ugh, I hate sharpening

This sharpening business. I don't know what to make of it.


I mean, it's one aspect of photography that simply does not interest me in the slighest. I have a very poor sense for mathematicals, so keeping in mind the relationship between pixel density and thresholds and whatever is lost on me. However, I do enjoy bringing out a slight bit of sharpening to give my pictures that extra edge. Though I have really no idea what I'm doing.


Pretty much everything I do is for the internet (some concert pictures have been printed in paper) though some pictures I plan to print out and frame. For now I use a standard USM formula (sorry, perryge!) that I grabbed somewhere, but I realize it might not be optimal. I suppose also that if I were to print out pictures I would have to re-do all post-processing I've done.


That was my rant, I suppose.


*e* Actually, I now concidered that my b/w pictures might be off, because my b/w in-camera setting has a bit of sharpening already compared to the color setting. Do you find my b/w pictures to be oversharpened?

I like your B&W. They don't look oversharpened to me. But then again, I like high contrast sharp B&W.

Don't feel bad. I really don't understand sharpening either. I don't understand the math, anyhow. I just move the slider until it looks sharper without looking phony or fake.

I don't see any reason to understand the math (and I am a geek ). That being sad just find a general setting that works for your images, save it as an action and use it when you need to. I use LR now, but when I used PS CS2 I used USM 120, .5, 0 most of the time or something close to it for 1024 pixel images.

But your workflow sounds like it needs some help. You should perform all your edits on full size images, save them, then resize and sharpen before saving as a different filename. This way you have to original to use for print at a later time.

In2Photos wrote in post #7562430
But your workflow sounds like it needs some help. You should perform all your edits on full size images, save them, then resize and sharpen before saving as a different filename. This way you have to original to use for print at a later time.

What I do, is that I keep a huge folder with all pictures straight out of camera (with sub-folders named by the date of each upload session). Then I have another where I save pictures where I've made any changes, including resizing and sharpening. It's sort of like keeping negatives. I also keep the same file name in both folders (IMG_3095.jpg etc.) so that I can easily re-locate any original file.

*e* God, I still remember the shivers I experienced when a friend of mine wanted to rename all my edited pictures to have "funny names". It would have ruined the system completely.

If you have some time to spare, this is a great read:

http://www.ronbigelow.​com …les/sharpen1/sh​arpen1.htm

It may also put you off sharpening for life though!

I hate sharpening too. I'd love some "rules of thumb" for setting the Radius/Amount/Threshol​d.

JoYork wrote in post #7562583
If you have some time to spare, this is a great read:

http://www.ronbigelow.​com …les/sharpen1/sh​arpen1.htm

It may also put you off sharpening for life though!

Victoria (if you're reading this thread), for those of us who use Lightroom rather than Photoshop (particularly for those of us who have never used Photoshop), can you help by providing a means of 'equating' the Photoshop Unsharpmask settings (control type, range of values--Radius/Amount/Threshol​d) to the Lightroom Unsharpmask values (Amount 1-150/ Radius 0.5 - 3.0/ Detail 0-100/ Masking)? This would be handy when we see articles written in context of Photoshop, but we Lightroom users would like to try doing the same with our program.

bjordan wrote in post #7563867
I hate sharpening too. I'd love some "rules of thumb" for setting the Radius/Amount/Threshol​d.

Here are mine, if it helps.

I don't ever sharpen in Lightroom. I don't feel I get as good results as with photoshop. Just adds another step though. I would like to see some guidelines as well.