Changing how I sharpen - please tell me what you think?

[kennysarmy]

After some "bad skies"...I've revisited how I process my RAW files.

New method is:

convert RAW to JPG using DPP

choose the most applicable picture style
adjust exposure and wb to suit
set sharpness to level 5​

Open in Photoshop CS3
run my new action to do a High Pass Sharpening
action pauses to set the level.

Here are 3 images:

1. Using my old action which used smart sharpen on the LAB mode channel only.

2. Using my new action with high pass radius set to 1

3. Using my new action with high pass radius set to 2.

Please let me know which one you prefer.


1.

2.

3.

ALL 100% crops and in each case the saturation was boosted by +10 and I've applied a linear contrast curve....



thanks for reading...

 

[evilonion]

1.

number 2 and 3 have seemed to create more of a halo effect around the edge of the rocks....?

 

[ryanyboy]

2 looks best to my eye. 3 looks over done.

 

[kennysarmy]

I too thought 3 was overdone at radius 1 - so that's why I tried again at a lower radius of 2.

I can see what you mean about some slight haloing evilonion
I guess that's as a result of this sharpening method working on the edges ....

So now I'm no further forward....

 

[Deckard]

I'd say 5 is perhaps a tad high for capture sharpening with DPP, I usually use 3 or 4.

If I use high pass sharpening I normally use a radius of 2-2.2 pixels, but I'll usually dial back the opacity of the high pass layer to around 65% to taste.

If I really want to go to town on sharpening an image, I tend to use an edge mask sharpening technique. It's similar to high pass in that it selects only the edges to be sharpened but allows more flexibility on how hard you do it and also allows you to carry it out with a layer blend style of luminosity, similar in a way to LAB sharpening.

 

[u8myufo]

Are you able to post an original strait conversion Jeff? A link to a 1024 size would be even better, dunno if it is just me but the grassy parts on both the lower and upper levels of the rocks look smudged and dont seem to show a lot of definition.