How much sharpening to add?

[tbfoto]

I shoot a 20D with my 28-135 IS lens most of the time. I just got back from vacation where I shot about 400 shots. I find that most all the time my shots need to have the contrast bumped up and then I apply some unsharp mask. It takes forever to go through 400 shots and do this for each shot. I know that I need to learn how to use photoshop better. I think I can set this up as an action and do the whole batch. I've never learned how to do that yet but this experience has told me that I must learn.

My question is for those of you that apply USM to your shots. If I set this up as an action then they will all have the same amount of USM ..right? Is this the way it should be done? So how much USM do you apply?

I have so much to learn.

[chtgrubbs]

I usually sharpen as one of the last steps, after all other adjustments , cropping and sizing for my selected print size. Then I use the amount of sharpening appropriate to the image and final size. But you could run an action which which would apply a modest amount of sharpening to all images, and then use additional sharpening later, if necessary.

[gasrocks]

Yes, last thing in any string of other processing. Have you overdone the sharpening so you know what it looks like? General rule: appply only enough sharp to make the pix look better - too much produces artifacts, and looks bad.