User Profile for rocketshipjack

Focus Magic 3.0.1a (Mac OS X)

THIS WORKS  

You always ask yourself if something like this product is a gimic or not. Especially at $45 bucks a pop. I thought I'd try it. So I put it to the test. A blurred image, we all have 'em. An image not to bad and a good image which I would have sharpened anyhow. I always apply a little sharpening to most images. Well, to put it simply this Focus Magic works. All tests were done using two of the same images side by side. One using FM and the other using the standard unsharp mask found in PS. On the blurred image using the maximum setting in unsharp mask I was able to get a respectable looking image BUT with halo effects throughout, very unexceptable. Using FM equal results BUT without the halo effects and I used a low setting in the FM product. I could have used a much higher setting, and I did, just to see what happened, but I got the halo setting and the sharpness did not improve that much. Clearly it worked. On the not so blurred image, again using the two comparisons, FM and unsharp mask, no halo effect with FM and an obvious halo effect using unsharp mask. On a normal image, the sharping effect using FM left absolutely no halo effect even when enlarged to 1600x and w/unsharp mask I got an equally sharp image but when blown up to 1600x I could see edge haloing beginning to appear. I will buy this product and use it to sharpen even my good images. One last note. It comes with a built-in noise reducer which you can control and my last observation was, when blown up after applying sharpening, using both images I noticed that the gradations in skin tone were much, much better with FM than when using unsharp mask. With unsharp mask areas of the cheek showed solid white pixels and with FM none of this occured. I imagine this product would be excellent to use if you are producing images for the web. Very user friendly and intuitive. The automatic settings were right on. Remember this though, it is an algorithm, and requires a fast processor. I have a 2.66 ghz Mac and when used on a high setting it took several minutes to process my sharpened image. A slow processor, well, you might as well go have lunch. [alert admin]

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Sunday, February 03 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST

MacJanitor 1.3 (Mac OS X)

Alternative MacJanitor for Intel Macs  

There is not a macJanitor for Intel .... yet. But why not try the widget that does exactly the same thing. I've been using it and it does work. Check out www.giantmike.com and on the sidebar look for Maintidget. It's a great widget and well worth the price (free) and doesn't take a lode of space, always accessible and ready to go with Admin password. You can clean up daily, weekly, monthly or all three. I use it regularly. rocketshipjack [alert admin]

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Tuesday, January 29 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST

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