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BayAreaPhotog
8th of December 2003 (Mon), 03:48
I have always heard that All digital images should be sharpened. Why is that?
henkbos
8th of December 2003 (Mon), 05:30
Try it and see the difference!
stopbath
8th of December 2003 (Mon), 09:26
See http://www.foveon.com/X3_better.html for the why.

Also, true black and white sensors do not need any sharpening.
gandini
8th of December 2003 (Mon), 11:46
So, I went to that Foveon link, and read 2 sentences that basically said that due to the under-counting of certain colors they must be interpolated, and in doing so a blur filter is used, and so the resulting image must be sharpened. Is that all there is?
By implication, a Foveon image does not need sharpening?

I'd suggest the original poster do a search on this forum for sharpening and resolution. There's been much written about these two related, but distinct, characteristics of photographs (digital, or not.)

cheers,
Roger_Cavanagh
8th of December 2003 (Mon), 14:10
The theory why images should be sharpened is that sharpening does introduce artefacts. Consequently, further processing may exacerbate these artefacts. Ergo, sharpen last.

Personally, I don't think this is written in stone any more. I surmise that the sharpen last rule comes from the time when images had to be worked on in 8-bit. It's not many versions of PS ago that USM was not a 16-bit tool.

When I had a D30, I used the Linear Sharpen method, whcih gave me sharpened 16-bit TIFF files to edit further and I was quite happy.

With my 10D, I very often sharpen during conversion with Capture One, and I don't see huge problems during subsequent post-processing.

Regards,