m9 files and sharpening

[Paul J]

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Hey K-H

 

Creative sharpening is a different thing entirely. You do it for the look and you stop when you like it. It's creative so there are no rules and no one has to like it if you don't care Just pay attention to what it's doing to the tones and correct it where necessary.

 

Even with creative sharpening though, do it last in the chain. Leave it on a separate layer so you can back it off or replace it entirely. Particularly if you decide to decide to print bigger than you were expecting (this happens a lot) then you will see the artefacts you don't want to see because you are stretching the effect and duplicating sharpened pixels. Where as if you do it AFTER resizing bigger you only get the necessary and minimal amount.

 

For general sharpening however, particularly with Leica lenses, clarity and sharpness is really not so much an issue. Sort out the colour, the lighting and the tonality and you really don't have to do too much more.

[MirekE]

The book by Fraser and Schewe aforementioned in this thread is probably the most comprehensive reading about sharpening for photographers and I highly recommend it. The same principles as described in this book (and other publications of Jeff Schewe and Bruce Fraser) were adopted by Lightroom, so if you are doing your printing or exporting from LR, you are following these principles already.

 

Before the book, there was this article that summarizes the technique on several pages.

[tobey bilek]

I received Nik package 4 for free and Sharpener Pro was part. Still looking for "one size fits all" I ran it on a few images on automatic settings specified for a laser photo printer. Did an 8x10 and five 4x6 prints. While the 8x10 was super sharp, it appeared too brittle. Bokeh background went wonky. Nikon D7000/ 35 1.8 lens Raw sharpening was 25 and .7.

 

The 4x6 were Nikon D700 with 35 pc Leica lens. I adjusted the layer opacity to 60, 70, 80,90 &100%. Again 100 was brittle on the print, 90 looked like how a nice landscape with much detail should look. 70 about right for a nice portrait.

 

I also did some tests so I could apply some standard for mass produced photos like sports pics. It depends on the camera, PRINT SIZE, and reproduction medium.

I made presets in smart sharpen by eye sharpening to just before halos appear. Save for resize and sharpen for later. In general, small prints require the least sharpening and the smallest radius. large require more sharpening and larger radius. I incorporated these into actions.