recognizing Photoshop as the image editing standard and the choice of most professionals, they also make the filters compatible with many other applications. This lets anyone with a good image editor take full advantage of the plug-ins that are available to us.

Filters do a variety of things. They can be artistic and add creative elements to a digital image. They can also be used to enhance, repair, and improve the quality of images. With the rapidly advancing technologies, those of us who have digital cameras, computers, and good software can do amazing things with digital photos. We can also do many professional type tasks that will retouch and restore older photos. We now have available to us the tools that once were used only by professional photographers, and  we are capable of achieving outstanding results.

I highly recommend investing in good plug-in filters. They will enable you to make dramatic improvements in photos. Take the time to research what types of improvements you will need to make and then download trial/demo versions of these filters and put them through their paces. Nik offers a full line of demo products to try, along with the manuals to tell you how to work with them. They are full product versions that watermark the final image. You can get a good feel for what the filter will do this way.  Start with filters that you absolutely must have to do your work and then enlarge your collection from there. Good filters will never go to waste. They will improve the quality of your work, save you the time spent in trying to manually fix problems, and enhance the look of an image. Plus you get the benefit of knowing that you, too, can get professional quality results when working with your digital images.

The filter we are looking at here is a sharpening tool. Many applications have an “unsharp mask” built into them and it takes a delicate hand to achieve the results you are seeking. Most of these affect the entire image elements and don’t do exactly what you want them to, but they were all we had at one time. Now we have plug-ins that will work more exclusively with the areas we want to enhance and affect less of the overall quality; for instance, not damaging the color quality for the sake of improving the overall look. You also have the option to adjust particular areas of the image rather than the entire thing. A sharpening filter is a necessity for this type of adjustment. Look at the detail on the image of the headlights below. The image on the left is the original and the image on the right has had nik Sharpener Pro applied to it. You can see how much clearer the details on the headlight are, after the filter has been used on the image. The headlight even looks brighter. By simply applying the filter to this portion of the image, it has greatly improved it. This is the type of improvement that you want to learn to achieve by working with the sharpener. The same is true for the second set of examples. The first image is okay; the second has much more detail and the texture more pronounced.

This is the manual adjustment interface for the Inkjet setting. You can see the various sliders that are used to improve the image quality. The preview area on the right allows you to see how the settings are affecting the image. You can save the setting, load the setting that you have previously saved, and/or  access Help. The box below will advise you if your adjustments are good or if they are not something you should use.

nik Sharpener Pro sharpens the characteristics of each image individually. Using the autoscan feature, it will analyze the image and then adjust the colors, details, resolution, and quality. The “Autoscan” version of the calculation engine that sharpens the images is available for any type of print……inkjet, inkjet autoscan, color laser, color laser autoscan, offset, offset autoscan, and internet autoscan.

In the following example, the original image is on the top. It has more of a blurred looked to it, and no real texture or depth of features. The second (bottom) photo has nik Sharpener Pro’s Internet Autoscan applied to it. The trees, bushes, and even the foggy areas have more detail to them. The tree branches have more individuality, rather than just blending together smoothly. Since I’m limited in size and space for the printed version of this review, I will enlarge these photos on the web site to that you can see them more clearly.  The autoscan engine has enhanced the image perfectly without tossing in lots of “noise” in an effort to add detail to it.

Original Image

Sharpened Image

The other settings allow you make manual changes to photos. The filter will analyze the adjustments and advise you whether or not the changes will be acceptable to the quality of the end result.

If you can see what the filter is doing to the photos, you will understand the value of being able to sharpen a photo so that it has more visual impact, but not go beyond the limitations of good photo quality. nik Sharpener Pro has “Real Resolution” for images. This lets it not only sharpen the image but it gives you the information you need to assess the quality of the image. The clarity index rates the overall quality by evaluating the detail, clarity, focus, color, etc., so that you know whether or not the settings are going to be acceptable.  To test this feature, I took the same image, used the color laser selection, and then changed the settings beyond what the software had set. I received a warning indication that there was insufficient dpi. See the image below to view a warning notice.

I wanted you to see what a warning might look like, so I purposely overdid the settings in a photo so it would tell me that what I had chosen would not result in the best image quality.  Had I chosen to use these settings, I would have not had an optimal image because I had enlarged the image size and did not have a good dpi setting.

By learning the various options and the capabilities of nik Sharpener Pro’s image analysis engines, you will obtain quality image sharpening that is consistent and brings the necessary improvements to the images. If you understand that ignoring the warning will result in a print that is less than perfect, this will help you produce the highest quality print photos.

Feature List:

1. OK - Confirm
2. Cancel – Abort
3. Select Profile
4. Select Eye Distance
5. Printer Quality
6. Printer
7. Image Quality
8. Image Source
9. Image Height
10. Image Width
11. Preview Area
12. Quick 100% View
13. Zoom Adjustment
14. Save and Load
15. Help
16.The Acceleration Button
17. Image Information Dialog

Essential Information: Select Profile displays the print size of the image as it is set in your image-edit application. This can be changed by changing the print sizes setting in the image application. Select Eye Distance adjusts the sharpening setting for optimal sharpness at the distance it will be viewed. Printer Quality adjusts the sharpening to compensate for the printer range. Printer indicates the resolution that the printer is currently using. Image Quality - setting available when using non-autoscan selections, this will allow you to choose the image quality. Image Source – shows device used to capture the image (digital camera, flatbed scanner, type of film). This helps to determine the correct level of detail of the image. Not available in autoscan. Quick View 100% Lets you view the image at the 100% size with a single click. Save and Load – save filter parameters to disk and load any saved setting at a later time. Image Information Dialog – useful information about the image being used.

As you can see, nik Sharpener Pro is easy to use and gives great results to the images it is applied to. Sharpener Pro comes in several versions, Complete – which retails for $329.95; Inkjet Edition at $169.95; Home at $79.95; and Sharpener at $129.95. The price is the same for both the downloadable and boxed versions. Since there is no price difference, I would recommend the boxed version, which will give you the original CD and a printed manual. Please refer to the nik Multimedia web site for details and feature differences between the various versions.

One final example – I applied the Color Laser Autoscan to the photo below, and it brought out the detail in the texture and color of the leaves; even the tree bark has more texture and detail. I wanted to preserve the smoothness of the flower itself so I selected the flowers using a freehand selection tool, inverted the selection to protect the flowers, and then applied the nik Sharpener Pro Color Laser Autoscan to the rest of the photo. By using selections, you can apply the sharpening effect to only those areas you want to have sharpened. The spots and creases in the leaves are not very pronounced in the original image. In the sharpened image, the plant looks more vivid and true to life. The spots now stand out on the leaves and the leaves look much better than they did in the original photo. This is the effect you want to get from a good filter.