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I recently bought an iMac (dubbed the ShyMac) for photo editing. I've also installed PhotoShop Elements 15 for the photo editing duties. Perviously, I was using PSE 9.

The program (15) is nearly identical to 9 as far as where I need to go looking for stuff. However, using my old workflow, the results are absolutely horrible. Applying the same Unsharp Mask that I was using on my old PC creates an image that looks way, way oversharpened.

Here's the deal: looking at the fresh image on the Mac, it looks absolutely perfect. So, I figured I'd just resize the image from 6000x4000 down to 1200x800. No other editing was done other than adding a bit of saturation. When I look at the finished product, it still looks horribly oversharpened.

I've even tried the various format options (Baseline Standard, Baseline Optimized, Progressive) with no discernible difference in quality. Viewing the Mac edited shots on another computer aren't pleasing either.

So what am I missing?

ShyFlyer wrote:So what am I missing?

Hmm... let's see:

ShyFlyer wrote:I recently bought an iMac

There's your problem!

SCNR. Never worked on a Mac, nor with PSE, so I'm afraid I can't help you here.

I've also noticed that cropping a photo doesn't actually do anything, as in a 6000x4000 photo remains that size even after cropping.

It's gotta be a Adobe thing.

ShyFlyer wrote:I've even tried the various format options (Baseline Standard, Baseline Optimized, Progressive) with no discernible difference in quality. Viewing the Mac edited shots on another computer aren't pleasing either.

Just to check: if you apply the exact same workflow that you used to use on PSE9, and then view the results on a non-Mac monitor, it still looks horrible?

Just asking because I've heard many times that the Apple Retina displays can take awhile to get used to, as they can look quite different.

vikkyvik wrote:Just to check: if you apply the exact same workflow that you used to use on PSE9, and then view the results on a non-Mac monitor, it still looks horrible?

It looks horrible on both PC and Mac. In fact, the level of horribleness is about the same on PC and Mac for the photos edited on the Mac with PSE 15.

Ok, so here are some samples of what I'm dealing with. Below you'll find the same photo edited from scratch on the iMac and the Dell XPS. I had to do some significant cropping, so neither version is spectacular, but what I'm hoping for is some feedback on which looks better

First, the iMac version:



The Dell XPS version:

The Dell version is sharper. Aside from that, there are differences in brightness, contrast, and color, but I wouldn't necessarily say one is better than the other.

But honestly, it's pretty obvious that it's a big crop, so neither version looks all that great, as you noted. Maybe not the best image to use for comparison.

I was afraid of that. I've got another test image. This image is full frame and taken in sunlight.


Workflow:
1) Saturation @15
2) Resize from 6000x4000 to 1200x800
3) Flatten Image
4) Unsharp Mask: Amount = 85%; Radius = 0.4; Threshold = 0
5) Save Image: Quality = 12 (Max); Format = Progressive (Scans = 3)


Dell Edited Version:



iMac Edited Version:

Really hard to tell the difference between those two.

Are you starting with RAW or JPEG files?

As Photoshop came out with newer versions, I think they adjusted the sharpening a bit. When changing from CS3 to CS5 I noticed I needed to apply a bit more sharpening, so the same amount of sharpening may differ between PE9 and PE15 also.

ShyFlyer wrote:I was afraid of that. I've got another test image. This image is full frame and taken in sunlight.

Zoomed in to 300%, I see no difference between those images. Are you sure you didn't upload the same one twice?

If they are the correct images, then I can't see a bit of difference.

mr chips wrote:As Photoshop came out with newer versions, I think they adjusted the sharpening a bit. When changing from CS3 to CS5 I noticed I needed to apply a bit more sharpening, so the same amount of sharpening may differ between PE9 and PE15 also.

My sharpening and a couple other things are a bit different now on CC than they were on CS3.

They're both unique images. After taking a bit of a break, I can't see the difference in the photos either, to be honest.

This is really getting frustrating. When I viewed the edited versions on the Mac in "Preview" (before uploading to Photobucket), the Mac edited version showed a lot of jaggies, almost like a smaller image being enlarged even though the PC version looked fine. As far as I can tell, "Preview" is set to open images at 100% zoom.

I'll be back later with some other images to see what happens. Thanks for the help so far guys!

Vik probably knows 100 things to photos to every 1 that I do, but the Dell pic (1st photo) looks darker to me. Other than that, they all look presentable, in my caveman POV.

I think the gamma is slightly higher on the first photo.

In your last set of images, certainly in Firefox/Win7 I can see no difference whatsoever, and sampling random pixels with the eyedropper tool confirms that they're identical.