> Second, I don’t know why all the techies around have a huge kink over sharpness, but the most challenging situations I have faced as a photographer were with

> Second, I don’t know why all the techies around have a huge kink over sharpness, but the most challenging situations I have faced as a photographer were with smooth gradients. Or more accurately, gradients that should have been smooth and weren’t in the output. I can tell you why: because it's hard, i.e. it's hard to compress efficiently. So if someone claims a breakthrough, they either did something extremely smart, or cut some corners.