Tiny tack

Remember this vintage candy recipe from your childhood? Hard Tack Candy is easier than you think! Make for any holiday.There’s a handful of recipes I remember my mom making during the Christmas holidays. I remember some Christmas cherry cheesecake bars, snickerdoodles, peanut blossoms and this hard tack candy. I’ve always been candy crazy, so when I remembered this old fashioned hard candy recipe, I had to make it to share with you. This brings back many memories for me and I hope it does for you too.Why you’ll love this hard tack candy recipe:vintage recipesimple ingredientsmake any flavor and any colorperfect for make ahead holiday giftsWhat is hard tack candy?Hard tack candy, sometimes called rock candy, is a homemade hard candy. Think Jolly Ranchers, lollipops, etc…this is a candy that you suck on similar to those.You make hard tack candy by boiling sugar to the point of “hard crack” stage or hard ball stage, which is between 290-300º Fahrenheit.What do I need to make hard candy?Besides the sugar, water, light corn syrup and powdered sugar, here are a few key things you’ll need for this homemade candy recipe:LorAnn Oils: You can find these in baking shops, possibly in Walmart or on Amazon. They come in tiny little bottles and you can get them in just about any flavor imaginable. Our favorite flavors are peppermint, cinnamon, butter rum, spearmint, grape and cherry. LorAnn oils are highly concentrated making them great for hard candy. They will not break down as other flavors will. We don’t recommend anything other than flavor oils recommended for candy.Food Coloring: We used liquid food coloring. Just cheap store brand is fine for this recipe.Candy Thermometer: We LOVE our Thermoworks ThermaPen to quickly test temperatures. This probe thermometer is AMAZING. Get it here.How do you make hard tack candy?It’s important to be very, very careful when making homemade hard candy. The mixture gets extremely hot so you can easily get burned. And the hard candy can actually be quite sharp! The first times I made this I ended up with tiny cuts on my hands. Make sure you watch those strands of glass-like candy.Also, kids may want to help with this. After all, it’s candy! It may be best to bring them in at the point of breaking the candy or shaking it in powdered sugar.Line a large cookie sheet (at least 12×17″) with parchment paper. Set aside.Place the sugar, water and corn syrup in a saucepan and place over medium heat. Mix constantly until the sugar melts and the mixture starts to boil.Continue to cook and stir. The first time you make this, you may want to keep the heat at medium. Once you are comfortable with

AI for the best sharpening results. Use Tack Sharp AI and NoNoise AI TogetherIf you have worked with noise reduction software, like NoNoise AI in Photo RAW, you know that correcting noise is a push and pull between smoothing out noise grain and maintaining detail. Sharpening is a similar balancing act, increasing crispness of details without over sharpening and boosting textures.ON1 Photo RAW has a Both tab in its Noise & Sharpening tab that puts the sliders of Tack Sharp AI side by side with the NoNoise AI control. Recall I mentioned Tack Sharp AI can introduce a speckled pattern, especially if Micro Sharpening is pushed too far? Well … in the Both tab, Tack Sharp AI and NoNoise AI are applied, and those speckled get balanced out. The net/net is the best of both worlds. A great improvement in sharpness without an increase in grain and noise.When your photo needs Ai sharpening, I advocate starting your work in the Both tab for the best results from Tack Sharp AI.Pro tip: Switch the NoNoise AI Model if the results don’t look good out of the gate. Improve your ON1 skills with these training titles Areas Of Improvement For Tack Sharp AITack Sharp AI does have some room for improvement. The sharpening Ai can be aggressive at times, and dialing back the Tack Sharp AI Deblur slider is not always the solution. In the photo below, my subject is soft. I was shooting handheld and it was relatively windy (and I also know I don’t have the steadiest of hands). I needed the full strength of Tack Sharp AI to get the sheep crisp and sharp. The tree line in the distance is over-sharpened. Fiddling with the Micro Sharpening slider helped some, although it became a tradeoff between maintaining the detail in the sheep’s wool versus over-sharpening the trees.Can I deal with this in ON1 Photo RAW in another way? Of course. Duplicate the layer, apply Tack Sharp AI to the upper layer, and then use a mask to remove the sharpening from the background. (And that gets much, much easier

With Mask AI, another new feature in Photo RAW 2023). While ON1 continues to improve their AI smarts, the rest of the Photo RAW ecosystem has other tools to fill the gaps.ON1 Tack Sharp AI Or Topaz Labs Sharpen AI?The burning question on everyone’s mind: Is ON1 Tack Sharp better than Topaz Sharpen AI?That is actually a challenging question to answer in September of 2022 for two reasons. First, ON1 Photo RAW 2023 is still pre-release software. The final product is still several weeks away, and the AI brains in Photo RAW may change. Second, Topaz Labs recently announced Topaz Photo AI which undoubtedly updates their AI algorithms. That being said, I did push several photos through both Tack Sharp AI and Topaz Sharpen AI to see how ON1’s new feature holds up. I took 16-bit TIFFs and let each software do it’s automatic work. In ON1, I applied the defaults in the Both tab. In Topaz, I let Sharpen AI automatically detect and apply correction.The results? Tack Sharp AI holds its own. There is a spot or two where I’d give a nod to Topaz… the over-sharpening mentioned above I didn’t see in Sharpen AI. I also thought Topaz did slightly better with human faces. Yet once again, ON1 has additional tools like Portrait AI for further refinement. So if ON1 is your processing hub of choice, you aren’t limited. ON1 Tack Sharp AI removes camera shake from portrait photos well. Topaz Sharpen AI sets the standard for debarring and sharpening software. ON1 Tack Sharp AI holds up well. ConclusionON1 Tack Sharp AI is an excellent feature and produces solid results. Photo RAW users will be very happy with Tack Sharp AI.If you are deciding between Tack Sharp AI and Topaz Sharpen AI (or the new Photo AI), I think your decision will be driven more by other factors. What is your “home base” for your photos, your asset manager? If it’s ON1 Photo RAW - you’re done. If it’s another tool like Lightroom or Capture One, remember that Photo RAW does not run as a plug-in. I think