way sharp

[jonnyhorizon]

i just took delivery of a new 100mm macro EF 2.8 today with the sole purpose of capturing the wildflowers around here
my first impressions of the lens are great
its been raining here (unusual) here is a shot i just took
F10 / 1/8sec / tripod/
the more i sharpened it the more i liked it
usm 150/4/4
did i get to carried away?
i there a better way to get this kind of sharpness from the shot instead of the post process?
my ultimate target media is 5x7 framed prints
thanks


http://www.johncastor.com/canon%2Dforum/blueCRW_4543v2.jpg

[Qurlyjoe]

did i get to carried away?


I'd say you got a tad carried away with the sharpening. Look at the edges of the petals (especially at the right of the shot) and you can see artefacts of the sharpening process. There's a bit of a halo effect there, and at the top edges also. This can be mitigated somewhat by tweaking the various parameters of the USM filter (talking PS CS here.)

It's a nice shot, nonetheless.

For 5x7 prints you don't need to go hog wild with sharpening anyway. Depends on the paper you print on, for one thing.

[Scottes]

A nice shot, but over-sharpened a bit. Try setting 150%, Threshold 0 and then playing with radius. Somewhere between 0.3 and 1.0 should work. When it looks about right then play with the Amount to fine-tune.

I'm still experiementing with sharpening for prints, but several sources suggest to "oversharpen considerably" when viewed on the monitor, and/or to sharpen with the image viewed at 25% or 50%. As Qurlyjoe suggested, a 5x7 isn't that big of a print, so don't go too crazy.

[JZaun]

Nice pic.. I don't have a problem with the sharpening but It is a tad dark maybe

JZ

[jonnyhorizon]

thanks everyone
i am finding sharpening for the web is quite different than sharpening for print than glossy than matt than...
i have found the six rules of thumb in chapter 11 of the Scott Kelby Photoshop CS book handy but it amazing how widely varied they are
i am tempted to evaluate some sharpening plug-ins
i need to be more consistant
sometimes when i stare at the tube for more than 4 hours my sharpening eye goes to pot

[Qurlyjoe]

sometimes when i stare at the tube for more than 4 hours my sharpening eye goes to pot

It doesn't take me even that long, JH. The monitor you use can also affect the process. I have a flat panel at home, and a crt at work, and the same pic looks quite different depending on which one I'm sitting at.

Like everything else, skill comes with practice.

[PhotosGuy]

i need to be more consistant

Well, not really! Sharpening should be the last step, or in my case, no step at all. I make my final save before sharpening, since each "display" size (for the web, or 5X7 print, or 8X10 print) should be sharpened to a different extent. So I save the file w/layers. Then I flatten it, set the image size & resolution, sharpen, & save it as XXX_4X6_00xx, XXX_8X10_00xx, etc.

[whowie]

Of the many image sharpening methods, the one the seems to work best for me is to convert the image to LAB mode (Photoshop, of course), sharpen the L channel using a USM, then convert the image back to RGB. Using this method you can get away with a little more sharpening before the halo effect appears. Also, you will find that the combination of settings on your USM will vary according to the image subject. Portraits will have different settings than landscapes that will in turn be different than close ups of flowers and, in all cases, your settings for printed images will be different than for images viewed on your monitor.

I'm also impressed with the output of a program called SharpControl. I may have found out about it on this site. It's a freebie; I don't remember the URL but a google search should find it for you.

[4walls]

Of the many image sharpening methods, the one the seems to work best for me is to convert the image to LAB mode (Photoshop, of course), sharpen the L channel using a USM, then convert the image back to RGB. Using this method you can get away with a little more sharpening before the halo effect appears. Also, you will find that the combination of settings on your USM will vary according to the image subject. Portraits will have different settings than landscapes that will in turn be different than close ups of flowers and, in all cases, your settings for printed images will be different than for images viewed on your monitor.
I have found that the larger the print, the less mode changes I want to make to preserve the quality of the file. I use USM with a very small radius and usually a small threshold, then after sharpening (last stage of file manipulation), go straight to EDIT>FADE UNSHARP MASK and choose LUMINOSITY and 100% to get the same effect as sharpening the L channel above. This method seems to reduce the halo effect common to oversharpening of images and reduces the amount of MODE changes thus preserving the original data better.

[Jewel]

I think it is a beautiful shot. Very well done, and I personally do not feel it is oversharpened. Very nice work.

Jewel

[jonnyhorizon]

the more i look the more i see
this is a very important subject that is going to take me a while to digest
one issue is we are critiqueing based on the web view
the hard copy view is something i will have to sort out myself i guess
here is where i am at
i got a copy of sharpcontrol but initial review tells me that i need to play with it for awhile - more later?
when to use fade unsharp mask is not clear to me
i am posting web optimized images with different sharpening approaches
i took the RAW original and increased the exposure to lighten it
i cropped it and saved it as a 16 bit tiff at 72dpi
i changed it to a 8 bit jpeg at max
i will post that as the original 1
post 2 is the same image with my original USM sharpening of 150/4/4
3 - is usm 150/3/0 per previous suggestion
4 - usm 400/3/0 which is scott kelbys suggestion for web
5 - is dragging it into photoshop album and hitting the sharpen buttom twice

i find it interesting what the unsharp does to the apparent level of the background
which is best so far...
what else would you change?


---

1 - orig
http://www.johncastor.com/canon%2Dforum/orig-CRW_4543.jpg

2 - usm 150/4/4
http://www.johncastor.com/canon%2Dforum/usm-150-4-4-CRW_4543.jpg

3 - usm 150/3/0
http://www.johncastor.com/canon%2Dforum/usm-150-3-0-CRW_4543.jpg

4 - usm 400/.3/0
http://www.johncastor.com/canon%2Dforum/usm-400-dot3-0-CRW_4543.jpg

5 - photoshop album auto sharp clicked twice
http://www.johncastor.com/canon%2Dforum/psa-x1-CRW_4543_edited.jpg

[whowie]

Thanks for the tip, 4Walls, I'll give your method a try and see if my evil eye can see the difference.

To my eye, JonnyHorizon, you haven't hit the right combination yet but... Where is the point of focus in this image? My eye wants it to be at the front of the flowers but I think it might be a little further back and I think that's what's throwing me. You can't really sharpen anything thats outside your DOF and I think by looking for sharpness at the front of the image you may be oversharpening the in focus part of the image. Just a thought.

[jonnyhorizon]

yup

the more i mess with it the worse it gets
i need to soften this way down and get off this sharpening merrygoround
the more i look at this image the less i like it
think i will start with a fresh pic
although i do not like where this went i did learn a lot and thats the point ...

[jess07leigh]

Thanks for the tip, 4Walls, I'll give your method a try and see if my evil eye can see the difference.

To my eye, JonnyHorizon, you haven't hit the right combination yet but... Where is the point of focus in this image? My eye wants it to be at the front of the flowers but I think it might be a little further back and I think that's what's throwing me. You can't really sharpen anything thats outside your DOF and I think by looking for sharpness at the front of the image you may be oversharpening the in focus part of the image. Just a thought.

im still new to this, but the reason i think your eye is wanting to focus on the back is because as the picture is sharpened more and more, so are those water dropplets on the flower. the just really pop out and draw attention to that area of the picture.

thats just my 2 cents though.