Sharpening...

I have been told to use "unsharp mask" in photoshop to make my images "POP" in the past. I have fooled around with it a bit and didn't care much for the results. Then I discovered that using the sharpening slider in the RAW tools in Photoshop give WAY better results.

Is this how it should be? My guess is that you should use unsharp mask on .jpg's and such but when shooting RAW, which I do 100% of the time it is much better to use sharpening in the tools for RAW files.

I took some pics today and played around with them in Photoshop and here is what I got:

My nifty fifty (1.4) has always been sharp and I've never applied any kind of sharpening to the images taken with it. However playing around with it I noticed it made my images MUCH sharper and without any ill effects (that I can see) like when using insharp mask. I was so happy with what it produced I cranked the slider to 100% in this image:

The 1st shot looks good but the 2nd isn't.

I don't sharpen in RAW instead I prefer to do it in PS.

A little curve/level will help as well.

lostdoggy wrote in post #3257483
The 1st shot looks good but the 2nd isn't.

I don't sharpen in RAW instead I prefer to do it in PS.

A little curve/level will help as well.

The 2nd pic looked a lot worse out of the camera, trust me. I was amazed at how much better it looked when I cranked up the sharpening.

Curve/level.... eh.. is there some tutorial or guide I can learn about this from? Never used it..

You say you do it in PS, do you mean with unsharp mask? I've used that before and it makes my pics look bad, almost like adding noise. When I did the tractor pic it was like I was bringing the pic into focus, no ill effects, it just got sharper.

There is 3 setting in USM amount/radius/threshol​d. A good starting point for Amount is 150 w/ radius at 0.9 and threshold at 0. Then depending on the subject and effect adjust as needed.

Level/curve adjusts the highlight lowlight midtone. If you use the histogram the left side is the lowlight (black) the rightside is the highlight (white) and the middle is the midtone. When you adjust the curve/level you're ajusting how the three component will look in the picture. I use PSCS2 but is available in all PS not sure if PSE has it or not.

I sharpen in PS too. I usually start at 85/1/0 for normal photos. I always sharpen in Lab mode on the lightness channel to avoid the color halo's.

I just found this link on curves which may help explain a bit. A lot of people use a slight 's' curve to add some more contrast to their photos. If you open a photo in PhotoShop and then press CTRL + M it brings up the curves box, or go to Image > Adjustments > Curves. Here is the link that should explain more about curves.

http://www.dphotojourn​al.com …adjustments-in-photoshop/

..but why not just use the 'contrast' box instead or curves? it is under > Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast

Depending on the image I do a very light sharpen in the RAW conversion. I have been using Nik's Sharpener Pro 2.0 for the sharpening in Photoshop. This plug-in allows you to paint in the sharpening to the areas that need it.

I NEVER use the sharpening in my RAW convertor. It doesn't give ME enough control. I typically use two passes of USM but the settings vary for print/web/size/sharpne​ss of pic/etc. For images that I want to be extremely critical with I use TLR sharpening scripts.

andrewaaa5 wrote in post #3257706
I just found this link on curves which may help explain a bit. A lot of people use a slight 's' curve to add some more contrast to their photos. If you open a photo in PhotoShop and then press CTRL + M it brings up the curves box, or go to Image > Adjustments > Curves. Here is the link that should explain more about curves.

http://www.dphotojourn​al.com …adjustments-in-photoshop/

..but why not just use the 'contrast' box instead or curves? it is under > Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast

The contrast setting doesn't allow you to control where the contrast is applied. It is too general. Curves is much better. But you can also use USM for contrast. Try something like 15/20/0 for smaller images and 25/30/0 for larger ones.

The first shot is pretty nice, good composition - I'd like to see it also in either the late afternoon sun or early morning to get some good, interesting shadow contrast and range. Noon day sun is OK but it tends to blast things out.

The second shot suffers more from a lack of contrast than anything else and is easily reparable.

I make the major WB/light/dark/exposure​/contrast adjustments to the RAW file, but leave sharpening for the JPG. I find I have to be careful about the latter though. Stuff comes pretty sharp right out of the 5D to begin with, and if you oversharpen you can get some very unrealistic "halo's" and funky edges around certain detail areas. You don't get that with film and traditional wet processing and printing and if overdone can make the photo look a little fake. This is one of the criticisms people have of digital prints that are overprocessed. - Stu

I'v always found the sharpening within ACR to be kinda weird. It almost doesn't seem to do anything and the fact that you were able to crank it to 100% and get good results kind of reinforces that. I usually end up setting it to zero, along with all the contrast sliders and the shadow slider and then doing all those adjustments in PS2. In fact I don't use ACR for anything except white balance and exposure. I'm hoping when I try ACR 4 it will give me better options.

Sathi wrote in post #3260805
I'v always found the sharpening within ACR to be kinda weird. It almost doesn't seem to do anything and the fact that you were able to crank it to 100% and get good results kind of reinforces that. I usually end up setting it to zero, along with all the contrast sliders and the shadow slider and then doing all those adjustments in PS2. In fact I don't use ACR for anything except white balance and exposure. I'm hoping when I try ACR 4 it will give me better options.

If you are not doing as much in RAW as possible then why do you shoot it? Only adjusting exposure and WB seems like a waste. You are pushing a lot of pixels around in CS2 if you do Curves, Levels, etc all the time. You should be doing as much as possible in ACR. Bruce Fraser's book Real World Camera RAW for CS2 is a great read and resource. Once you read it you might start using the capablilities of ACR more.

Thanks everyone for all the advice. I'm gonna go out and shoot some more test pics and see what I can do in post processing using all your advice. Just when I think I know the basics of digital photography I come here and find out I don't know anything... LOL

In2Photos wrote in post #3260849
If you are not doing as much in RAW as possible then why do you shoot it? Only adjusting exposure and WB seems like a waste. You are pushing a lot of pixels around in CS2 if you do Curves, Levels, etc all the time. You should be doing as much as possible in ACR. Bruce Fraser's book Real World Camera RAW for CS2 is a great read and resource. Once you read it you might start using the capabilities of ACR more.

Well, what it comes down to is I am not really sure what edits are better done in raw, and which ones don't really make a difference. Also some of the raw edits in the version of ACR I have seem practically useless such as the sharpening and noise sliders. Colour adjustment (other than white balance) also seems to be not nearly as robust in ACR as in PS2.

But I would gladly sacrifice some control if it yielded an overall higher quality file. But this gets back to me not really understanding what is most advantageous to do under raw. It is obvious to me that white balance and exposure compensation is best done in raw because once I make it a PSD I no longer have control over this. But all the other things, contrast, sharpening, colour control, shadows are all easily adjusted once in PS2. When you use the phrase 'pushing pixels around' it leaves me with the impression that I am losing something, like I would my making a jpeg or by clipping dark/bright areas. But since I am converting the RAW pic to a PSD which is termed a lossless format, I am unsure as to what is concretely set except for colour space and exposure.

Another problem I have is lately on about 70% of my shots (processing wedding pictures) I am making multiple exposure copies, and then masking them together in PS2 to try and achieve the greatest dynamic range. I cannot really be sure what I am going to want to set for contrast etc. levels to be, until I have masked them together and get an idea of how it is going to look, and what range of light and dark areas I am going to be able to render.

I would appreciate any insight you have. Thanks.

Perhaps I missed it, but I don't see any mention of the new SmartSharpen tool in PSCS2.