40 D sharpness

I find that with all of my lenses when I PP with DPP I need to boost the sharpness sometimes all the way up to 10 to get a sharp looking image. DOes anyone else have similar problems

it might help if we knew what lenses you're shooting with, what conditions, focus, ISO, aperture, etc. and maybe post an example of an unsharpened shot?

all images require at least a bit of sharpening usually.. unless you're using an L lens, then you can sometimes get away without if you've really nailed the shot.

All digital images, no matter what lens, need some sharpening.
it is a function of sensor capture, It is normal and expected.
Point and shoots do it for you in camera.
DSLR users are given the option, as they often want to take control of the sharpening process them selves.
If you take jpgs you can set the degree of sharpening in camera too.
However for best results it is better done in PP.

The lenses I use are 100-400 L and 17-40 L

kszczes wrote in post #5652208
The lenses I use are 100-400 L and 17-40 L

You will still need to sharpen.

In DPP my standard sharpening amount is 3. If the photo is a little off I might bump it to 4. If it's quite a bit off I'll go to 6 at the max. If I need more than 6 I scrap the photo. That's the case with both my 30D and 40D and any of my six lenses. Going to 10/10 looks very fake - with my photos at least.

I'm interested in the comments here on sharpening. As a relative newbie to my 40D I love the sharp look and textures you can achieve with this camera. So many of the shots posted here are incredibly sharp, presumably fine tuned with software.
Can you forgive my ignorance and educate my on your anachronyms.....PP and DPP? Are you referring to specific software or is this a generic term.
I use Photoshop Elements, I'm a budding amateur. It has a sharpening 'filter', I've found it not that useful.

I've noticed the 'standard' setting for photos are relatively soft, Canon has the 'landscape' setting sharper. Is it adequate to sharpen in-camera, or do you think you should always do that with software, and if so, what software is best for sharpening, and perhaps for removing noise? Photoshop, a plug-in or a stand alone program? Are the 'elements' series adequate?

Currently I own just the 28-135 IS kit lens, however with a milestone birthday in about 8 days I'm expecting to improve this with at least one L series, maybe two.....my wish list has been supplied.

Thanks in advance...this forum has been extremely helpful, I've appreciated all the experiences shared that have helped me with my camera purchase and knowledge base already...

PP means Post Processing. In other words editing/processing the image after you took the shot. The alternative would be SOOC - Straight Out Of Camera.

DPP refers to Digital Photo Professional - the free raw processing software that Canon supplies with all its DSLR cameras.

Sharpening with Photoshop can be very powerful but you need to understand what you are doing. People have written guides and tips, but as I don't use Photoshop myself I can't advise you.

If your lens is sharp and you focused well and are happy with a natural look to your photos then "standard" sharpening should be sufficient in most cases. If you have a problem with a soft lens or focusing problems, or just like sharpness that pops off the screen then you can increase sharpening. Personally I like to go for realism. I see horrible haloing far too often in photos that have been oversharpened. Sometimes you feel you have to sharpen excessively just to compete. I try to avoid that competition.

I think Photoshop Elements should be perfectly adequate for someone fairly new to digital photography. The full blown Photoshop is very expensive and really far too powerful (complicated) for many people's needs. I have CS3 but I don't use it. I stick with DPP and Lightroom. DPP produces great image quality and natural colours but is a bit limited if you need to make a lot of adjustments to your photos, including simple straightening or highlight recovery. If you shot the image well then DPP is great for fine tuning and finishing it off. Lightroom offers more features and is really good for organising your files and sorting through the good and bad shots but I find the images look just a little less crisp than with DPP and the noise handling is not as slick for 40D raw files.

If you want to play around with sharpening without compromising image quality at all then try shooting raw rather than jpeg. The jpeg format throws a lot of data away and leves you far less to work with if you want to edit your images. If you start off with a jpeg and then edit and save that you will get a further reduction in quality. With a raw file to begin with you start off with all the data the camera captured and you only throw stuff away when you finalise to jpeg for printing or online viewing.

Have a look at this sticky on sharpening - https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=466333

sharpening is always involved in PP. You should also start sharpening from RAW in photoshop if possible, even if you can get CS1 just to do sharpening afterward. before i had CS3 I would pp in DDP and always set the sharpening to 0 then import to CS1 and either lab sharpen, unsharp mask, or high pass sharpen.

Keep in mind that you can PP your photos with a much cheaper PhotoShop Elements 6 for Mac or PC. It's very useful for post processing RAW images and JPEG as well.