Capture Sharpening M9 files

[kuau]

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Just getting started with my new M9 which is an amazing camera btw.

I use both Capture 1 and PS CS5 camera raw to process my dng file.

I shoot mostly landscape stuff and was wondering what are some good starting number for capture sharpening in camera raw and C1?

 

From what I understand is because the M9 uses no AA filter, images need to require less capture sharpening then lets say a common DSLR ie, Nikon D3, D3x, etc.

 

Thanks

Steven

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[hoppyman]

Steven, generally speaking for high frequency images such as landscapes you can use smaller numbers for the radius setting, down to .5. Portraits larger, up to 1.5 (these are what I use with M9). The default is in the middle at 1 (pixel)

 

But capture sharpening is inter-related with noise reduction and ISO too, so it makes sense to try a few variations for yourself. The mask setting is especially useful to avoid applying capture sharpening to smoother areas of continuous tone such as skies, skin tones.

 

Since you are shooting Raw of course there is no penalty to go back and forth and try different settings anytime.

I can recommend an excellent book 'Real World Camera Raw with CS5 by Jeff Schewe and Bruce Fraser' if you want to get a very solid grounding. REALLY useful book if you are CS5 based.

[250swb]

I shoot mostly landscape stuff and was wondering what are some good starting number for capture sharpening in camera raw and C1?

 

 

Just use the mild ACR default value or none at all. You should only sharpen an image based on its final size and use, so capture sharpening should just be low level to help in post processing, like judging overall sharpness or contrast. Save the file as a TIFF unsharpened and then each time you re-size (like a small JPEG for web or a large TIFF for print) judge the amount of sharpening to apply.

 

Steve

[hoppyman]

My view is that capture sharpening is always beneficial, even if it is at a very low level just restoring the inevitable losses in conversion from analog data to digital. But you have much more fine control than that with the current tools. Capture sharpening is in any event independent from output sharpening.

 

I don't recommend making a very large TIFF master and then making different versions of that for different outputs. Most especially if, much of the time, your output is for web.

 

Instead continue to treat your DNG as your master. You have your capture sharpening/noise reduction integrated in your conversion (non-destructively of course) and you can vary the options for saving a version of your image with the desired colour space, resolution, output sharpening too. It is a newer mindset and Lightroom actually is the logical outgrowth of that too. Naturally if you are making a detailed edit with layers or creative sharpening etc etc then you may want to make a print version in another format be it, TIFF, PSD or JPEG.

 

Hint, if you add Lightroom to your tools you may find that you spend a lot less time in Photoshop The two apps really are complementary of course.

[Guido]

You may also want to check Raw Developer, which implements an advanced deconvolution sharpening algorithm.

 

Photoshop's "Smart Sharpen" in "Lens Blur" mode with "More Accurate" checked offers a similar algorithm. Both are improvements over traditional unsharp masking.

[01af]

... Raw Developer, which implements an advanced deconvolution sharpening algorithm.

So do Lightroom and Camera Raw.

 

Regarding the original question: The Leica digital files are much sharper at the pixel level than most digital cameras' files due to the absence of an anti-aliasing filter, so they can get away with much less capture sharpening than others. In Camera Raw, I created a new set of default values for M9 files where I changed the factory defaults for capture sharpening from 25, 1.0, 25, 0 to 15, 0.7, 40, 0 (i. e. Amount, Radius, Detail, and Masking). So I decreased Amount and Radius, and increased Detail. (By the way, my M9 default also includes Clarity +10, Vibrance +5, and Saturation -10.)

 

Still, these are just default values which mostly aim at not to destroy anything when bluntly applied to all kinds of images. When carefully adjusting the settings for an image individually then of course I will set the sharpening parameters according to the particular image content, and possibly also to artistic intents. And then a strange phenomenon can be observed: While the Leica files need less capture sharpening than other cameras' files, they can take much more than these. With Radius and Detail reasonably chosen and with a bit of Masking added (i. e. Masking somewhere in the range of 5 .. 25), you often can push Amount as high as, say 60, 70, or 90, and the result will still look good—that's just plain impossible with most other cameras' files.

 

However that doesn't mean I generally recommend Amounts that high ... usually I end up at values between 20 and 50. Generally, the lower the Detail setting and the higher the Masking setting, the higher the Amount setting can, and should, be. For landscape shots with lots of fine detail, use small Radius, high Detail, and low Masking or no Masking at all. For portraits, use large Radius, low Detail, and some Masking. Increase Amount until the sharpening effect starts to become obvious at 100 % view, then back up a bit from there.

 

Sorry I cannot say anything about capture sharpening settings in Capture One.