Sharpening...

Craikeybaby

Craikeybaby

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Lewis
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It seems that a lot of people use sharpening as part of their digital workflow and this is one area I've never got my head around.

Software wise I use Lightroom, but if needed I can install the GIMP, but there is no way I can afford Photoshop. I know Lightroom as an option for sharpening in the print module and I've been told, small picture = a little sharpening and large picture = more. Is that it or am I missing out something big?

Does sharpening need to be done to all images, or only ones which aren't sharp enough from the camera?
 
JPG's will be sharpened by your camera, although many people feel they need more sharpening applied. If you shoot in RAW you will always need to manually sharpen your shots as no PP is applied in camera
 
Many people use a 2 or 3 stage sharpening workflow.
1 capture sharpen, this is to replace the sharpness lost by the anti alias filter fitted to DSLR cameras (compensated slightly in jpeg as said above)
2 creative sharpen, this is to sharpen parts of the image to draw attention to them (eg the eyes in a portrait) this is the stage missed out in a 2 stage workflow.
3 output sharpen, this is the biggie! and the tricky one, you need different sharpening for printing than for web, but the problem is you can't really judge it from the monitor, web sharpen is easy, resize and sharpen till it looks good, for printing resize sharpen and print a test, then decide if you have enough sharpening, if not start over. As a very rough guide I find you need to over sharpen slightly(on the monitor) to get it to look good in print, but it depends on your printer and software. Oh yes and ALWAYS sharpen with the view at 100% otherwise you may not be seeing the effect properly. Wayne
 
Ohh. Interesting stuff. That explains some of the comments I've received, I never realised. Thanks CB for starting this thread. Anyone able to offer any real rough guidance for the 3 types of sharpening ? USM, Smart sharpen etc.
 
Thanks Wayne, that clears things up a bit!

I always shoot in RAW and PP in Lightroom, I know Lightroom applies print sharpening, but what about saving to web? And capture and creative sharpening?
 
There are many different techniques for sharpening and everyone has their preferred method.

Here are a link to a useful site re sharpening

http://www.bythom.com/sharpening.htm
 
I was reading a book on Lightroom last night and found out that it automatically applies sharpening to RAW images, the defualt amount is 25 (not sure what units though) and you can tweak it from 0 to 100 on the slider in the develop module. I will have a further play tonight I think!
 
Gredel thanks for the link. :thumbs: That edge sharpening tutorial is excellent and action setup.

The first exercise is well worth doing as it gives you a good understand of the usm works
 
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