Sharpening Questions

[bpiper7]

Okay, I'm cramming as quickly as I can and learning why it's not like 30 years ago and you focused as best you could and the slide was as sharp as you focused.

I'm learning to seperate focus and sharpening and understand the border pixel thing.

But before I got that far I was frustrated with how "soft" the pictures were that I produced and set the sharpen configuration on my 400D to 5. I think the factory default was 0.

Then forgot about it and the next bunch of pictures I took were much sharper. Maybe a LEEETLE too sharp. Some folk's complexion could have used a 3 setting.:) But I was pretty happy with them. There was no haloing or other effects that I could see and I didn't have to sharpen in PP at all.

Too high, though?

What's the best general setting here?

Am I right in thinking that the sharpen configuration is for the camera's JPEG conversion and doesn't affect RAW? (I didn't shoot RAW this last time?)

Am I moving in the right direction or do I need to read up some more? (Well I know I have to read more. Do I have to repeat 2nd grade?)

Thanks in advance.

[Mark_Cohran]

Okay, I'm cramming as quickly as I can and learning why it's not like 30 years ago and you focused as best you could and the slide was as sharp as you focused.

I'm learning to seperate focus and sharpening and understand the border pixel thing.

But before I got that far I was frustrated with how "soft" the pictures were that I produced and set the sharpen configuration on my 400D to 5. I think the factory default was 0.

Then forgot about it and the next bunch of pictures I took were much sharper. Maybe a LEEETLE too sharp. Some folk's complexion could have used a 3 setting.:) But I was pretty happy with them. There was no haloing or other effects that I could see and I didn't have to sharpen in PP at all.

Too high, though?

What's the best general setting here?

Am I right in thinking that the sharpen configuration is for the camera's JPEG conversion and doesn't affect RAW? (I didn't shoot RAW this last time?)

Am I moving in the right direction or do I need to read up some more? (Well I know I have to read more. Do I have to repeat 2nd grade?)

Thanks in advance.

In camera sharpening is applied to the JPGs and once that's done, there's no going back. RAW isn't affected (at least not with any finality).

I much prefer to do my final sharpening in Photoshop where I have fine control over the amount of sharpening. The need to sharpen varies with the size of the final file. Less sharpening is needed for smaller file/print sizes.

Mark

[Mark_Cohran]

Here's a link that might help you a bit:

http://www.updig.org/guidelines/sharpening.php

[bpiper7]

Hot diggity more resources. Thanks very much.