sharpening with layer methods on free software

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Lawrence
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wotcha, got some problem shots, ISO 1600 with a fair degree of noise.

I get lots of fine white grains appearing when I try the standard sharpening sliders in DPP (canon's free Digital Photo Professional) or the sharpen+ plugin on Paint.NET

so I thought it may be time to try some of the alternative methods of sharpening that I've read about here, I get the impression that these other methods don't exagerate noise the same.

unfortunately all the steps I find are all written in photoshop terminology and I can't translate to paint.net (I have not tried in gimp yet, it seems to have a dark and forbidding reputation and I am having enough trouble already!)

one example:

Originally Posted by moomike
Try the high pass method instead - I can't get along with USM personally.
1. Duplicate your flattened image
2. Go to Filter>Other>High pass
3. Raise the slider until the image is still mostly grey but you can see a light outline of your image - like a pencil sketch.
4. Change the layer mode to Hard light & adjust the layer opacity to suit​

can this be done on paint.net?

what is "high pass", "hard light" and others mention "soft light"

please enlighten me, this one and any other sharpening methods
 
Well, I can say that GIMP is actually quite easy to use these days, you can find one of my tutorials in my signature.

There are two other methods I tend to use, depending on the time I have for postprocessing:
Smart sharpening, but modified with one extra layer, it goes like this:
Make 3 copies of the original layer and make the original layer invisible.
You won't touch the bottom layer, but it has to be there.
Now, select the top layer and Add Layer Mask->Grayscale copy of the layer.
Then, select the middle layer, Add Layer Mask->Grayscale copy of the layer but also check invert mask this time.
In the middle layer, apply Sharpen filter with Sharpness of 10 up to 50, depending on how big your photo is). Repeat until you're happy with the sharpness. You might want to duplicate the top layer and lower its opacity to manipulate sharpness further or if you over sharpen the middle layer by a bit.

High pass filter is described here:
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Sketch_Effect/
to sharpen using the layer with the filter applied, you set the layer to overlay or hard light

So, high pass is a filter name, hard light and soft light are layer modes.

You should be able to reproduce it Paint.NET too... probably.
 
OK, brilliant info, this is starting to make a little sense now,

I followed the gimp sketch effect link using paint.net and got as far as producing the combined inverted 50% opaque gaussian blur with the 50% opaque copy of the original ie. the high pass filtered layer:clap:

but then can't find anything like "hard light" . . . no layer option by that name

layer properties available are:
normal
multiply
additive
colour burn
colour dodge
reflect
glow
overlay
difference
negation
lighten
darken
screen
XOR​

or should I be looking elsewhere?
 
yes, "overlay" works in paint.net, and there is definately less noise than the usual sliders

I have been trying on gimp too, not successful yet but I am getting close
 
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