4k Monitors, Unsharp Mask and Canon 5DS

[rh1944]

When using cameras, other than the Canon 5DS, I found that I had to apply some Unsharp Mask to get the Jpegs sharp enough to display at 800x533 on internet sites. It seemed that every time I reduced the size of a jpeg, the image became softer.

In the last few years, I have moved from a VGA monitor to an HDMI monitor and then to a 4k monitor. As I moved from one resolution monitor to one with a higher resolution, I found that images that had been sharp on the lower resolution were actually soft when viewed at a higher resolution.

Given these two observations, I decided to use Unsharp Mask (to one of Scott Kelby’s recommended settings) for the images from my Canon 5DS. The result was images that were too harsh according to reviewers. It seems that the sharpness remains when you come down from 8688x5792 to 800x533.

I have no theory as to why the 5DS when viewed on a 4k monitor do not need sharpening. It may explain why people viewing my images on lower resolution monitors find the images harsh.

 

[Pookeyhead]

When using cameras, other than the Canon 5DS, I found that I had to apply some Unsharp Mask to get the Jpegs sharp enough to display at 800x533 on internet sites. It seemed that every time I reduced the size of a jpeg, the image became softer.

In the last few years, I have moved from a VGA monitor to an HDMI monitor and then to a 4k monitor. As I moved from one resolution monitor to one with a higher resolution, I found that images that had been sharp on the lower resolution were actually soft when viewed at a higher resolution.

4k monitors, or more accurately, the OS itself when set to such a high resolution, often scales the contents on the screen. It does this because without any scaling, fonts, small buttons etc are just too small at native resolution for most people to be comfortable with. The irony is, 4k it may be, but if it's viewed in a window on the OS desktop and not full-screen it may well be scaled, and no longer at native resolution, so aliasing may be an issue. This is a bigger issue on a Mac than a PC.