is there a "best" sharpening filter?

[frank_footer]

i have been playing around with various sharpening filters, such as asharp, msharpen, sharpen convolution, wavelet sharpener (which to me seems the best one i have tried). intel's detail enhance (which i also like), lapsharp, unsharp (which seems like an interesting filter) and i have heard of contrast sharpening, which i have no idea how to do, and i remember someone once said something about upscaling and then downscaling back to the original resolution, though i see no reason why that would do anything, but i was wondering if there is a consensus "best" method?

it can be for Windows or Linux, doesn't matter.

u was also wondering if there exists something like topaz's ai upscaler but for detail enhancement while keeping the same resolution.

i seem to recall years ago someone had a plugin for vdub that i think was called super resolution.

i know that you can;t perform miracles, but wavelet sharpener does produce some nice results, as long as you don't over do it, but i wonder if there is something better,

[Selur]

There is no 'best' sharpener, the choice of the sharpener always depends on the content.
Avisynth and Vapoursynth both offer a bunch of sharpener scripts and filters.
Regarding machine learning based sharpeners, especially for anime/cartoon content, there are a bunch of models over at https://openmodeldb.info/ which might be helpful.

i remember someone once said something about upscaling and then downscaling back to the original resolution, though i see no reason why that would do anything
...
u was also wondering if there exists something like topaz's ai upscaler but for detail enhancement while keeping the same resolution.

Since detail enhancement and super resolution usually also includes some cleaning of the source, upscaling and downscaling can make sense depending on the used methods.

Share a sample of a typical source you want to handle and folks can probably suggest some Avisynth and/or Vapoursynth methods for detail enhancement or in the case of machine learning stuff often 'detail invention'.

i seem to recall years ago someone had a plugin for vdub that i think was called super resolution.

You are probably referring to: https://www.infognition.com/super_resolution_vdf/

i know that you can;t perform miracles, but wavelet sharpener does produce some nice results, as long as you don't over do it, but i wonder if there is something better,

it always depends on the choice of filters and the source, a sharpener that might be nice for some cartoon, might be horrible for live again content,...


Cu Selur

[rgr]

i have been playing around with various sharpening filters, such as asharp, msharpen, sharpen convolution, wavelet sharpener (which to me seems the best one i have tried). intel's detail enhance (which i also like), lapsharp, unsharp (which seems like an interesting filter) and i have heard of contrast sharpening, which i have no idea how to do, and i remember someone once said something about upscaling and then downscaling back to the original resolution, though i see no reason why that would do anything, but i was wondering if there is a consensus "best" method?

it can be for Windows or Linux, doesn't matter.

u was also wondering if there exists something like topaz's ai upscaler but for detail enhancement while keeping the same resolution.

i seem to recall years ago someone had a plugin for vdub that i think was called super resolution.

i know that you can;t perform miracles, but wavelet sharpener does produce some nice results, as long as you don't over do it, but i wonder if there is something better,

Try lsfplus.
https://github.com/Dogway/Avisynth-Scripts/blob/master/EX%20mods/LSFplus.avsi

[Selur]

As a side note: SuperResolution filter don't do magic, so using them for detail enhancement is often a bad idea.
(took a 4k source, linear downscaled it to 1024x540 and then upscaled it back to 4k)

Cu Selur

[lollo]

As a side note: SuperResolution filter don't do magic, so using them for detail enhancement is often a bad idea.

+1

[lordsmurf]

LSFmod is fun and aggressive at times.

"SuperResolution" is a joke.

The exact sharpen filter chosen really depends on the type of sharpening needed, quality of source, noise profile, etc. No one answer here.

[frank_footer]

thanks for all the replies.

@rgr, thanks for the lsfplus suggestion, i will try it out.

@selur: thanks for the comparison pics, are these from a publicly available source?

i ask because some of the pics look noticeably better than the original unless you zoom in, but i suspect in normal viewing one would comclude that they are of higher quality.

also, why are some of the pics a slightly different color than the others?

did the sharpening change the color slightly?

[Selur]

About the coloring: with ai filters sometimes they mess up the colors a bit. (depends on what they were trained on, can be usually compensated by changing the color matrix before and after the filtering, but I didn't really care about it, here )
Also, down and upscaling can change the colors since highlights get remove created and changed.

Source was: https://philipbloom.net/blog/postcard-from-bern/

i ask because some of the pics look noticeably better than the original unless you zoom in

Okay, to me none of them look better than the original at 100%.

[lollo]

LSFmod is fun and aggressive at times.

Generally, not with a proper handling

i ask because some of the pics look noticeably better than the original unless you zoom in

Are you sure? Put them in an image slider (like https://imgsli.com) and compare (jpeg compression added)

[rgr]

LSFmod is fun and aggressive at times.

I don't think so. In fact, I think it's very gentle.
I even prefer it to the sharpness filter in Neat Video.