[Leica] Focus Magic question

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

Thanks, everybody!

Tina:  Thanks for the history brush tip.  In Picture Window Pro, there
is no such thing as the history brush. But I can accomplish the same
thing by having the Focus Magic-treated and untreated images in two
windows, and using "1:1 Cloning" to brush parts of one image onto the
other.

Sonny, Douglas: Yes, Focus Magic has both a stand-alone and a plug-in
version.  The stand-alone only works with JPGs, so if you want to work
on TIFFs, you have to use the plug-in.  The plug-in also has some
subtleties that the stand-alone lacks--such as adjustments for the type
of camera/capture used, and whether the image is noisy.  But there are
some extra filters and effects in the stand-alone that don't exist in
the plug-in.  :-)

Yes, it appears that running Focus Magic on digital camera files at a
blur width of 1 or 2 seems to counteract the softening effect of digital
capture without the crunchies you often get with USM.  It looks like
what's happening is that FM is "unspreading" the transition zone at
edges, whereas USM creates a spread with more contrast than the
original.  USM is still needed for printing. But it appears that Focus
Magic gives the image a needed tweak early on without killing detail or
adding artifacts, which means less USM may be needed later.  

--Peter