sharpening help please

mrgas

mrgas

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within the last week or so I've made a couple of significant changes to my photography , the first thing I've changed is the lens , I've now got a Sigma 24-70 2.8 and my other change thanks to amazon black friday is Elements 9

Today is the first chance I've had to have a proper walk round with the lens and after getting back and looking at my efforts I wasn't that impressed , they all look very soft

I've fired a few test shots at home and they do look a bit better , I think some of the earlier problems were user error , i'm reckoning the wider aperture lens is less forgiving than the kit lens and i need to learn how to us it properly , hope i'm right

looking at the later "test" shots i'm pretty sure the sharpening is the reason they look poor , I shoot in RAW and realise some sharpening is required.

when I used elements 7 all i used to do was press "auto sharpen" and the results were good , pressing "auto sharpen" on my new version of elements however has little effect , so I reckon i now need to know how to sharpen correctly.

So to summarise !!!

what sharpening methods do others use ?

anyone else agree with the lens may need more user input ?

any help greatly received

thanks
 
Post a picture :)
 
Your sigma lens "should" give better results than the kit lens, that said sigma have had some.... Errr "issues" with some lens in the past (the 10-20 is infamous) it might be worth comparing it with another if you can in case you have a dodgy one.
 
swanseamale47 said:
Your sigma lens "should" give better results than the kit lens, that said sigma have had some.... Errr "issues" with some lens in the past (the 10-20 is infamous) it might be worth comparing it with another if you can in case you have a dodgy one.
Click to expand...

that thought had crossed my mind , I dont know anyone else with the same lens tho

I've took a few more shots and seem to be getting better results , I'm hoping its user error on my part

thanks for your reply
 
I find these settings work quite well on images that have been resized to 800px longest side

Unsharp mask: Amount 150% Radius 0.3 Threshold 0

Give it a try on some of your 'soft' images and see if it makes the difference.
 
Another good sharpening method that i learnt on this forum is to duplicate the layer, apply a hign pass filter on the duplicate (adjust radius so that just the fine details can be seen) then set the layer to overlay, soft light, etc..

As far as the lens quality (which needs to be established before any other measures are used imo) there are a few people on this forum using that lens, so i'd search the site and see what peoples opinions are, i certainly remember them getting good opinions anyway.

Good luck :thumbs:
 
I've always found that the autosharpen button way oversharpens things so never use it. I have a baseline setting of amount 100, radius 1, threshold 2 and fiddle from there until it looks right to me! I use different settings for different end uses - on screen and web gets less than prints.
 
I have a Nikon D40, shoot in .nef and use PSE 9.

My procedure:-
Download to PSE in a separate RAW folder.
Duplicate the .nef file, then open the copy in PSE.
Adjust white balance (if needed) AND sharpen in RAW. I find "detail" and "amount" both at 50 to be a good start point. "Mask" and "radius" to suit yourself/photo.
Then "open image" in PSE Editor and carry out your other "improvements".
If you think a further sharpen is needed, just a slight tweak on the sharpen slider - any more than this gives a grossly over sharpened end result.
Save in preferred format:- .psd, .tiff, etc, etc.

I have recently changed both my Nikkor lenses for a single Sigma 18mm - 200mm. I have found that this lens requires a totally different approach in many cases to that used previously to produce sharp photographs.
With the Nikkors I was using Programmed Auto much of the time - I found with the Sigma this did produce somewhat softer photographs. I now use various modes to more accurately reflect what I am trying to achieve/photograph. End result is that I am getting nice sharp photographs again, but am having to think about it a bit more, depth of field and all those strange things - just like in the days of my K1000 !
Surprisingly, having to do a bit more is a lot more enjoyable !
 
Moonrakerz said:
I have a Nikon D40, shoot in .nef and use PSE 9.

My procedure:-
Download to PSE in a separate RAW folder.
Duplicate the .nef file, then open the copy in PSE.
Adjust white balance (if needed) AND sharpen in RAW. I find "detail" and "amount" both at 50 to be a good start point. "Mask" and "radius" to suit yourself/photo.
Then "open image" in PSE Editor and carry out your other "improvements".
If you think a further sharpen is needed, just a slight tweak on the sharpen slider - any more than this gives a grossly over sharpened end result.
Save in preferred format:- .psd, .tiff, etc, etc.

I have recently changed both my Nikkor lenses for a single Sigma 18mm - 200mm. I have found that this lens requires a totally different approach in many cases to that used previously to produce sharp photographs.
With the Nikkors I was using Programmed Auto much of the time - I found with the Sigma this did produce somewhat softer photographs. I now use various modes to more accurately reflect what I am trying to achieve/photograph. End result is that I am getting nice sharp photographs again, but am having to think about it a bit more, depth of field and all those strange things - just like in the days of my K1000 !
Surprisingly, having to do a bit more is a lot more enjoyable !
Click to expand...

thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply , very helpful
 
Thanks everyone for your replies much appreciated

I've now managed some very sharp photos

I think I'm getting there !
 
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