Folks,
Bart van der Wolf has authored a web-based tool for image analysis and, specifically, the analysis of optimal capture sharpening. Here is the thread on the Luminous Landscape:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=68089.0
and here is the web page for the tool itself:
http://bvdwolf.home.xs4all.nl …foto/psf/SlantedEdge.html
This tool uses the capture and analysis of a slant edged image to estimate the "edge spread function" of a sharp change in contrast - this is similar to a point spread function. The idea is to estimate the blur caused by various artifacts in the optical capture chain, like AA filters, diffraction, etc. and recover the image through deconvolution or other sharpening techniques. THe workflow might be a bit daunting, but try it and I think you will find that the analysis of your images as they come out of your raw conversion is really insightful.
Careful evaluation and application of capture sharpening is particularly important because the last thing you want to do is introduce over sharpening in raw conversion that will just get worse as you bring the converted image into post, or under sharpen and try to compensate later with more drastic techniques, or have a blurred image.
Have a look, it is a really nifty tool.
kirk
