Sharpness - correct amount?

[Colin Southern]

Colin. Been spending today reading your thread on sharpening and practicing various RAW sharpening.

Poor guy!

I note that you do not use ACR for sharpening ... does this mean that you zero Amount/Radius/Detail and Masking or just Amount?

At the bottom of the screen there is a hyperlink that you can click to set your default colourspace / bit depth etc ... there's sharpening options in there ... and that's where I have mine set to none. If people want, there's also options for sharpening just the preview in ACR.

Then do you use the ACR Noise Luminance/Colour controls or also set these to zero before opening the file and using Unsharp Mask 300/0.3/0.

To be honest, I (almost) never need to go anywhere near the noise controls, and I normally only use the colour controls on the first tab (which don't have any effect on sharpening) - so yeah - I usually pop into PS - zap the dust bunnies and then hit the capture sharpening button.

Could be a stupid question but I am trying

Not stupid at all (in all honesty, I enjoy these technical discussions more than image critiques!)

[Dave Humphries]

Then do you use the ACR Noise Luminance/Colour controls or also set these to zero before opening the file and using Unsharp Mask 300/0.3/0

I completely understand why we don't use the Sharpening in ACR, but I am at a loss to understand why so many people don't use the NR (at all) either

Maybe they don't need to because I'm the only one shooting above 200 iso regularly!

My advice; try it, it's good!

Cheers,

[Colin Southern]

I completely understand why we don't use the Sharpening in ACR, but I am at a loss to understand why so many people don't use the NR (at all) either

Maybe they don't need to because I'm the only one shooting above 200 iso regularly!

That may well be part of the reason for me ... I pretty much stick to ISO 100; it's fine for anything outside during the day, and for landscape even ISO 100 is too high (I'd prefer ISO 25 or 12 if it didn't clobber the dynamic range). And having just said that, on the rare occasions that I do shoot at higher ISOs I still don't really have a noise issue that's obvious in small prints.

So about the only time I ever use NR tools is when working on other peoples exposures - and even then, areas of blown highlight are far more the norm than significant under-exposure.

[RonH]

At the bottom of the screen there is a hyperlink that you can click to set your default colourspace / bit depth etc ... there's sharpening options in there ... and that's where I have mine set to none.

Thanks Colin.
My PSE8 ACR does not have the hyperlink for all these widgets but its still easy to 'fix'.

Oh and ref 'Dave' ... from my experience the light 'down-under' is so much better that lower ISO's seem to be the norm.

[Dave Humphries]

Oh and ref 'Dave' ... from my experience the light 'down-under' is so much better that lower ISO's seem to be the norm.

Don't think I have crossed "the line", so I wouldn't know, but it seems there's a two stop (or more) "northern hemi smog" we live with

Cheers,

[Colin Southern]

Don't think I have crossed "the line", so I wouldn't know, but it seems there's a two stop (or more) "northern hemi smog" we live with

Just think of it as a giant built-in diffuser

[RonH]

Colin ... your Unsharp Mask 300/0.3/0. I also optionally tried 80/1/0 on a church building. Trying to compare the two left me thinking 'I can't see a difference', they both looked good. This latter setting is the one that 'Digital Photography Review' used for testing camera RAW and I downloaded their Nikon D3000 RAW pic for the test ...
http://movies.dpreview.com.s3.amazon...0/DSC_0608.zip

Am I correct in thinking therefore (as a general rule) that if one uses a higher Sharpness then use a lower Radius and vikkiversa?
(I appreciate that there will be heaps of variations to 'a norm'.)

[Colin Southern]

Colin ... your Unsharp Mask 300/0.3/0. I also optionally tried 80/1/0 on a church building. Trying to compare the two left me thinking 'I can't see a difference', they both looked good. This latter setting is the one that 'Digital Photography Review' used for testing camera RAW and I downloaded their Nikon D3000 RAW pic for the test ...
http://movies.dpreview.com.s3.amazon...0/DSC_0608.zip

Am I correct in thinking therefore (as a general rule) that if one uses a higher Sharpness then use a lower Radius and vikkiversa?
(I appreciate that there will be heaps of variations to 'a norm'.)

Hi Ron,

Be sure to evaluate capture sharpening at 100% With sharpening, the amount is "how much to increase the contrast of the halos" whereas the radius controls the width of the halos - so the 300/0.3 (recommended by Canon for 1D3 / 1Ds3 by the way, but also used on lower resolution cameras) is simply to counter the softening of the digitisation, demosaicing and anti-aliasing "processes"; it doesn't make any difference to the printed image - it just makes it easier on the eye to work on at high magnifications. 80/1/0 is getting more into content/creative sharpening, and will probably do at a lower magnification (say, 25%) what 300/0.3 does at 100%, although - personally - I wouldn't call 80/1 capture sharpening.

At the end of the day though, the sharpening that makes the biggest difference visually is content/creative sharpening of which 40/4/0 would be a typical starting point for me.

Hope this helps

[RonH]

Hi Ron,

... is simply to counter the softening of the digitisation, demosaicing and anti-aliasing "processes"; it doesn't make any difference to the printed image - it just makes it easier on the eye to work on at high magnifications.

Crickey ... you must have an honours degree in this stuff Colin. Thanks for all your guidence on this.
One (maybe) last question ... you say above it doesn't make any difference to the printed image so does this mean that the first sharpening (capture sharpening) is not actually 'saved' just 'used' for the setting of other picture parameters? 'cause if it were 'saved' it would be part of any next process? Or am I just 'thick as a plank'

[Colin Southern]

say above it doesn't make any difference to the printed image so does this mean that the first sharpening (capture sharpening) is not actually 'saved' just 'used' for the setting of other picture parameters? 'cause if it were 'saved' it would be part of any next process?

Hi Ron,

Sorry - I probably used a bad choice of words there. The capture sharpening is still used per sec, but you can only really see it's effects when working at 100% magnification ... so if you had a couple of prints side by side (say 8 x 12) with one being capture sharpened and the other not, I don't think you'd be able to tell the difference.

For me it just makes the image nicer to work on - people seem to have different tolerances for things in life; personally, I can't can't stand working on unsharp images (it just annoys the heck out of me - right up there alongside kids bouncing basketballs and kids with skateboards!) - so once I get the capture sharpening done it makes the image a lot nicer to work on, but it's really the content/creative sharpening that makes the difference in terms of the appearance of the final print.

[RonH]

Hi Ron,

Sorry - I probably used a bad choice of words there ...

No sweat ... now my brain is engaged Thanks for the clarification Colin.
You're working late!

[Maritimer1]

You know when you've been reading too many posts and tutorials about sharpening and halos and all that techie stuff when you look at a tree, a real tree, and think to yourself, "I don't see any fringeing." Oh, my....

[RonH]

You know when you've been reading too many posts and tutorials about sharpening and halos and all that techie stuff when you look at a tree, a real tree, and think to yourself, "I don't see any fringeing." Oh, my....

Spot on Myra! I'm rather new to all this sharpening stuff. Previously we mainly took snaps though many good ones ... I think that's what 'normal' pictures are called ... and they mostly already looked sharp when printed for albums etc. Now ... well maybe its my eyes

[Maritimer1]

Same here. Now, everything that I once thought was "in focus" looks soft. It's a conspiracy! These CinC people are messing with our minds !

[Dave Humphries]

It's a conspiracy! These CinC people are messing with our minds !

Gulp

Colin, I think they're on to us mate, run, RUN .....

must dash,

[Colin Southern]

Gulp

Colin, I think they're on to us mate, run, RUN .....

must dash,

It's OK Dave - I've already told them that "resistance is futile", and they always listen to us

[RonH]

Colin, I think they're on to us mate, run, RUN .....
must dash, Dave

It's OK Dave - I've already told them that "resistance is futile", and they always listen to us

Read my lips ...

Oh and now I am really confused. In the thread 'RAW to Photoshop' you's are saying ... 'The general rule is "everything you CAN do in ACR you SHOULD do in ACR"; ... '

But now you's are saying 'Don't sharpen in ACR'

Sniff ... I'll never get my head around this! but I will give in to pressure

[Dave Humphries]

Oh and now I am really confused. In the thread 'RAW to Photoshop' you's are saying ... 'The general rule is "everything you CAN do in ACR you SHOULD do in ACR"; ... '

But now you's are saying 'Don't sharpen in ACR'

That's because you cannot do 300, 0.3, 0 in ACR

0.5 is the minimum radius, therefore, do it in PS or Elements.
No contradiction!

Clear as mud?

[Maritimer1]

To further confuse things, when I open a photo in ACR, I cannot do anything to sharpen. It appears that the "tool" does not work. No matter what the setting, there is no difference in the photo's appearance. Everything else seems to work. My version is old- I have Photo Shop cs2. Guess I should check the help menu to see if I am doing something wrong. For now, I am sharpening after opening in PS, which seems to be OK.

[Colin Southern]

To further confuse things, when I open a photo in ACR, I cannot do anything to sharpen. It appears that the "tool" does not work.

It's been a while since I've used the CS2 version of ACR, but all later versions have a control that essentially says "Apply sharpening to: None / Preview Only / Both". Off memory it's buried unter a general settings control which is a barely noticeable triangle in the top(ish) right hand side of ACR

For now, I am sharpening after opening in PS, which seems to be OK.

Which is what I do (as Dave mentioned, you can't get a radius of 0.3 in ACR so it's one of the few things that I do outside of ACR. Basically ACR is best for things that are levels related because it can attack them in linear gamma (including saturation / vibrance / hue / WB type adjustments).