Image Sharpening - How do you do yours ?

Rightly or wrongly I think people tend to judge a picture by how 'sharp' it is so I thought I'd ask how you go about (if indeed you do) sharpening your images ?

Compact cameras apply extremely high levels of artificial sharpening whilst D-SLR cameras tend to be (by default) more subtle.

The picture style menus in a DSLR (standard, portrait, landscape etc) have preset 'amounts' for things like contrast, saturation, tone & sharpness which you can adjust the values for or (in some cameras) set up and save your own personal styles.

Canon tend to sharpen 'in camera' less than Nikon so in my Canon I've added my own style with a slightly higher sharpening value. For my snaps I tend to just switch to my own setting which is fine but if I'm dealing with pictures that I want to take forward in Photoshop I'll often use sharpening tools.

For those that do use sharpening in photoshop or the like - how do you do it ?

I like 'Unsharp mask' but I'm never sure how far to take it. 'Sharpen' seems more subtle and then there's 'sharpen edges' which I've never really used.

I've prattled on a bit but I guess I'm just looking for what methods (in camera or post processing) you use or think work well.

Do you mean for posting on the web?

If so I only sharpen to compensate for reduction in size, which is usually smart sharpen at around 21.

Tips welcome for web posting or whatever Azz but I guess I mean for a final 'finished' best image file / print.

Well on my Oly I have a few presets that I have done for certain subjects, that has the contrast, saturation, sharpness to my taste all sorted, and alot of times it is fine as is.

But for some reason with my zoom lens, I always have to do some extra sharpening, it is too soft when used to the full extent

I tend to use the Unsharp mask for a quick sharpening of the whole pic. it just needs a little tweak then Sharpen, but I have used layers before to sharpen certain bit that may need it, or wanted that to be the focus, and the little sharpen tool is good too.

But for a quick sharpen, then it usually is the Unsharp mask.

My editor of chooice is Photoshop Elements 7.0. I use Adjust Sharpness on the Enhance Menu. I also sharpen If I'm cropping, then resizing in Genuine Fractals 6.0, which is a lossless software program.

Maybe one should first establish which format the photo was taken in, RAW or Jpeg

In Jpeg I have 2 imaging suites both by Microsoft, but for RAW I have photoshop 7 and Lightroom 2 both soon to be upgraded as soon as I get to see a pal of mine.

Nikon also have a good in camera sharpening setting as well.

I use high pass sharpen, create a duplicate layer and then run a high pass filter on it from 3-8 pixels depending on the pic then select overlay as the blend mode and drop opacity to 50% or lower depending on the pic.

I use either high pass or unsharp - very much dependent upon which lens I'm using.

I sometimes start by making an initial sharpen in RAW, but I always leave sharpening until Ive finished all other PP work on an image.

As I shoot everything in Raw I have to sharpen every image and the medium that the image will be shown in determines my Sharpening workflow.

If the image is inted to be shown on the internet then I process in Lightroom, Curves, Colour Balance etc and then sharpen using the sharpen tool in Lightroom.

For images destined to be printed, it is the same as above but then passed to Photoshop for any final editing and then either High Pass sharpening or Smart Sharpening in CS3/4. It all depends on the type of image.

Steve

I don't often bother if it is for the Internet but it is for printing I alway finish by using unsharp and then apply it only to Luminosity, the amount depends on the subject, people can take far less than railway lines or buildings.