Piccure +

[Horoscope Fish]

Test Shot #2: Normal lens correction, 25% Noise Reduction and 75% Sharpening via Piccure+. No other processing. Both images were then resized to 1000px on the long edge and saved as JPG using Photoshop.
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Before Piccure​

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After Piccure​

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[Horoscope Fish]

Test Shot #3: Normal lens correction, 99% Noise Reduction (maximum) and 25% Sharpening via Piccure+. No other processing. Both images were then resized to 1000px on the long edge and saved as JPG using Photoshop.
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Before Piccure​

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After Piccure​

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[mikew_RIP]

Test Shot #3: Normal lens correction, 99% Noise Reduction (maximum) and 25% Sharpening via Piccure+. No other processing. Both images were then resized to 1000px on the long edge and saved as JPG using Photoshop.
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View attachment 187555

Before Piccure​

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View attachment 187556

After Piccure​

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The after looks poor in this set

 

[Roy1961]

big difference there Paul

the glass blower picture

 

[Roy1961]

i agree with mike, in the church pic the building stones look alot brighter.

 

[Blacktop]

I guess the big question would be, is this just another sharpening tool, or is it what it claims?

 

[Horoscope Fish]

I guess the big question would be, is this just another sharpening tool, or is it what it claims?

Executive Summary: I'm still on the fence. Piccure+ is a "definite maybe" for me right now.

Long-Winded Response: From what I can tell the sharpening it applies is not the same as Unsharp Mask or using a High Pass Filter. The sharpening looks cleaner than either of those methods but it's not a "punch to the head" sort of difference; it's subtle and I don't think you're going to be able to discern the difference by looking at forum posts.

On the upside, I was surprised at how well it corrected the exposure in my first shot, the one of the glassblower. I chose that image specifically because I thought the exposure might throw Piccure+ a bit of a "curveball" and I wanted to see how it would handle it. Both the noise reduction and the sharpening Piccure+ applied look impressive to me in that shot but I'm not sure it blows away what I'd be able to do in Photoshop.

On the downside, I tested another shot that I didn't post here because Piccure+ really didn't seem to be able to do much with it. It could be that a different set of parameters might have helped but I switched shots and used the pots and pans shot instead. Here, I too think the original looks better than the after. Again a different set of parameters might have given a different result but that leads to my big gripe about Piccure+.

What I definitely do NOT like about Piccure+ is the processing time it requires. I'd say it was taking a full minute to preview, or process, a shot. That feels like a reeeeally long time. If you don't get good results the first time around, you have make an adjustment and apply them... Which takes another full minute and that routine got old pretty fast. If I had a better handle on how to use the software, meaning if I knew better how to adjust the settings right off the bat then it might not be so bad. It's not software that encourages you to experiment, though, because each iteration takes so long to accomplish. In the long run, it might be worth it.
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[Blacktop]

Thanks Paul [MENTION=13090]Horoscope Fish[/MENTION] for that review.

 

[Horoscope Fish]

Thanks Paul [MENTION=13090]Horoscope Fish[/MENTION] for that review.

Most welcome...

I'd like to play more with this software because I really think it has potential but family issues are taking me out state for a week and I'm not going to be able to do that.
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[Marcel]

Test Shot #2: Normal lens correction, 25% Noise Reduction and 75% Sharpening via Piccure+. No other processing. Both images were then resized to 1000px on the long edge and saved as JPG using Photoshop.
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View attachment 187553

Before Piccure​

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View attachment 187554

After Piccure​

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To me the first picture (unsharpened) looks sharper than the second one. Are you certain you didn't mix them up in posting?

 

[Pretzel]

I'm running some tests of my own. Normal lens correction, 50% Noise Reduction and 50% Sharpening via Piccure+. No other processing. Both images were then resized to 1000px on the long edge and saved as JPG using Photoshop.
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View attachment 187551

Before Piccure​

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View attachment 187552

After Piccure​

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In this comparison, too much was lost, IMO. The detail in the fire/oven, the face/skin tone feels wrong, the feel of the "glow" from the fire is lessened... not a fan.

In the other comparisons, I don't see anything that NIK tools, or OnOne, or even a good knowledge of the sliders and controls in LR couldn't match or better. *shrug* Granted, I'm looking at .jpg files in forum formats, but still...

 

[Horoscope Fish]

To me the first picture (unsharpened) looks sharper than the second one. Are you certain you didn't mix them up in posting?

I'm sure. If you notice, EXIF data shows up on images that did NOT get processed by Piccure+. I imagine that's because Piccure+ outputs a .TIFF which was then opened in PS in order to be resized and converted to JPG. I'm assuming the .TIFF conversion stripped the EXIF data.

Images processed by Piccure+ do not show EXIF data when posted here but... If you hover your cursor on one you'll see a pop-up that shows the file name. Piccure+ processed photos append "_picc" to the file name. This was how I was able to keep the two JPG's straight in my mind when posting the before and after pics.


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In the other comparisons, I don't see anything that NIK tools, or OnOne, or even a good knowledge of the sliders and controls in LR couldn't match or better.

I'm inclined to agree at this point... I also wonder how much better it could do if I better understood how to use it. I'm wondering if there isn't a 'sweet spot' comprised of just the right combination of Noise Reduction and Sharpening.
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[Whiskeyman]

Thank you to all for responding to my initial RFI. I'm still on the fence about this.

WM

 

[pforsell]

While deconvolution sharpening has solid mathematical foundation and it has been used for decades in astronomy, it doesn't suit general photography too well.

The problem is that we don't know the convolution kernel for each lens, each aperture, each subject distance, each zoom setting. What these software developers do is they use a general gaussian kernel which does not deliver any better (if that) results than conventional local contrast enhancing "sharpening" methods.

Rawtherapee has a built in Richardson-Lucy deconvolution sharpening (from astronomy) and the software is free.