Sharpening

mattwalkerncl

mattwalkerncl

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Matt
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Hi all,

I'm looking back at my editing workflow and doing a search online to check how others are working.

A question that has came up is about applying sharpening in ACR in regards to any additional sharpening with Nik Effects.

For example, should I leave the sharpness settings as default in Adobe Camera Raw, open my images in Photoshop, apply some pre-sharpening from Nik Effects
and then some output sharpening once all creative edits are made?

I'd imagine I'd end up introducing artefacts etc (along with noise) if i did sharpening in ACR, Pre-sharpening and then output sharpening...?

Cheers,
Matt
 
2 sharpenings only. You need the RAW conversion sharpening first and output sharpening as the last thing. It really doesn't matter if the initial sharpening is in ACR or Nik software or any other software.
 
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•


Why do you think you should sharpen your pictures anyway?

I would never deliver a sharpened shot… ever!
 
Kodiak Qc said:
•


Why do you think you should sharpen your pictures anyway?

I would never deliver a sharpened shot… ever!
Click to expand...

Personal taste? ;)
 
•


In the publishing business, you render a sharpened shot
only once… the first time you tried and were fired.

The AD hired you because he trusts you and he wants to
keep all the flexibility of the RAW and that is very severely
limited with a sharpened shot! No publishing pro will ever
dare unless he is asked to! —never happened to me.

Of course, for personal use…
 
As John mentions above, sharpening should be a 2 stage process.

Unless you're using a camera without an AA filter, then your RAW converter should apply some light sharpening to counteract the effects of the AA filter. I think in LR the default setting is '25', other programs will have something similar which you can tweak to taste.

Then, after resizing for your intended final output you should sharpen taste - it will be different settings for a 1024px web display than a large print, so there are no general settings.

Personally, I use smart sharpen in PS, but it's a case of whatever you're happy with

Mike
 
Kodiak Qc said:
•


Why do you think you should sharpen your pictures anyway?

I would never deliver a sharpened shot… ever!
Click to expand...

Why? 'cos finished files often need it. Maybe if you're submitting to someone who's going to do further work on it you wouldn't but most photographers won't be delivering to that kind of client.
 
Kodiak Qc said:
•


Why do you think you should sharpen your pictures anyway?

I would never deliver a sharpened shot… ever!
Click to expand...
I've always understood that sharpening offsets the loss caused by the AntiAliasing filter that most digital cameras use.
Maybe if you're using a camera that does not have an AA filter then you don't need to sharpen, otherwise that's just a silly comment.
 
The23rdman said:
Most bonkers and out of context answer ever on TP. Sheesh, some of the stuff you say!
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In a very limited contact it does make sense. But only if you're delivering work that someone else will sharpen as part of the final layout. Otherwise I agree makes no sense
 
Brian G said:
I've always understood that sharpening offsets the loss caused by the AntiAliasing filter that most digital cameras use.
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Not entirely. Its been around as a darkroom technique for film for many years before digital was invented, and you can find examples in art going back to the 15th century (atleast)
 
boyfalldown said:
In a very limited contact it does make sense. But only if you're delivering work that someone else will sharpen as part of the final layout. Otherwise I agree makes no sense
Click to expand...

But he provided no context and it is not appropriate to the context of this thread. :)
 
•


Why should I use any sharpening at all?


A3771%201Dpp.jpg


​
 
I'd say it needs sharpening - not a lot admittedly, but if you're going to finish things off well then they beed presenting properly. I gave this just a little extra, and there is a subtle difference. Look at the eyes,and the water beads and the definition in the head.

Everybody else I know sharpens for their intended output. It's not a case of trying to polish a turd, you can't fix something thats not there if you've missed focus for example, but absolutely everyone I've ever spoke to ( and this includes some really high level nature photographers ) will sharpen their shots to some degree.

kodiak-duck2.jpg
 
pooley said:
I'd say it needs sharpening - not a lot admittedly, but if you're going to finish things off well then they beed presenting properly. I gave this just a little extra, and there is a subtle difference. Look at the eyes,and the water beads and the definition in the head.

Everybody else I know sharpens for their intended output. It's not a case of trying to polish a turd, you can't fix something thats not there if you've missed focus for example, but absolutely everyone I've ever spoke to ( and this includes some really high level nature photographers ) will sharpen their shots to some degree.

View attachment 73737
Click to expand...


What he said really. I think that somewhere sharpening seemed to get equated with fixing out of focus photos. Which it can't do. Used well it adds to the finish of a photo. It should be thought of as away of selectively increasing edge definition, adding to an already great photo
 
'Vanilla' downsizing of an image can often make it look less sharp - which is why some common resizing algorithms include a degree of built-in sharpening. ISTR that this is the default behaviour of both Photoshop and Capture One.
 
When I was a beginner I used to over sharpen my photos to try and overcome the fact that they were badly taken and blury. Now I look back at those and cringe :puke:

I use sharpening in LR, usually at around 50 or so, then use the mask slider to remove the sharpening from areas of sky etc that don't need it. Usually it's just enough to sharpen some edges and details, without adding noise. It's one of those things where if you can tell that someone has done it, then it's too much
 
I hardly ever sharpen. I'm not a big fan and find it too often look unnatural as in not how my eyes see it.
 
Bird and Wildlife images - I always sharpen ...... and I always use background noise reduction, (you could say un-sharpen the noise) - both as appropriate on parts of the image
 
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I have never liked the look of sharpened photos so one of the first things I do is disable it in my raw converter.
At the moment I use Darktable and it was not easy to disable sharpening altogether but I found a way eventually.
A lot of cameras seem to be getting rid of AA filters - recently used cameras have been Ricoh GR and Leica M8 which do not have AA filters.
 
All RAW conversions require a slight sharpen as part of the process. I tend to sharpen quite a bit for web (I use the same action always) but rarely for print, can look too 'digital.'
 
boliston said:
I have never liked the look of sharpened photos so one of the first things I do is disable it in my raw converter.
At the moment I use Darktable and it was not easy to disable sharpening altogether but I found a way eventually.
A lot of cameras seem to be getting rid of AA filters - recently used cameras have been Ricoh GR and Leica M8 which do not have AA filters.
Click to expand...

It can depend on the camera that you are using, (the level of sharpness that is), or the image that you want to create with a particular camera/lens set up

so there is the DSLR RAW answer .. that is sharpen

and I think a colour versus B & W answer

and other answers, depending on the subject
 
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Brian G said:
Maybe if you're using a camera that does not have an AA filter then you don't need to sharpen,
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Yes I do.
boyfalldown said:
But only if you're delivering work that someone else will sharpen as part of the final layout.
Click to expand...
AD's would never accept a sharpened image!
Rendering sharpened picture would be a bad
practice.
boyfalldown said:
Just making excuses for him
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Thanks but…
dejongj said:
I hardly ever sharpen. I'm not a big fan and find it too often look unnatural as in not how my eyes see it.
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:agree:
boliston said:
I have never liked the look of sharpened photos so one of the first things I do is disable it in my raw converter.
Click to expand...
:plus1:
 
In my case sharpening depends on lens, aperture, noise, etc.. I often do no sharpening on shots taken with one of my good prime lenses near its optimal aperture for detail resolution at a low ISO. If I've stopped down to f11 or more to increase DoF I'll usually sharpen a bit to bring back some of the detail which diffraction blurring has pushed below visual perceptibility. I nearly always sharpen the softer images from my zooms.

The noisier images from high ISOs are a problem. Simple sharpening will sharpen the noise too. So with those I'll use a specialised noise reduction program which has noise-aware sharpening features. I'll usually leave some visible noise in the image because trying to remove all noise removes detail which the eye can extract from the noise. A final stage of intelligent size reduction will often help to make the noise less visible while preserving most of the visible detail. That final stage helps when the image is to be viewed by youngsters who suffer from a noise allergy.

I converted myself from film to digital around 2006. Younger photographers are often unaware that the old chemical developing processes incorporated controllable amounts of sharpening at various stages of the process. For example less agitation led to local exhaustion of developer in places adjacent to high exposure, thus exaggerating the contrast of edges. Thicker surface gels increased this effect. There were papers of varying degrees of contrast. Sharpening isn't a new artefact of the digital era. What's new is the flexibility, variety, and controllability of ways of sharpening. Of course most people simply gave their films to the local chemist. That didn't mean no sharpening. It meant the default amount of sharpening of the standard processes.

Can you avoid sharpening entirely? It seems you ought to be able to do so if you process from RAW and completely turn off the default amount of sharpening, sometimes misleadingly labelled zero as the middle value in a slider with a positive and negative range. There remain some doubts in some expert minds whether all RAW processors allow you to turn sharpening completely off. There have also been some doubts expressed as to whether some camera models don't already have some small amount of ineradicable noise reduction and sharpening built in to their RAW files.

Sharpening has acquired a bad reputation because some people overdo it horribly, just like HDR. To eschew the use of HDR or sharpening because some people criminally overuse them is like refusing to use kitchen knives because they're often used by murderers.
 
If I think an image or part of it needs sharpening, or in fact needs any other adjustment, I sharpen or make that adjustment in pp - simple as that really
 
boyfalldown said:
Not entirely. Its been around as a darkroom technique for film for many years before digital was invented, and you can find examples in art going back to the 15th century (atleast)
Click to expand...
I'm aware that sharpening has been around since the days of film, and I've used high acutance film developers myself in the past.
However, I was simply pointing out the reason for the modern usage of sharpening, not a historical context.
Presumably the sharpening employed by 15th century painters involved the use of increasingly finer tipped brushes?
 
The only time I use sharpening is just before I reduce the image size
 
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