Sharpening images with PL6

DxO PhotoLab
1

I’m new to PhotoLab (come from C1 Pro22) so you’ll have to excuse me if I’m missing something obvious.

When processing an image I was able to toggle the sharpening tab from off to on for any images that were shot with the Summilux 35mm 1.4 when paired with the M11 but, when I try to do the same thing with images shot with the Leica 28mm Elmarit I’m unable to toggle the sharpening tools on. In fact, there are a number of Leica lenses that don’t allow me to turn on the sharpening tab.

So, am I missing something here? It seems like unless there is an optical module for the lens then I can’t sharpen the image but I assumed that I must be missing something as not being able to sharpen an image would obviously cause problems.

Thanks for any help. Cheers

2

Yes, your lens may not be a module available, you can check it here.
It’s also indicated on your image in the image browser by an icon.

edit: You can make a request for this lens here

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3

Yes unfortunately if there isn’t a module available you can’t use lens sharpening and are just left with the USM.

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4

But you can also use the Fine Contrast, Highlights, Mid-tones and Shadows sliders from FilmPack, which can give some beautiful and subtle sharpening effects.

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5

Why not use the Unsharp Mask in the DETAILS Palette?

6

Yes, I just spotted how to apply sharpening other than the lens settings.

As it happens, DXO Photolab6 is a no go for me. The keywording tool doesn’t allow manual ordering of keywords which I need as I have to rank them in order of importance. C1 Pro allows this so I’ll stick with that until DXO provides a function to manually order the keywords etc.

Thanks

7

UM (in PhotoLab) is a fall-back work-around for situations where there is not a DxO Optics Module for the {body+lens} combo used to capture the image. Using UM is a purely manual process - and much inferior to DxO applied sharpening that’s specific to the {body+lens} combo used to capture the image.

John M

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8

If they had a better selection of Leica Lens / Body modules then using PL6 could have worked. I would just have to export the finished files and keyword within C1 Pro. Not ideal but an option.

Without the support for any Leica 28mm & 75mm lenses and no Voigtlander or Zeiss lenses at all for M either it doesn’t make any sense for me for me to consider it at this time.

If these were added then great… and if they added an option to manually order / arrange keywords then I’d be straight in there.would have struggled on for ages so I appreciate the time you’ve saved me… cheers!

Thanks everyone for your help though, I

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The tools are there though they’re not as “good” as an available DxO module for a Leica lens. @John-M I find USM quite harsh, bit like Microcontrast. I do, however, have the FP6 license and Fine Contrast @Joanna is much more like it.

This is with the 35mm Summilux 1.4 TL for APS-C, with the 23mm Summicron or 60mm Elmarit (for which PL6 has support) the native sharpening is really excellent.

@TArtist for me, it’s a balance. I find PL6 really easy to use so I can get good results without the module for one lens. The Leica CL isn’t supported at all in Capture One last time I checked and I have passed final PL6 TIFF outputs through Topaz Sharpener with a great deal of success. I don’t use PL6 for metadata handling at all.

LOL, using all these packages I probably should of stuck with Lightroom but I’m invested now :joy:

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10

You could use Xpiks for that. The basic version is free and offers everything, except for minor limitations.