KII vs KIIs

A3 makes for some very nice prints, and even allows a modest amount of cropping. I'm glad to say that these days I don't seem to be cropping as much as I did, so I must be seeing the images better in the first place. Cropping is usually more about changing the shape of a picture to suit its contents.

So to get back on subject, I'd be tempted by the K-5 IIs but I am curious as to how the wider market will view these variants from Pentax and Nikon in the longer term.

As the 645D and Q already have no AA filter then it seems there must be a point to it. It just needs market acceptance to make it mainstream.

FastStone is free, fast and does decent Lanczos3 rendering.

Does the viewer portion use Lanczos3 ?

Some people might find this page interesting....

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/image-resize-for-web.htm

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The optimum downsizing option in Photoshop is Bicubic Sharper, which is designed to retain quality as we down-size.

In practice, the standard Bicubic resampling works very well anyway.

A lot of the problem may well be that people don't adjust their sharpening regime to reflect that they are using a smaller image than for print. Print and web need distinctly different amounts of sharpening.

The webs littered with complaints about the resizing in PB

This is just one thread, and it contains a shot of a yacht which
is the type of shot that would show the difference between the
K-5II and K-5II S.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/thread/1856262

The original can be downloaded search for pbase on page 2.

I've just tried Farstone Viewer it's not bad but the 1280W
shots it produces aren't as good as 1280W shots I produce
from an editor.

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The thread you've linked to Algi seems to be full of lots of photographers who are not sure what they are doing.

If anyone has a problem with resizing, here's a simple article to help:

https://www.pentaxuser.com/article/photoshop-cropping-and-resizing-254

It seems to, if you turn it on. FastStone is primarily a viewer, with some simple but handy editing features tagged on, such as lossless jpeg crop etc.

That's true of all forums

Just had a quick play with Farstone Lanczos3 it does produce
less jaggies so it might be OK with the K-5 II S but the
images are far too soft and you shouldn't have to re-sharpen
them

In CS3 bicubic is really soft, but bicubic/sharper is OK
except for it's poor handling of anything that can produce
a jaggy such as ropes (on the yacht picture mentioned above)
steps, roof tiles, bricks, fabrics etc. I don't think that will be
much use with the K-5 II S if it already produces jaggies

The free Image Magic (which I already use) seems to be the
best compromise

http://www.fsoft.it/imaging/en/Esempi.htm

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I use Fullscreen Photo Viewer, seems very clear and detailed to me. Free also.

link

Quick tip on Windows Preview, which makes full size images look soft - zoom to a 100% view, then jump back again. Presto, the image is now sharp!

Keeping images sharp when resizing is something else. You really need to do an unsharp mask or use focus magic. The resizing process destroys sharpening halos.