which sharpening tools do you prefer?

This is is just a general question for Resolve experts. These days with the use of large sensor cameras, its pretty common to find footage that is slightly soft . Resolve seems to have at least 5 different ways to sharpen and Neat Video adds a 6th. Why and when would you choose to use one tool over another?

1- In the Color Wheels palette there is "Midtone Detail" -

2- In the Blur palette there is Radius

In the OpenFX library there is
3 - Sharpen
4 - Sharpen Edges
5 - Soften and Sharpen
(I haven't had very good results with any of these but that's likely just my lack of skill)

6 - Neat Video has a pretty subtle sharpening option that I've often used ( before i got Resolve Studio) but its of course very processor intensive.

There might even be more as far as I know.

Thoughts?

Lenny

I think there's an "it depends" here. All of these controls can work. I generally tend to grab Midtone Detail first, but there's some good positive sides to Sharpen Edges, particularly when you're careful about qualifying what gets affected and what does not. (BorisFX' "Magic Sharp" does similar things.)

The danger is that you wind up with a weird-looking out-of-focus shot that's been artificially over-enhanced, which doesn't look good. Even worse is when the actor or subject leans forward or leans back and momentarily gets in focus, then leans back out of focus again. Depth of field is a real thing.

"The danger is that you wind up with a weird-looking out-of-focus shot that's been artificially over-enhanced, which doesn't look good. "

Yes , that's why In was asking which tools people have had luck with. Neat video does a good job of helping a shot without making it look terrible, but you can only correct so far .

I usually only use the Color Page for sharpening unless it's a basket case kind of situation.
A recent case was where an interview was focussed behind the subject.
I used the Resolve 17 Magic mask to seperate the subject from background and sharpened the foreground and defocussed the background. It worked very well after doing some work getting the mask exactly right.

Thanks Peter, I'm still in 16 so am not familiar with the Magic mask, but that's just the masking tool isn't it? What did you use for sharpening is what I'm curious about . Softening isn't as risky.


By the way I've been afraid to upgrade to 17 BETA while in the middle of a multicam . Any reason to take the chance - would be it be risky?

Apart from Neatvideo, which was already mentioned, you may want to try Video Enhancer AI by Topaz Labs. It is not only for upscaling, but can work for sharpening at 100% too. But it's only for very difficult cases: it is sloooooow.

Thanks Uli but I don't want another sloooo tool unless its really a lot better though I will check it out.

It sounds like you guys are not very enamored of the Resolve sharpening tools. But you must have a go to for cases that aren't dire right?
So far for me its Midtone detail or just the Blur palette. I've mainly been curious if anyone really liked any of the OpenFX tools.

I just looked at VTEAI and while I don't know if it will be the sharpening tool I want ( it looks promising though) , it does look like it could be very valuable in salvageable old demo pieces for my website > I'm an older DP and some of the nicest stuff I ever shot was on 16 or 35 years ago that I only had on Beta or sometimes even VHS or 3/4. No matter how nicely lit , in sheer video quality they pale compared to what any high school kid could shoot with an A7 now, but I'll be interested in seeing what ATVI can do. Most of those pieces aren't more than a minute or 2 so Sloooo is fine. Thanks for the tip.

Oh I have a dumb question - On the installer it asks "what directory" I want to install it in - do you know what I should say for Resolve to be able to use it? Most programs tell me where to put it.

Are you unsatisfied with the standard sharpening in the Color page? It's very good unless you have extremely soft images. It's the quickest to render too.

VEAI is not a plug-in for Resolve. You'll have to treat your video outside of DR, but at least it can output higher quality now, like 16 bit TIFFs (huge) or ProRes 422 HQ.
I didn't mention Neatvideo or VEAI because I think the tools in DR are bad, quite to the contrary. But in critical cases they might give you that extra notch in quality.

Peter, As was mentioned above, we all know its hard to sharpen without it ruining the shot even more, and my experience is that some tools are better than others . Having noticed that Resolve has 5 different ways to do it, including 3 OpenFX tools that only come with the Studio version, I'm just wondering if anyone has found some of those tools to work better than others. I have used both the blur palette and midpoint detail with limited success. No luck with the Open FX tools though maybe that's lack of skill. Actually all 5 tools are in the color page.
So far I'm not hearing any suggestions.

Uli, Do you know what I should answer when the installer asks what directory I want to put VTAI in. I'm in Mojave BTW.

Sharpen, any sharpen that does not “rebuild” edges (like AI can do), does not effectively “sharpen an image: the only thing that does is adding contrast to the edges of a white vs black pixel difference (namely edges.,..)

So, “mid tone detail” is a contrast tool with a broader radios from the edge, all other tools have different way to identify an “edge” and how spread if the radio us vs how hard is the contrast we put in the correction.

That is about it.

If you are out of focus by a lot, an edge that usually is only a 2-3 pixels white vs black transition, now is 6-8-12 pixels and there is pretty much nothing you can do....

Uli, Do you know what I should answer when the installer asks what directory I want to put VTAI in. I'm in Mojave BTW.

It's an application and goes into the Applications folder by default. No reason to change that: as I said, it's not a plug-in.
It looks a bit Windows style, but the defaults are OK.

Thanks I think the word Directory threw me as it isn't very common in Macland

For sure it depends on the footage.
But I usually use both the Mid/Detail and the basic Sharpen tab.
A touch of Mid/Detail, like 10-20 can be a nice add to most anything.
And the Sharpen tab at like 48 with defaults is good for where sharpening is obviously needed.
And it's what I add when cropping in on video for example.
46 and below can get ugly fast.
And all the tweaks available can be useful in difficult situations, but I rarely go that extra mile.
This is a useful video on the Sharpen tab:
'www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2S3F33sB1s&ab_channel=TDCatTech'

With the OFX, I use the Sharpen Edges for the extra oomph.
OFX Sharpen seems to give me similar results to the Sharpen tab....
(and like Peter said, the Sharpen tab is fastest to render, so I default to that over the OFX Sharpen)
And OFX Soften & Sharpen always seemed too complicated for me to get good results.

And OFX Soften & Sharpen always seemed too complicated for me to get good results.

Oh, I dunno. You just screw around with it for awhile and eventually you'll find out a combination of tweaks that work.

What is a huge annoyance with a lot of the ResolveFX plug-ins is that you can't save the adjustments the presets. And that's a huge drawback compared to (say) most commercial OFX plug-ins like BorisFX, Sapphire, Red Giant Universe, and so on.

Uli,
Thanks for turning me on Topaz. I haven't tried it for any modern images yet, but it really does a good job on reviving old clips of mine that were shot on 16 & 35 but for which I only had 3/4 and Beta dubs ( even VHS.) Also I've read up more on the sharpen palette and discovered using it with the Level setting which takes away a lot of the evil. Thanks for all your help as always guys.