In camera sharpening

[Russ]

Why wouldn't I want to set the in camera sharpening to the high mode instead of waiting to sharpen in PS? Why not set it to get the sharpest picture right out of the camera? Am I missing something?

[DWerner]

The problem is that it is "sharpening" and not sharpness that is maximised...

There is no more information (in fact there is arguably less) in a "sharpened" photo. With "sharpness" set to "high" the camera puts white edges on dark lines and black edges on dark ones, to fool the eye and make the image look sharper. (It's actually a little more complex in the G1, but that's more or less what is going on.)

Thats OK, if you just want a quick jpg file for web viewing or small size printing.

But, if you want to do any computer based processing later, the "sharpening" adds artifacts (usually close in halos made worse by jpg compression) that distort the image to some extent and get a little worse with each stage of the process. That is why most people will tell you to "sharpen" last after you've made all the other adjustments to the photo.

[Yves]

Russ wrote: Why wouldn't I want to set the in camera sharpening to the high mode instead of waiting to sharpen in PS? Why not set it to get the sharpest pictureright out of the camera? Am I missing something?


My opinion is that you have a much better control in Photoshop on sharpening.
You can adjust the amount, the radius and the treshold which give result that speak for itself.
Play with the sliders in the ps sharpening window. Try different settings.
The "average" amount of the 3 settings recommend in the industry are: Amount= 75 to 150, Radius=1 to 2.5(max) and the treshold is 0 to 15.
But of course, i welcome any other opinion on this topic from the guys on this forum.

Have a "sharp" day.

[Kevin M]

Photoshop's Unsharp Mask is primarily a contrast tool which gives the impression of sharpness. Unfortunately it also highlights artifacts and noise that you would prefer to remain hidden. It is therefore best applied to the parts of an image that could benefit from sharpening whilst ignoring the rest. There are several routines and Actions available (eg Ultrasharpen etc) that utilize the power of USM without the side effects. Two Pass sharpening employing edge masks is fairly well explained at:- http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/12189.html and should be superior to any internal camera sharpening.

Kevin
http://www.titanicart.com/