ShrinkSharp2 (under construction !)

Overview

ShrinkSharp2 is a export plugin for Adobe Lightroom.

The main purpose of this plugin is to resize and sharpen pictures in a way to get the maximum possible quality for showing them later an a screen.

Most cameras nowadays have a much greater resolution then the screens the pictures are shown on later. The apps which are used to display the pictures have to scale them down to fit the screen. This is mostly done in a very fast way and the results are not as good as they could be. I've seen an article from Phillip Reeve in a German forum which describes a cascaded shrinking and sharpening process to the final screen resolution with a Photoshop action.

To simplify this process I have written this plugin.

Besides this main feature the plugin is also able to frame the picture and annotate it with text and EXIF data from the LR catalog. It's also able to put the output pictures into a directory structure equal to the structure of the original RAW's.

It's a replacement of the old ShrinkSharp plugin written in Perl which I do not longer support.

Third Party Tools

This plugin is only a wrapper for ImageMagick and ExifTool. These great tools are doing the real work here.

Development

This plugin is in development state at the moment. I'm NOT a programmer. I'm a system administrator. So my programming skills are limited. Please use with care.

At the moment there are several shortcomings.

It is only tested under Windows 10 64 Bit and MacOS Catalina with the most resent LR-Classic version.

There my be problems with other codepages then western European (latin). Shrinksharp uses ImageMagick for the main work. But this tool is loosing some EXIF data when TIF is used as LR output format. To work around this I use the exiftool to copy the EXIF data back from the source to the destination picture. But this tool needs to know about the used codepages for the filenames. I coded a function to figure this out but my tests showed problems with that. But I tested this on a German Windows 10 switched to a Cyrillic keyboard. So this test my not be very meaningful.
You can bypass this by using JPG as LR output format but for best quality I recommend to use 100% quality and maximum resolution.

It's not jet save to work together with other plugins. If you want please use as last in chain.

Examples

You can see examples here.

Installation

Imagemagick and ExifTool

There is no need to install ImageMagick or ExifTool because it is included in the plugin. But I recoment the installation of ImageMagick under Windows because the static portable version which is included does not support multicore processing. You can download ImageMagic here. Pleas use the DLL-version. During the Installation you have to ckeck the "Add application directory to your system path". Without this ShrinkSharp cant't find the binary and will use the slower included version.

ShrinkSharp

The plugin can be downloaded here ShrinkSharp2.zip

The installation of this plugin is like any other plugin for LR. Extract the zip somewhere on your computer. Now in LR go to the Plugin-Manager and hit Add.

Then select the shrinksharp2.lrplugin directory. The Plugin will be added then.

Configuration

To configure the plugin go to the export dialog.

Here you can see the plugin now in the Nachbearbeitungsoptionen section. You have to select the "ShrinkSharp Configuration" (1) and hit Insert (2).

It is necessary to set some basic configurations to make this plugin work correctly:

Export to Hard drive (3)
If you want to use the directory structure sync feature the working file has to be exported in the same folder as the raw's. (4)
To get maximum quality use TIFF as format for the working file (5)
If you encounter problems with missing EXIF data (GPS) in the destination files please try JPG instead an give me a hint.
Set the size for the working file. This hast to be much larger then the destination size but it can speed up the process choosing a smaller size then the raw itself has (6).
For example:
I have a A7R4 with over 9500x6000 pixels and want 4k for destination size. So I set it to 6000x4000.
Disable sharpening in LR because the plugin is doing this (7).

The values are pretty self explaining.

Value	Description
Destination picture size: Width	Width of the rendered picture including the frame.
Destination picture size: Height	Height of the rendered picture including the frame.
Enlarge	Choose if the final picture will be enlarged if the original is smaller then the destination. I don't recommend this because the quality will drop.
Inner frame	Thickness of the inner frame and it's colour. Set this to 0 to get no inner frame
Outer frame (top, left, right, botom)	Thickness of the outer frame parts and it's colour. Set this to 0 to get no outer frame parts
Text annotations	Declaration of the text annotations, there colour, font and location on the final picture. There is no font selector yet for Windows but you can list your system fonts in Windows with \PluginPATH\win\imagemagick\magick.exe convert -list font but only fonts of the type ttf my be used. Under MacOS you can select a TTF fontsfile direct with a selector. With the X- and Y-Shift it is possible to move them to fit better your needs because the location setting will put the text straight to the edges of the picture. You can use whatever text you want and combine it with EXIF tags. These tags have thy syntax [TAG_NAME] For example: [cameraMake] [cameraModel] \| [lens] {@[sfocalLength35mm]} \| [aperture] \| [isoSpeedRating] and [title]{ \| [caption]} As you can see the caption tag in the second line and it's separator in encapsulated in {}-braces. This has the effect that all chars within the {}-braces are deleted if the tag is empty. You get "Title" and not "Title \| " if the caption value is empty. This can be used for every tag. You may only one tag in {}-braces
Sharpening	With sigma,radius, strength and threshold the amount of sharpening can be set. Good values depends on your needs. I found values of 0,4 - 1,0 - 0,5 - 0,15 useful. That may vary from your needs, taste and picture type. A very good explanation of those Values can be found here https://redskiesatnight.com/2005/04/06/sharpening-using-image-magick/
Runs	How many runs with shrinking and sharpening will be used to get the final size
Filter	Which filter akgorythm is used for resizing. Pleas look to the ImageMagick filter pages for more infos.
Output format	In which format the final picture will be rendered.
Sync RAW directory structure	With this feature enabled the final picture will be created in a directory hierarchy equal to the RAWs. If you want to use this pleas select "Gleicher Ordner wie Originalfoto" in the "Speicherort für Export" tab. In the both directory fields you have to set the root directories iv which the equal hierarchy is starting for source and destination. Needed subdirectories will be created automatically. Please be aware that destination files will be overwritten by default.
Delete workfile	Should the working file be deleted after work is done?

Tag Name	Description
fileName	The leaf name of the file (for example, "myFile.jpg")
folderName	The name of the folder the file is in
rating	The user rating of the file (either nil or number of stars)
title	The title of photo
caption	The caption for photo
exposure	The exposure summary (for example, "1/60 sec at f/2.8")
lens	The lens (for example, "28.0-135.0 mm")
shutterSpeed	The shutter speed (for example, "1/60 sec")
aperture	The aperture (for example, "f/2.8")
isoSpeedRating	The ISO speed rating (for example, "ISO 200")
focalLength	The focal length of lens as shot (for example, "132 mm")
focalLength35mm	The focal length as 35mm equivalent (for example, "211 mm")
sfocalLength	The focal length of lens as shot (for example, "132 mm") This parameter is not original from LR, it's my own one. It is filled with the focalLength value in case that a zoom lens is used. This is recognized by [-][numbers(s)]mm in the lens string. If it is not a zoom lens the value is empty. You can use the {} mechanism to leave the focal length complete empty if no zoom is used. This is useful because in the focal length is part of the lens name already.
sfocalLength35mm	The focal length as 35mm equivalent (for example, "211 mm") This parameter is not original from LR, it's my own one. It is filled with the focalLength35mm value in case that a zoom lens is used. This is recognized by [-][numbers(s)]mm in the lens string. If it is not a zoom lens the value is empty. You can use the {} mechanism to leave the focal length complete empty if no zoom is used. This is useful because in the focal length is part of the lens name already.
dateTimeOriginal	The date and time of capture (for example, "09/15/2005 17:32:50") Formatting can vary based on the user's localization settings
dateTime	Adjusted date and time (for example, "09/15/2005 17:32:50") Formatting can vary based on the user's localization settings
cameraMake	The camera manufacturer
cameraModel	The camera model
artist	The artist's name
gps	gps: (string) The location of this photo (for example, "37°56'10" N 27°20'42" E")

There are mny more. Please ave a look to the SDK pages.

Debug

Plugin Manager

There my be problems and errors while using this plugin. Espacialy now because of the beta state. To help me solving the bugs you can send me so much information as possible.

If the render process is interuppted due an error please go to the PluginManager. You may see the error there. Please send me this error.

Debug info in PluginManager

Logfile Lightroom

At the moment the plugin is writing a logfile. You can find this file:

Windows: c:\Users\YOUR_USER\Documents\LrClassicLogs\
Mac OS: /Userns/YOUR_USER/Documents/LrClassicLogs/

Logfile ImageMagick

ImageMagick itself is writing a logfile

Windows: c:\Users\YOUR_USER\AppData\Local\Temp\shrinksharp2.log
Mac OS: /tmp/shrinksharp2.log

Please report errors to this forum thread. Link to support forum

Version History

Date	Version Number	Changes
06.03.2020	0.1	1. Beta Release
10.03.2020	0.2	Added GUI field for number of resize/sharpening runs. Added GUI field for choosing resize filter algorithm. Fix eror in calculating the intermediate resize steps.
11.03.2020	0.3	Added the capability to allow or deny the enlargement if original size is smaller then the destination size. Fixed number/string errors
12.03.2020	0.4	Added the capability to leave the focal length empty in annotations if a zoom lens is used.
18.03.2020	0.5	MacOS support. Added strength and threshold to sharpening values. Fixed eror in calculating the intermediate resize steps. Fixed error not using text colors as configured.
04.05.2020	0.6	Fix for Zoner does not show time of creation. Plugin can use installed or included ImageMagick (Windows only). Fixed bug in size calculations.