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nik SharpenerPro Complete! Review by: Gary Coyne (replace the "-at-" with "@") Provides: Photoshop Plugin: simplified sharpening
of images in Photoshop nik Multimedia provides a variety of Photoshop Plugins to enhance and/or simplify your photo enhancements. Specifically, Sharpener Pro specifically tries to simplify and/or improve the process of sharpening an image. If you can cope with a feeling of a lack of control, and have a need for the subtle differences in sharpening of an inkjet versus a laser writer, versus an offset printer, you will find much value in this product.. A bit out of form for most reviews, I feel a need to explain the sharpening process as a means to explain my views of this product. Forgive me if this review starts out as a Photoshop lesson, but to explain why I found strengths and weakness in nik Sharpener Pro, I feel I need to explain what takes place in the digital sharpening experience. If you already know how digital images are sharpened, you can skip right to here. Otherwise, please read on. If you go into your Photoshop Filters menu, about 2/3rds the way down is one called "Sharpen." Once there, you have 4 options: "Sharpen," "Sharpen Edges," "Sharpen More," and Unsharp mask..." What any of these do is to look for areas of changed contrast and enhance that contrast. An enhanced contrast tricks our eyes into a perceived sharper image. Let me show you:
Thus, what we perceive to be sharpening is really a visual trick upon the eye. In the movies and television, one often sees the detective or FBI agent asking the technician to increase the magnification of a corner of a picture. At first, it's all pixelated, but then with a few keystrokes we can clearly see the face of the guilty party. This is nonsense as you can't take a pixel and show information (detail) that never was there. The term Unsharp Mask is a photographic term coming from a duplicate negative that is intentionally blurred (is unsharp) and is used as a mask (just as a mask in Photoshop) together with the original negative. The sandwiched negatives are given more time for exposure and as such the lighter areas become lighter and the darker areas are kept darker. This creates the exact same result as we see above for the same trick on the eye. The problem with sharpening is that it is easy to over sharpen an image resulting in "halos" around images. Consider the picture below of one of my dogs. I'm limiting any preparation to only cropping, no color or contrast preparation was made. The first image (on the left) is the original with no sharpening. The second image has too much sharpening (middle). If you look around his ears or back, you can see the halo created by whitening the grey of the garage door. The last picture was done with Unsharp Mask and provides a more pleasing appearance of "invented" information while avoiding overbearing halos. More can be done, but I'll get to that later in the review. One last comment: sharpening must be the last thing you do to an image, after fixing the colors, levels, curves, size, everything. This is why one should never use the sharpening within your camera or your scanner if you plan on performing any sharpening operations later. At that point you are sharpening a sharpened image--likely to be dangerous. Also, sharpening should be done with the image at 100%. If you are looking at an image at 50%, you are only looking at 50% of the pixels and have no real idea of what's taking place with all the pixels. That said, let's move on.
Now, back to nik SharpenerPro:nik SharpenerPro is selected from the Filter menu displaying the various sharpening options for selection.
As shown, there are four basic options to select from: Color Laser, Inkjet, Internet, and Offset. Three of these have the expanded option of some level of automatic operations. The automatic part of the operation examines the photo for its quality and source. If you don't select automatic, you must supply the plugin with what kind of photo it is and its general quality. For example, selecting the "Inkjet/Autoscan" option, one will see:
Whereas the "Inkjet" selection itself (shown below on the left) shows that the user must input the source of the image and its quality. With a completely different take, the "Internet/Autoscan" requires essentially no input (below right). (See 2nd paragraph down for info on this feature.)
The settings for any given module provide information for nik Sharpener's internal code to examine the image and create the proper amount of sharpening. nik claims that there is an automatic analysis of each image and all the parts contained therein to achieve the best possible sharpening. As can be seen in the images above, nik wants to know how the image was obtained, what the original image quality was like, the resolution of the printer, what quality you plan on printing the image, how far away from the eye the image is supposed to be seen (5 settings), and the "personal profile." The "personal profile" input has only three settings: Anna, John, and Zap (aka: low, medium, and high). It was curious to see so much power in a plugin chopped down to such simplification. The only way to obtain anything between these is to sharpen to a higher degree than you want, click on the [OK] button, then immediately go to the Edit menu and select "Fade..." to decrease the amount of sharpening to a level more satisfactory to your eyes. [If you do anything before selecting the Fade command, this option will either be grayed out or only able to "fade" the most recent action.] While I understand how an "internet" sharpening would not deal with printer resolution or print quality, I do not understand why one would want to ignore the image source or (original) quality of the image. Suffice it to say, I found the "Internet/autoscan" feature of nik Sharpener Pro mostly useless. The true strengths of nik Sharpener Pro is its ability to self-determine "sensitive" areas in an image and sharpen those areas less. In addition, normally during the sharpening process colors can inadvertently be altered resulting in changed hues. nik Sharpener Pro does do a good job at maintaining original hues. In addition, nik Sharpener Pro does an outstanding job of setting the subtle nuances of sharpening for the various printers. Just as it could be considered a major challenge to use sharpening on a screen to fine tune how an image will be sharpened for in inkjet printer, it is an equal challenge to use the performance of an inkjet print job to determine the sharpening for a laser writer. As risky as it may seem, it is wisest to set up the parameters of nik Sharpener Pro and let it do its thing--and go print. I found this frustrating, but it worked. nik Sharpener Pro came with a tutorial CD that showed how one can use layer masks to control what part of any image gets extra sharpening. Thus, it may be best to over-sharpen the body of the dog but not near the surrounding background to avoid the halo effect. Or, one can sharpen a models hair but leave her skin less sharp. Thus, even nik Sharpener Pro appreciates (and encourages) a level of fine tuning that even it cannot do. Using Unsharp Mask and a layer mask, I too can achieve sensitive sharpening.
Having control to fine-tune sharpening specifically for a laser writer, an inkjet printer, or an offset printer is a desirable feature. Likewise, being able to fine-tune the sharpening based on the intended distance the item will be viewed is equally important. But if you are only working with images intended for screen viewing (i.e., the internet) I cannot justify the cost of this product. However, if you are a professional and/or intend on printing your results, the product will probably pay for itself in short order. Do not expect this product to circumvent your knowing how to use Unsharp Mask. If you use Photoshop, my suggestion is to either learn how to use Unsharp Mask and layer masks, or use nik Sharpener Pro (and learn how to use layer masks anyway). If you are using Photoshop Deluxe, or Photoshop LE, nik SharpenerPro will provide a wonderful enhancement over the limited capabilities of the sharpening within these programs. 
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