Soft Contours effect
One of the most important and challenging tasks in digital photography is image sharpening. Although many methods like Unsharp mask provide good results and became a standard, we're still searching for a better sharpening method. Zoner Photo Studio 12 introduces a new method for image sharpening which is featured as a Soft Contours effect.
The difference among the newly introduced method and other conventional methods is that you can control sharpness of details of a different size independently and that you can not only enhance them, but also suppress them. This is especially important and powerful when sharpening portraits, because you can sharpen the most important smallest details of eyes or eyebrows and hide skin blemishes and soften the look of the portrait at once. Let's see an example...
The effect is controlled by four sliders, where every slider controls a presence of details of a specific size. When value is equal to one then there's no change. When you push slider to higher values then you'll emphasize the desired details, when you push it to the left, you'll suppress or completely remove them. Another three images in the gallery above show which details are affected by which slider, going from the smallest details to bigger.
Of course this new method can be used in other situations too. I've prepared another example to demonstrate the effect...
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| Ordinary sharpening |
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| 2x Soft contours effect + contrast adjusted |