Lightroom or Photoshop for sharpening?

danny_bhoy

danny_bhoy

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I'd prefer to use LR as I can then make sharpening part of my bulk image workflow, rather than then have to export all images from LR and batch process in PS with a high-pass sharpening action.

I've heard in various places (I'm sure TP was one of them) that PS does a better job of sharpening than LR. Anyone else find that the case?

Ps. this is for wedding/portrait work rather than landscapes or anything else if that makes a difference.
 
For basic capture/output sharpening LR is fine. I don't think there is advantage to PS batch high pass sharpening. For advanced sharpening (i.e. luminance sharpening) there is no choice but to export to another program.
 
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I personally never use sharpening and do not
recommend it's use though my converter has
a power tool for it…
 
Indeed, all raw files need capture sharpening to some extent.

I generally only use LR; sharpen to taste in the develop module [inc localised sharpening with an adjustment brush if required] then tick the box for output sharpening on export depending on purpose [screen, print etc].

There are several plugins available too for LR such as the Nik suite which have further options but I've not really found the need for them nor any extra sharpening in PS, but your mileage may vary as they say!
 
Whilst I've got Photoshop, I prefer most of the time just Lightroom itself and if I need more than I use the Nik suite of plugins.
 
I would prefer Lightroom for this. Sharpening in Lightroom 3 is quite good, and it has built in output sharpening, which is nice if you are printing yourself.
 
I sharpen mostly in the PS RAW field now. And reduce noise there if needed. In fact, I probably do 90% editing there.
 
andyscott said:
All raw files need 'some' sharpening applied in conversion.
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I think that depends a great deal on the lens. About 90% of my files via lightroom are not sharpened and I have turned off automatic sharpening in LR and in my camera bodies. I get many comments from people about clear sharp images.

I hardly use 'clarity' either, and if I do its '5' or less.

I think my post processing tends to encourage good contrast though (not over the top though, it needs to look natural and I never use the contrast slider to obtain good contrast).
 
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MidnightUK said:
I think that depends a great deal on the lens
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Yes, for sure and on the working technique that
includes focus fine tuning, combo holding etc and
greatly on the post processing as well.
MidnightUK said:
About 90% of my files via lightroom are not sharpened
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Post processing properly the tonal values makes
this tweak most irrelevant
MidnightUK said:
I hardly use 'clarity' either, and if I do its '5' or less.
Click to expand...
This tweak is an other thing as it affects micro satu-
ration through taming the mid-tones at pixel cluster
level. It is an adaptive algorithm not a rigid one in CO9.
MidnightUK said:
my post processing tends to encourage good contrast
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Yes, absolutely. Proper DRL and WB do miracles when
it comes to natural rendition through the restitution of the
contrast values expressed in a correct DR.
MidnightUK said:
it needs to look natural
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That is indeed the first aim. Once reach, one may apply
own artistic intent knowing that all the recorder data has
been exploited.
MidnightUK said:
I never use the contrast slider to obtain good contrast).
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Of course, when the DRL is set adequately and the mid-tones
tamed, this slider is almost useless in colour renditions but has
it place in B&W conversions as these were on a paper emulsion
that had far less shades of grey than the actual digital 254.
 
I always thought that USM was required to counteract the effects of the anti-aliasing filter that is typically fitted (for Canon at least)?
 
MidnightUK said:
I think that depends a great deal on the lens. About 90% of my files via lightroom are not sharpened and I have turned off automatic sharpening in LR and in my camera bodies. I get many comments from people about clear sharp images.
Click to expand...

It's not a function of the lens, it's a function of the filters in front of the sensor. Anti-alias filters need to be counteracted in post. Cameras without those filters probably don't.
 
GeeJay57 said:
I always thought that USM was required to counteract the effects of the anti-aliasing filter that is typically fitted (for Canon at least)?
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I use a Canon 7d and a 5d, neither are the newest models. At one time I was using the very bottom end of the range when they first issued a DSLR cheap enough for normal people to buy. I have never found the anti aliasing filters to be a sharpness issue, nor have I bothered to compensate for them in any way. Obviously the cheapest camera at 6mp had limitations, but even from that I have a close up of a pigeon that shows all the individual barbs of each feather clearly.
 
EightBitTony said:
It's not a function of the lens, it's a function of the filters in front of the sensor. Anti-alias filters need to be counteracted in post. Cameras without those filters probably don't.
Click to expand...

Personally I have found it to be almost entirely lens based and anti alias filters have been for me mostly an invisible issue.

I was broken hearted with my first DSLR, the images were no sharper and no better than my digital point and shoot. If I could have taken it back I would have. I wondered how the test images I had seen could be so much better. I bought a 2nd hand prime lens deemed on old film reviews to be one of the best non L primes. I cannot describe the improvement in colour and sharpness and contrast over the trash lens supplied with the camera - it was as if I had a different camera.

Cheaper zooms in the Canon range just cannot compare to primes and frankly some of those cheaper zooms issued over the years are shameful (I am looking at you 70-300 in particular). I am sure the L zooms are good, but I only have one of those, buying good consumer primes as and when I could afford them became my goal and looking back over many years now, all of them are still up and running and given finance retraints at the time, it has turned out to be an excellent long term choice in every way. I also avoided buying any specific crop fit lenses in the hope of getting a full frame one day and not having to scrap them. This too has paid off massively well.

Re post processing - saving as a very high quality jpeg makes a huge difference in sharpmess too. Lots of people go for medium to good settings, to save space or to allow posting up on the web etc, but it really does hammer detail quality. This is not the fault of the lens or of anti aliasing filters or of poor contrast post processing, its just down to how jpeg creation works - it undoes a lot of fine detail.

So I stick to my guns, get a decent lens above all else - its more important than anything and can be cheap to do. Forget the aliasing filter and sharpening red herrings and watch your processing contrast.
 
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MidnightUK said:
So I stick to my guns, get a decent lens above all else - its more important than anything and can be cheap to do. Forget the aliasing filter and sharpening red herrings and watch your processing contrast.
Click to expand...

I've got an extremely sharp Sigma, and a Canon 70-200 L F4 which is just amazing, and both of them require the default amount of sharpening in Lightroom (which it applies on import, by default, at 20, without any intervention on my part). The only way to stop it doing that would be to create a development preset with the sharpening set to 0, so unless someone's done that, they're getting Lightroom's 20 anyway.
 
EightBitTony said:
default amount of sharpening in Lightroom (which it applies on import, by default, at 20, without any intervention on my part). The only way to stop it doing that would be to create a development preset with the sharpening set to 0
Click to expand...

My Lightroom and camera have both been adjusted to no automated sharpening. The only time anything gets sharpened is if I go out of my way to add some and that would either be in LR or possibly PS. Sharpening is mostly for when I have just marginally misfocused but for some reason want to keep that image for myself anyway, perhaps one of those family moments.

I wonder how much of this sharpening/not issue is due to the perception of individuals, just what people each find desirable, related perhaps to eye sight or just what we come to accept as a 'standard' look. I don't like over saturated or over clarified images but I have a friend who whacks both of those right up, deeming anything otherwise to look 'dull'. Each to their own :-)

For me, it may also be that I very rarely do large prints. Most of my work is on screen or 8x10 or smaller.
 
sk66 said:
Is there some issue with sharpening that I'm unaware of? I realize there is a potential for over-sharpening and increasing noise, but other than that, why avoid it?
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The implication is that real photographers that are able to shoot sharp images with great lenses, don't need to use image sharpening in PP.

Whatever....
 
sk66 said:
I realize there is a potential for over-sharpening and increasing noise, but other than that, why avoid it?
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Equally, why bother putting it in if it is not needed. Down to personal perception / desire I guess.
 
GeeJay57 said:
The implication is that real photographers that are able to shoot sharp images with great lenses, don't need to use image sharpening in PP.
Click to expand...

I think that is a bit unfair. Anyone at all with a camera is going to take technically sharper images if they have a good lens instead of a low contrast unsharp one - on an SLR or a camera phone. Where did 'real' photographer come from? Anyone with a camera is a photographer.

Not sure that 85 1.8, 50 1.4, 50 2.5 consumer lenses count as 'great lenses'. They are good lenses. They are not L grade, but more relevantly they are much better than some of the rubbish zooms Canon produced in the past, including the early digital kit zooms which I believe were later upgraded, but as I have never used a later kit lens I cannot comment. I was foolish enough at the beginning to buy a 70-300 consumer zoom and i don't know how Canon had the nerve to ever put it out as a product, its image quality is dull, flat, low contrast and poor colour - the lengths you need to go to with that, way beyond mere sharpening, to get even a halfway decent image is staggering and not worth the time and effort.

The downside to primes is of course you have to keep changing lenses in a way you don't with zooms. I wish I could afford some of the higher quality zooms but they are not in my range at the present moment.

I also did not say no one else ever needs to use sharpening. I said I personally hardly ever use it, maybe 10% of images, mostly because I like a fair bit of contrast in my images so that adds to perceived sharpness and that the need to post sharpen is greatly reduced or removed via other processing.
 
MidnightUK said:
I think that is a bit unfair. Anyone at all with a camera is going to take technically sharper images if they have a good lens instead of a low contrast unsharp one - on an SLR or a camera phone. Where did 'real' photographer come from? Anyone with a camera is a photographer.

Not sure that 85 1.8, 50 1.4, 50 2.5 consumer lenses count as 'great lenses'. They are good lenses. They are not L grade, but more relevantly they are much better than some of the rubbish zooms Canon produced in the past, including the early digital kit zooms which I believe were later upgraded, but as I have never used a later kit lens I cannot comment. I was foolish enough at the beginning to buy a 70-300 consumer zoom and i don't know how Canon had the nerve to ever put it out as a product, its image quality is dull, flat, low contrast and poor colour - the lengths you need to go to with that, way beyond mere sharpening, to get even a halfway decent image is staggering and not worth the time and effort.

The downside to primes is of course you have to keep changing lenses in a way you don't with zooms. I wish I could afford some of the higher quality zooms but they are not in my range at the present moment.

I also did not say no one else ever needs to use sharpening. I said I personally hardly ever use it, maybe 10% of images, mostly because I like a fair bit of contrast in my images so that adds to perceived sharpness and that the need to post sharpen is greatly reduced or removed via other processing.
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There's two things at play here. Preference and physics. Everyone should create the images they enjoy and personal preference is all that matters.

However, physics means that anti-aliasing filters reduce the sharpness of the images the camera captures. They just do. They may have gotten better over the years, but it's not an opinion, or a preference, it's a fact.

That's why several manufacturers have brought out filter free cameras, because with all the other conditions the same, you get sharper images with them. So, for most DSLRs, the image produced by the camera is softened by the anti-aliasing filter. Whether people correct for that or not is preference, whether or not it happens is just fact.
 
MidnightUK said:
I think that is a bit unfair. Anyone at all with a camera is going to take technically sharper images if they have a good lens instead of a low contrast unsharp one - on an SLR or a camera phone. Where did 'real' photographer come from? Anyone with a camera is a photographer.

Not sure that 85 1.8, 50 1.4, 50 2.5 consumer lenses count as 'great lenses'. They are good lenses. They are not L grade, but more relevantly they are much better than some of the rubbish zooms Canon produced in the past, including the early digital kit zooms which I believe were later upgraded, but as I have never used a later kit lens I cannot comment. I was foolish enough at the beginning to buy a 70-300 consumer zoom and i don't know how Canon had the nerve to ever put it out as a product, its image quality is dull, flat, low contrast and poor colour - the lengths you need to go to with that, way beyond mere sharpening, to get even a halfway decent image is staggering and not worth the time and effort.

The downside to primes is of course you have to keep changing lenses in a way you don't with zooms. I wish I could afford some of the higher quality zooms but they are not in my range at the present moment.

I also did not say no one else ever needs to use sharpening. I said I personally hardly ever use it, maybe 10% of images, mostly because I like a fair bit of contrast in my images so that adds to perceived sharpness and that the need to post sharpen is greatly reduced or removed via other processing.
Click to expand...

Sharpening in post processing is not IMHO primarily for compensating for poor quality lenses and out of focus images.

From the reviews I've seen, the Canon 85 f1.8 seems widely regarded as a very sharp lens. The 50mm f/2.5 is a very sharp (if slow focusing) macro lens and in my experience is as sharp as the 100mm f/2.8 L or non L (which is also very sharp). If you're happy not sharpening your digital images, good for you. Most digital images that I've captured using L and non-L glass have typically benefitted from some degree of sharpening in PP. When being prepared for printing, I've always felt that there is some benefit in the final result if some USM is applied in post. YMMV of course.
 
sk66 said:
For basic capture/output sharpening LR is fine. I don't think there is advantage to PS batch high pass sharpening. For advanced sharpening (i.e. luminance sharpening) there is no choice but to export to another program.
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I've just picked up on this thread today. I haven't seen it mentioned in the subsequent posts but I'm wondering if it is appreciated that LR provides the facility whereby it is possible to inspect the image in luminance mode when working with the slider controls in the "Detail" sharpening panel, by holding down the "Alt" key (Mac) as you drag, for example, the Amount slider. With the colour content filtered out, this allows you to see more clearly the effect the adjustment is having on the image sharpening. Likewise for the other sliders. Hope that helps to clarify some of these aspects of the LR sharpening methods.
 
sk66 said:
That's not the same thing as "luminance sharpening" (sharpening the luminance channel in LAB mode).
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Yes of course and I apologise if you thought I'm taking away from your post. Your post reminded me that this feature ((in luminance mode) is perhaps not so well known and is so useful, especially when used in at least a 1:1 view. The OP talked about preferring to use Lightroom, but the thread seemed to have drifted off topic.:)
 
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