Sharpening techniques

[Bill Allsopp]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I have written an article covering my sharpening methods in Lightroom and Photoshop CS Sharpening techniques

[viramati]

Interesting as Personally I find the leica files to be inherently 'sharp' and very rarely if at all add any sharpening. this was not the case when I used the the D700 or d-lux series.

[AlainLandry]

Thank you Bill for sharing your method of sharpening and for the pdf download from your website! It is very kind of you!

[sblitz]

i agree with david, i can count on one hand when i have sharpened m9 raw files opened in capture one 6 -- my guess is here the software doesnt matter. bill -- thanks very much for offering the article. steve

[Bill Allsopp]

i agree with david, i can count on one hand when i have sharpened m9 raw files opened in capture one 6 -- my guess is here the software doesnt matter. bill -- thanks very much for offering the article. steve

I use these mainly with black and white pp.

[Phil U]

Thank you for that Bill, I found it both interesting and useful.

[pgk]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Interesting as Personally I find the leica files to be inherently 'sharp' and very rarely if at all add any sharpening. this was not the case when I used the the D700 or d-lux series.

Or Canon 5D/D2, etc. Except for the M8/9 I find that I have to use a very 'fine' unsharp mask prior to resizing etc. I find that the key is to keep the radius low so that any further sharpening upon resizing will not cause problems. Essentially this preliminary unsharp mask is dealing with the anti-moire filter, further sharpening is 'sharpening to output requirements.

[jaapv]

I find that resize by using the crop tool will produce the least artefacts and maintain sharpness best. If I drop down to 960 px that way, a 15%, radius 50, threshold 1 followed by 15% radius 1.5 threshold 0 in the lunmnosity channel will make the image very sharp without halos.

[DES]

I have written an article covering my sharpening methods in Lightroom and Photoshop CS Sharpening techniques

 

Excellent!! Thank you for sharing that.

[leica dream]

That is really helpful, many thanks

Richard

[leicamann]

Interesting as Personally I find the leica files to be inherently 'sharp' and very rarely if at all add any sharpening. this was not the case when I used the the D700 or d-lux series.

 

 

Ditto, I rarely if ever use USM, even in Adobe RAW 7.2, I turn off the sharpening.

The DMR and Leica glass are incredibly sharp, same experience with the Dlux 5 and Digilux 3..amazing sharpness.

 

 

Thanks for posting you article Bill, I'll give it a gander.

 

Wow..cool and great article.. some great pointers there.

Myself this would mostly apply to my scans, where this most definitely comes into play.

Thank you for your generosity.

 

Cheers, JRM

[Beyder28]

I had a question about this before but could not find the answer. For those who use Aperture, what do you set the sharpening and edge sharpening to?

[wstotler]

Beyder28: I use Aperture. There are no hard and fast rules for settings--you need to eyeball it. (Best policy, anyway.)

 

I do use Edge Sharpen on a regular basis to give some photos a slight bit of snap. I use it on the default settings usually, but will sometimes bump the sliders slightly to the right to add a bit of extra punch.

 

I usually don't use Sharpen--too drastic. When I do, it's with Edge Sharpen, and I will use the defaults. Rarely, will I bump the sliders a bit, to taste.

 

Usually, I hit the checkboxes on/off/on/off to watch what's being affected and how. Tinker. Repeat.

 

Cheers!

Will

[dewsweeper]

Thank you for your generous article on your sharpening workflow. I used lab mode in my Nikon days, but my technique was producing over-sharpened results on my M9 files. I finally just resorted to a very light touch or nothing at all, but it wasn't satisfactory.

 

I like your use of masks to apply appropriate sharpening more locally and to creative effect.

 

You've given me incentive to reapply myself to this refinement.

[pico]

Thank you, Bill.

 

For those who still use Photoshop exclusively, as I do, one method Bill shows in LR can be done in Photoshop.

 

Do corrections, and save.

Copy to new layer.

Desaturate the layer.

Filter - Other - High Pass and use 1 to 4 pixels.

Change that layer's mode to Overlay

 

Done. I am fairly sure that's what LR does, and it is simpler in LR, too.

BTW - If you invert the overlaid layer, you will get an interesting softening effect unlike any other filter.

[Beyder28]

Beyder28: I use Aperture. There are no hard and fast rules for settings--you need to eyeball it. (Best policy, anyway.)

 

I do use Edge Sharpen on a regular basis to give some photos a slight bit of snap. I use it on the default settings usually, but will sometimes bump the sliders slightly to the right to add a bit of extra punch.

 

I usually don't use Sharpen--too drastic. When I do, it's with Edge Sharpen, and I will use the defaults. Rarely, will I bump the sliders a bit, to taste.

 

Usually, I hit the checkboxes on/off/on/off to watch what's being affected and how. Tinker. Repeat.

 

Cheers!

Will[/quote

 

The reason I ask is because my Aperture has a default of .75 for both Sharpening and Edges. What is your default?