Sharpening plug-in for CS4

I've not been too pleased with the Focus Magic PS plug-in and I'm thinking about investing in an upgrade. I'm really impressed with the Dfine and Silver Efex plug-ins from Nik and for that reason I'm leaning towards the Nik Sharpener Pro 3.00. Parsimoniously, I can also get the Nik offering on an educational licence (half price) but hey, if it dosn't do a good job its expensive at any price... Gratefull to hear your comments and suggestions. Thanks.

I've not been too pleased with the Focus Magic PS plug-in and I'm thinking about investing in an upgrade. I'm really impressed with the Dfine and Silver Efex plug-ins from Nik and for that reason I'm leaning towards the Nik Sharpener Pro 3.00. Parsimoniously, I can also get the Nik offering on an educational licence (half price) but hey, if it dosn't do a good job its expensive at any price... Gratefull to hear your comments and suggestions. Thanks.

Are you unhappy with the standard Photoshop sharpening tools? Sharpening is the one area so far where I have not felt a great need for 3rd party plug-ins.

Also, depending on what system you're running, most plugins do not work with the 64bit versions of CS4...yet.

S.

Photokit Sharpener. The best.

Sharpening is an art in itself.

For those not really familiar with sharpening, PK sharpener introduces a nice sharpening workflow, which is the most important thing.

Capture Sharpening>Creative Sharpening>and finally, Output Sharpening.

That's the process I've always taken for critical work, but do it using Photoshop's unsharp-masking tools.

As Bridge and Lightroom have been introduced, step one or "Capture Sharpening" can often be handled there.

Mind you I have not had any experience with trying to sharpen images that are out-of-focus or suffer subject or camera blur, maybe the plug-ins can help there.

Thanks for your input chaps. I've decided to give the Nik plug-in a whirl which I can try for a few days for free. Of course ACR offers a fairly easy to use sharpening utility which I havn't tried yet. Any thought on this one?

Thanks for your input chaps. I've decided to give the Nik plug-in a whirl which I can try for a few days for free. Of course ACR offers a fairly easy to use sharpening utility which I havn't tried yet. Any thought on this one?

Like Jeff, I don't see the need for additional sharpening tools beyond LR and PS.

For most stuff, I am happy to use the LR tools only ... and LR now does "output" sharpening, albeit in a very "black box" way.

For special care and attention, I export to PS/CS and use the Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen.

I'm still sharpening in Photoshop, but combining it with noise reduction in the "Noise Ninja" plug-in. I shoot without sharpening in my RAW files to retain control at a later stage. My workflow goes something like:

download > RAW > DNG > psd (noise, sharpening, fine colour, curves, retouching, cropping) > big jpeg Adobe RGB (print) > resize small jpeg sRGB (web)

I don't know if the Noise Ninja processing could be omitted with a more modern camera (ie D300). My psd step could be readily omitted with a clean, correctly framed image by using some of the functions in the RAW converter that I haven't been used to using, including the sharpening.

My files get a definitive name at the RAW > DNG step, which I quite like, where I can add both generic and specific elements to the name...

Tim