User manual

22 • Sharpening an image (unsharp masking)
ColorQuartet 5.0 Pro
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• A low value makes sharpening take place even when contrast is fairly low. This means that
more of the image will be affected.
• A higher value means that only areas with higher contrast are affected.
• By raising the Threshold value, you can decrease electronic sharpening in areas that should
remain smooth, such as sky or skin tones, while retaining the sharpening effect in more con-
trast-rich areas of the image.
• Dark Threshold affects sharpening around pixels that are darker than their surroundings.
• Light Threshold affects sharpening around pixels that are lighter than their surroundings.
Noise Filter
• The Noise Filter option detects individual stray pixels that are different from their surround-
ings. It intelligently decreases sharpening of such pixels if they occur in areas that should
remain smooth, such as sky or skin tones, while retaining sharpness between contrasting tone
areas in the image.
• The higher the value chosen, the more noise will be removed. In other words, with a higher
value, the contrast between the stray pixel and its surroundings does not have to be as great
for the pixel to be affected.
Presharpen
• The Presharpen option can be used with ScaMate flatbed scanners.
• If you activate Presharpen, a special digital filter will be applied to the RGB data during scan-
ning to increase the basic sharpness of detail of the scans.
• Because Presharpen increases the scanning time, we recommend that you use it only if you are
not satisfied with the overall sharpness of your scans. If a scan done with automatic USM seems
to be taking a longer time than expected, it may be because Presharpen has automatically been
activated.
Super Sampling
• The Super Sampling option can be used with certain ScanMate flatbed scanners.
• When Super Sampling is activated, each pixel in the image is sampled (scanned) the number
of times you type into the text field. The data is then averaged to find the value for that pixel.
• Super Sampling helps remove electronic noise from the images you scan, but it also increases
the scanning time considerably. We therefore recommend that it only be used when consid-
ered necessary.
• Super Sampling is particularly useful for scanning dark transparencies, reflective originals with
a rough surface, and negatives. It is also a good way to smooth out graininess in large, same-col-