Customer Reviews

Sharpener Pro 3.0

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am an amateur enthusiast who is fairly obsessive about image quality. Sharpener Pro 3.0 is without a doubt the best sharpening tool that I have ever used. It puts unsharp mask, Smart Sharpen and Focus Magic to shame. I have used it to sharpen images that I had previously sharpened by other means, and the difference was astonishing. I don't know why, but with Sharpener Pro, I find that I can sharpen very aggressively without producing artifacts. Like other Nik products, this one allows you to make localized adjustments with the greatest of ease. I cannot imagine that anyone would be less than thrilled with it (after an initial learning period, of course).

Nik Software's Sharpener Pro 3.0 not only produces excellent results, it's also simple enough to use that anyone can do a terrific job with it.

The user experience with this product is very good. It's clear and simple to use, and with just a few minutes of practice you'll be getting the results you want. Too bad the rest of Photoshop isn't as easily mastered, but that's another topic altogether.

One area this produce excels is in what the vendor calls "selective sharpening". Using Nik's "U-Point" technology, it's easy to limit sharpening to certain areas of your images without the normal Photoshop mask and layer gyrations. You select based on various control points, then apply sharpening - simple as that, and you can do it in just a few seconds. Also, if you're using Photoshop (that is, not Lightroom or Aperture), you can also use standard Photoshop brushes to do selective sharpening. If you work with lots of images, just the productivity gain you get from this capability makes the software worthwhile.

If you do a lot of repetitive work, you can also use Sharpener Pro in batch mode, making it simple to process large numbers of images. This is also quite a time saver.

The vendor offers a free trial version of their software at their web site, so you can tell whether it's for you or not before making the investment - but of course, come back to Amazon for the purchase, since they seem to have better discounts available.

Recommended.

I love the options in this product, and bought the product to help me sharpen in difficult situations. Large prints, distances, printer type, original pixel dimensions, etc. are all factored in.

Unfortunately, the "default settings" appear over sharpened, especially for smaller prints. Yes, smaller prints should be sharpened more. But the defaults are way over the top for the distances viewed. In some cases, it even color tinted complexions and white back drops blue. Yes, it sounds odd, but paid $300 to print a range of six image samples with various settings for image size, print size, strength, and a few other options using three different print shops. I ended up with about 50 photos in all, if I remember correctly. Some shops sharpen on their own, so I wanted to make sure and compare. In all cases, some 4x6 prints were terribly over sharpened. I sent a another batch in at 25% to 50% of the recommended value. They weren't optimal, but did look much better. Although I have Aperture, these photos were done from start to finish in Photoshop, and sharpened with only the Photoshop Plugin.

Yes, I did take the printer, distance viewed, and image size into perspective, and like I said, I printed a range of photos at different print shops.

Now the options take most of the guess work out of sharpening, but I've since found Unsharp Mask and even Aperture 3 sharpening more predictable than Sharpener Pro, and these tools don't add the color cast--at least at close proximity. I just utilize the 100% (pixel) view in each application, and use default or commonly-used settings for most photos. (For architecture I sharpen more, and I mask for most portraits.) If I were displaying a photo over five feet away, or sharpening for other types of print media, I do use Sharpener Pro.

I really like this product. NIK software products are top notch. I use it as a plug-in for Photoshop CS5 and Lightroom 3.

Ordering the product was easy and straight forward. Delivery was very timely. The Sharpener Pro product is an amazing tool that is straight forward and simple to use.