Sharpening...

I, as well, never sharpen in RAW. I use the TLR sharpening scripts (capture sharpening, creative sharpening, and output sharpening), as needed, or I just use the smart sharpen filter for a quick, yet sufficient sharpening of an image that I don't care to get too overly critical about.

FrankTheSpank wrote in post #3261067
Just when I think I know the basics of digital photography I come here and find out I don't know anything... LOL

to be honest, i feel in the same boat, there is ALWAYS something new to learn, that made me feel quite stupid, and i think one of the best ways to handle this is to try not to worry about the IT and PC side of photography and just get out there and enjoy taking photos...

The first photo that you have here is a cracker. I just love old derelict farm shots for some reason (although decline in general is not a 'bon' issue - it does make for good photogenic subject matter)

I was wondering if they were trying to use that white barrel under the tractor as a 'temporary' wheel, which was then crushed..

ho hum....

to my way of thinking proper sharpening is a 3-4 step process using usm.
depending on the dynamic range of the detail in the image.
first pass:
radius 5 or 10 sometimes both, threshold 2 or 5, amount varies to bring out the large textures.
second:
radius 2, threshold 1, amount usually around 60 to bring out the mid-range.
third:
radius .3,threshold 1, amount ~100 to bring up the fine detail.

The most common error is using small radius to bring up large details which leads to too much sharpening of the small details.

The other thing to remember is that you always need to (re)sharpen once you have resized for the web. A picture that is a sharp jpeg at original size will lose sharpness when resized downwards.

Andrew

Sathi wrote in post #3261069
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.

In Fraser's book that I mentioned earlier he shows very detailed reason why you should make as many changes possible in ACR. I don't mind discussing them, but I also don't want to get too off topic here so maybe we should start a new thread or continue this via PM (although I think the insight would be better suited if other members could read it).

You could also double click the sharpened layer, and use the "blend if" sliders:

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