Help! RAW to JPG; Sharpening

[Man About Toa]

Hello All, newbie here...

...I have a 400d and I shoot in RAW, and am currently using Bibble Pro (trial version) for RAW conversions.

Here's my problem :

I've got a super sharp image in RAW. I use Bibble's 'Perfectly Clear' function for Auto adjustment. I'm happy with the result, but notice that the image appears 'soft'. I sharpen the image to 125, and I get the same sharpness as my original RAW image; so far so good. Now I convert to Jpeg, and argh! The image is soft! Why is this so? Is this an inherent loss in quality when converting to Jpeg? (I've made sure that it's converting to 100% quality Jpegs). Is this because of Bibble's conversion? (I'm happy with the colour conversion, it's just the sharpness). Is it because I'm using a trial version of Bibble at the moment?? Should I be using another RAW converter? Should I be converting to another format? Do I have go through Photoshops' USM on the Jpeg?

Help!

[Andrew B.]

You shouldn't have a "super sharp" image in Raw, unless you are viewing a pre-sharpened version (I don't know Bibble, but Capture One has an option to "simulate sharpening" when viewing the Raw files). Raw files are not sharp. So if you convert to jpeg without sharpening you should still not be sharp. You need to use USM on the jpeg when it is resized to its final size, as a last step prior to printing or displaying on the web. That's normal.

Some people sharpen a little in Raw then a little more (occasionally at two different settings) in Photoshop.

BTW I think a more normal workflow would be to use a raw convertor to produce a lossless (not jpeg) version of the photo - for example in tiff format. Then produce jpegs from that if necessary, having first done any selective photoshopping work that might be necessary. Producing a jpeg throws away a lot of image data so you don't want to be working on that in photoshop if you have a choice.

Andrew

[S.Horton]

When you leave RAW, are you going to max quality JPG, or something less?

[rzych]

I trialed Bibble as well and will say that to my eyes, the as converted image without sharpening did appear to be softer than others I tried, no sharpening as well so as to have a straight up comparison. If you read up a bit on Bibble, one of the things about their software is that their conversion process adds no artifacts. Say for instance on a person's ear lobe in a portrait, if you would keep increasing the size of the picture to say 200% pixels, the ear lobe will retain it's roundness without pixelating whereas other converters would begin to pixelate - at least that was the way it was on my screen. As well, the catchlight in an eye would retain it's roundness where other converters would tend to have distinct pixels for the catchlight at extreme enlargement. I never saw a difference between the Bibble preview and the converted TIF image in terms of sharpness - what I saw was what I got. I always sharpened outside of Bibble anyway because sharpening depends on the final output.

I think it hard to compare the sharpness of converted raw images because all converters have their own algorithms that can effect this aspect. If I compared the same image out of RSE with all sharpening turned off to Bibble or anything else, the RSE conversion was always sharper. But it would pixelate sooner upon enlargement on the screen.

So I think the "softness" you are seeing is something Bibble considers a "plus" in their software in that they claim to not add aritfacts at the conversion process. You might wnat to go to their user forums to see if you can get any more help with your "softness" issue. They have a very good user forum and Bibble employees monitor it daily and respond quickly from I saw.

[Man About Toa]

Thanks for the advice folks!

Andrew B : You're advising to go to .tiff from RAW and then go to .jpg; at what stage do you sharpen? At the final jpg - it's the last thing you do?

hortonsl62 : I'm going straight to 100% quality .jpg

rzych : Thanks, I'll check out the forums.

[S.Horton]

^^ Good Q on sharpening.

I use Adobe Camera Raw, set up there as zero sharpening, no noise reduction; in that I only crop and adjust exposure.

Export to max res JPG

Optional noise reduction (rare), then sharpen / color, done.

What are you using to sharpen?

Have you tried the Canon DPP software that came with the camera?

[Andrew B.]

Thanks for the advice folks!

Andrew B : You're advising to go to .tiff from RAW and then go to .jpg; at what stage do you sharpen? At the final jpg - it's the last thing you do?


I do this:

shoot RAW
use Capture One LE to import the shots from a card reader
delete the rubbish in Capture One
do the RAW developing (crop, white balance, exposure) and a small amount of noise reduction in Capture One
export as unsharpened tiff (8 bits if no real exposure problems, 16 bits if tricky to allow more data to perform levels in PSE5)
do extra noise reduction on the tiff if necessary in PSE5 using the Noiseware pro plug-in
do selective editing and probably more cropping in PSE5
save the unsharpened but edited tiff
then if I'm printing I will sharpen the tiff and print at full resolution; if sending by email or putting onto the web I will resize in PSE5, then sharpen slightly and convert to jpeg; maybe sharpening some more after conversion if necessary.
If at a later date I need a different sized jpeg then I will go back to the edited tiff file to resize and produce a new jpegIt's actually quicker to do than it is to type for many photos!

Andrew

[Man About Toa]

Awesome! You won't believe how much hair I've pulled out and sleepless nights I've had with the words, "they're too soft!" swilling around in my head...(!)

Horton : Why do most of your processing at the Jpeg level rather than at the RAW level? Is this because the Jpeg is your final image, and you don't 'trust' the RAW->Jpeg conversion? (I'm thinking mainly about colour adjustment here)

Andrew : If you have a photo you want to convert to B&W, at what stage are you doing this? I'm assuming you're doing this from your .tff image.

All this time I've basically been doing everything in RAW, converting and then finding myself dissapointed with the final Jpeg conversion! I guess I should do the 'basics' in RAW (WB, Exposure, levels, NoiseNinja etc) and then the final
shine on the final jpeg.

Thanks Chaps!

I've now gotta go over my 300 odd uploaded pics and redo them - but I'm actually looking forward to it!

[S.Horton]

^^ Good Q.

Because I process hundreds at a time, so unless I have a keen interest in a particular photograph, I just apply two USM passes in a batch, one of which sharpens, the other for contrast, 'done' for the web posting and inexpensive prints.

When I don't use automation, I stay in 16 bit editing mode, in PSD files from Adobe Camera Raw, using layers for adjustments, hand-sharpen by trying a few techniques and so on.

There must be two dozen ways to sharpen and even more opinions about which type to use by photograph, subject and more.

I'm just dangerous with CS2, not seasoned, so others with more experience would surely have a different answer and know why -- Me, I was just taught that way.

[S.Horton]

......
I've now gotta go over my 300 odd uploaded pics and redo them - but I'm actually looking forward to it!

Oh, I know that feeling! I'm about to take a 3rd crack at an older gallery because now they really look bad to me. Good luck, have fun!

[In2Photos]

Awesome! You won't believe how much hair I've pulled out and sleepless nights I've had with the words, "they're too soft!" swilling around in my head...(!)

Horton : Why do most of your processing at the Jpeg level rather than at the RAW level? Is this because the Jpeg is your final image, and you don't 'trust' the RAW->Jpeg conversion? (I'm thinking mainly about colour adjustment here)

Andrew : If you have a photo you want to convert to B&W, at what stage are you doing this? I'm assuming you're doing this from your .tff image.

All this time I've basically been doing everything in RAW, converting and then finding myself dissapointed with the final Jpeg conversion! I guess I should do the 'basics' in RAW (WB, Exposure, levels, NoiseNinja etc) and then the final
shine on the final jpeg.

Thanks Chaps!

I've now gotta go over my 300 odd uploaded pics and redo them - but I'm actually looking forward to it!
I do as much processing on the RAW file as possible which is why I chose Lightroom. I can do all of my editing sans sharpening in LR. For stuff that I print at home I even use LR for sharpening as they are not "critical" prints. For stuff that goes out to be printed I revert to CS2 for a 2 pass USM like Horton, one for sharpening and one for contrast. Then I convert to my printer's profile, save as max quality jepg (oh yeah and resize to 300ppi) before uploading for prints. When LR 1.1 is released I hope to not even need to leave LR for sharpening, only for converting to my printer's profile.

An excellent book on RAW is Bruce Fraser's Real World Camera RAW for CS2. I learned a ton about RAW in that book.

[S.Horton]

^^ I hear a lot of good things about LR -- If it had sharpening, do you think you'd still need CS2? (Upside down, is LR that powerful?)

[René Damkot]

Depends. If you only do glabal image adjustments, no.
If you need to do local adjustments, or clone, liquify, blur, sharpen (locally or selectively), or a number of other things: You'll need PS.

[cosworth]

Turn all RAW sharpening off.

Open image as normal.

for web do this:

USM in two passes
200,0.3,0
15,100,0

Resize bicubic only

USM pass 3

100,0.3,0


For print adjust the third pass to your liking after resizing. Generally you'll need more USM on this pass for prints.

http://www.jasonhollister.com/action.zip

[In2Photos]

^^ I hear a lot of good things about LR -- If it had sharpening, do you think you'd still need CS2? (Upside down, is LR that powerful?)
I would still need it to convert my photos to my printer's profile since currently the morons at Adobe don't think LR needs this feature. However, I don't do lots of editing on each shot. Very rarely do I spend time in PS now. Before I would use PS for creative sharpening, shadow/highlight adjustments, local color adjustments, and output sharpening, but recently haven't needed it much. It just depends on the type of editing you do as Rene said.

[Man About Toa]

2 / 3 USM Passes?!? Ok, this is a new world to me. I'm sure this has been discussed somewhere else on this forum - can anyone link me to a thread discussing USM? Or can anyone post up pictures showing what they've been able to achieve by going through multiple USM passes?

Cosworth : Your suggested USM levels, are they suited to a particular style of photography or would you say they work pretty well across the board?

[In2Photos]

2 / 3 USM Passes?!? Ok, this is a new world to me. I'm sure this has been discussed somewhere else on this forum - can anyone link me to a thread discussing USM? Or can anyone post up pictures showing what they've been able to achieve by going through multiple USM passes?

Cosworth : Your suggested USM levels, are they suited to a particular style of photography or would you say they work pretty well across the board?
The multiple passes have different purposes. The first pass is designed to sharpen the shot, the second is designed to add contrast, the third is to combat the effects of the resize. This should work for most photos, although if you have cropped an image (more than just a slight crop) you may need to adjust the settings.

[S.Horton]

@rene/into - Right now, I either batch hundreds post RAW adjustments in a standard way using batch/action and ACR or I'm going in, adding adjustment layers and really working on the photograph for some specific reason, so I can see the download upgrade to CS3 (after my current project) and continued use of it for a long time. Now for my wife's minimal work, if they add sharpening to LR, I could see her in that. CS just confuses her, then she calls the local photo-geek for help. ;}

@op - these guys are spot-on, you will do at least two USM passes. After a while, you'll settle on what you use/like by type of photo and subject; my settings vary but are similar to cos's. I know it sounds wierd, at first. The key there is to avoid oversharpening.

[In2Photos]

@rene/into - Right now, I either batch hundreds post RAW adjustments in a standard way using batch/action and ACR or I'm going in, adding adjustment layers and really working on the photograph for some specific reason, so I can see the download upgrade to CS3 (after my current project) and continued use of it for a long time. Now for my wife's minimal work, if they add sharpening to LR, I could see her in that. CS just confuses her, then she calls the local photo-geek for help. ;}

@op - these guys are spot-on, you will do at least two USM passes. After a while, you'll settle on what you use/like by type of photo and subject; my settings vary but are similar to cos's. I know it sounds wierd, at first. The key there is to avoid oversharpening.
LR 1.1 will address the sharpening. Check out the threads regarding ACR 4.1 for more info. LR and ACR will mirror each other so we know it will be there. The question is when. :)