[Leica] Focus Magic question

[kleinp at BATTELLE.ORG (Klein, Peter A)]

Joe:  http://www.focusmagic.com   You can download a free trial, which
will work for 10 fully processed images.  You can experiment with the
controls on as many images as you like, but each time you fully process
the whole image, it decrements the counter by one.  The site takes
credit card orders. (I have no connection, just liked it and bought it).

B. D.:  I got the "Focus Magic as sharpener" idea from Sonny, who uses
it on his Pentax *ist DS shots.  Like the *ists, the E-1 has a fairly
aggressive anti-aliasing filter.  So I figured I'd give it a try.
Especially since Tina has spoken so highly of Focus Magic before.  

I also have a bunch of old Kodachromes from my mother's collection,
taken on an old Bolsey B2 rangefinder around 1950.  Family history
stuff.  These pics were shot at ASA 10, so shutter speeds of 1/50 and
1/25 are common even in sunlight.  Most pictures of my mother are
blurred, because my late father couldn't hold a camera still!  And the
lens isn't the world's sharpest.  Another reason to give it a try. I
found that Focus Magic could make a slightly blurred image seem in-focus
or steady at small print sizes.  Beyond a certain point, it made things
clearer, but weird, as you say.

The trick is to use no sharpening in the RAW converter or in-camera JPG.
And use the Focus filter with a blur width of only 1 or 2, usually
1--regardless of what the "Detect" function says.  If even that seems
too much, back off the amount to 75% or less.  This seems to clarify my
E-1 images without adding the crispy-crunchy artifacts.  Not all of
them, but many.  The effect was more easily seen on a print than on the
screen, but viewing at 50% magnification rather than 100% or 200%, you
can see pretty much how a print will look.  

The last couple of weeks I have been living the script of a movie called
"Invasion of the East Coast Relatives."  The visits were to celebrate my
mother's 85th birthday.  In the interests of time and convenience, I
decided to put the Leica away and just shoot digital with the E-1. I
found that running some of the shots through Focus Magic at blur width 1
was a lot like using the Sharpen function in Viewer (same as Studio) at
between +2 and +3, but the way it prints, it's a little less "in your
face."

Most of my shots were mostly flash and outdoor images.  Available light
shots may be different.  

--Peter, in Seattle, where it's going to be 92 degrees today!!!


B. D. wrote:

> On the next...and speaking off...I have to disagree a tad with Peter.
I
> downloaded the trial version and ran it on some images that I would
normally
> run CS sharpening on. What I found was not a miracle treatment, but a
> routine that made the entire image look a tad weird. I'll keep trying,
but
> my first impression wasn't a good one.


On 6/25/06 10:30 PM, "joelct" <joelct@singnet.com.sg> wrote:

> How / where does one find or buy Focus Magic?