Which is "better" - sharpening in ACR, in PSE, or both?

[Colin Southern]

I'm afraid, I don't Colin. Anyway, in Photoshop I normally add a border to the image before saving it as JPEG. Now don't tell me that ACR can add borders................

It won't do borders - but - you can batch automate that in Photoshop using Automate -> Batch to run actions -- so it's the next best thing (and a lot faster than doing it manually). And there was folks thinking they needed Lightroom to do things like that!

[xpatUSA]

I conclude[d] that ACR's sharpening with it's greater flexibility (more sliders), moderately applied, is indeed useful (for my purposes) as a "scene sharpness restorative" before more artistic processing in post.

I did some more tests with various cameras (i.e. pixel pitches), lenses (good and bad), at various aperture settings. I won't bore y'all with more QuickMTF plots but results confirmed my view of using ACR's pre-sharpening as a "scene sharpness restorative". I further determined that one setting does not fit all, sad to say. Basically, a bad lens wide open on a small-pixeled camera gives a edge blur of a good few pixels wide - as one might expect. On the other hand, a binned low-res shot with a Sigma SD10 and 70mm Macro at f/5.6 gives an almost perfect edge, needing no pre-sharpening at all (in the sense that any sharpening applied in ACR to such a shot can give an overshoot in the edge spread graph, assuming I got the focus perfect). These "overshoots" that I talk about are seen on-screen as "halos" which are (in my view) preferably applied and adjusted in post.

Maybe "scene sharpness restorative" will pass into photographological obfuscation (PO) as "SSR" - there to join such stalwart acronyms as PP, MP, EV, etc. ;-).

[jcuknz]

I would have thought the obvious answer is whichever programme you used last before exporting the file.

[Colin Southern]

I would have thought the obvious answer is whichever programme you used last before exporting the file.

Unfortunately, the old "sharpening is the last thing you do before exporting a file" days are long gone (if one is after an optimal result anyway).

[Chevi]

I never sharpen via ACR, always via Photoshop and always use selective sharpening techniques.
If you wish further info regarding 'selective sharpening' i will be happy to expand.

Tom

[Colin Southern]

I never sharpen via ACR, always via Photoshop and always use selective sharpening techniques.
If you wish further info regarding 'selective sharpening' i will be happy to expand.

Tom

Does this include capture & output sharpening?