So......I frequent blogs like Jessica Claire's, Becker's and some others not only because their pictures are great, but because I'm in awe of the sharpness of their images. I know that they usually shoot JPEG and sharpen the images in post processing, but I am wondering:

1) For all of you RAW shooters (like me!), have you mastered sharpening and what do you use?

2) What lenses are you using to get the sharpest images?

3) When you shoot RAW, do pictures styles and settings make a difference in the image? Does anyone know if there's anything you can do while shooting RAW to make the pics sharper right out of the camera?

Any and all input would be great - and please feel free to bump this, as I'm sure this post will be valuable to several of us.

In raw mode there is no processing to the file. You have to do all the sharpening yourself.

Good light + proper exposure = sharp pictures (most of the time)

also Becker, and Jessica shoot JPG.

I know [ b ] is an OSP member, why not ask him?

This image, that I shot last weekend was Nikon JPG, 50mm f1.8 1/1250 iso 400

No sharpening needed - this is how sharp it came out of the camera.

I'm curious to hear responses on this too!

I shoot RAW too. I don't notice much difference in shapness due to lenses, only the difference in DOF. I do feel like almost every RAW image needs a little sharpening, but I also struggle with noise which only gets worse with sharpening. I can't seem to have my cake and eat it too!

I currently use the "high pass technique" for sharpening. Duplicate layer and change it to mode "overlay". Then Filter>High Pass. Add mask if necessary.

I've seen some images that are sharpened way too much and make the eyes look freaky IMHO.

Who's next?

-Jess

oh oh oh oh oh - I can help here!!

I can't help with much, but this, I can help with!!

Don't use ACR to sharpen that's one thing I have learnt, turn that off (or dial it back for starters)

when you bring it into Photoshop (I'm assuming you use it sorry) I use this method for sharpening images if they need it:

1: duplicate your image on another layer (ctrl J) and set it to overlay
2: Go: (I'm working from memory here) Filters/Other/High Pass - and set it between 1 and 3 (depending on the image) - any higher than 3 you get that horrible obviously over sharp black and white lines thing going on.

...and you're done.

If you're keen, you can also mask out areas that are too sharp, but that almost never happens for me.




Now - important note here!!!
If you're resizing for web use - make sure you have Bicubic Sharper selected in the (I think) 'Resample Image' drop box when you have the resize image dialog box up.

You can set that as the default if you go - and here I'm guessing again:
Preferences/General - select Image Interpolation and select Bicubic sharper.




et voila!

***DISCALIMER*** this will not make fuzzy images look good.




I use a 24-70 f2.8 and I like it a lot - to answer question 2, but again it depends on the light and my stability at the time.

I hope this helps!!




Edit:/// AWWWWwwww crap - Jess beat me to it . . . . must learn to type less . . . . .

I know Becker used to use Kabota's Magic Sharp quite a bit..

I hate when that happens.

I shoot RAW and I like Kabota's Magic Sharp. I run this action last after I convert to jpg.

shhh... the secret... is simple!

1. Fixed lenses, manual mode for great exposure, WB, etc
2. NO sharpening in-camera (at ALL!!!)
3. Sharpen using Kubota's Magic sharp as the LAST THING YOU DO before output (print or web)

wahlah!


ps. RAW vs JPEG is irrelevant to sharpness IMHO... I've shot both, shoot all JPEG now, and they all look the same if I do the above.

Thanks for the info.

I have seen this technique thrown about in various places:

1. Convert your image to LAB color mode
2. In the channels palette, select the lightness channel
3. Apply Unsharp mask (start with these settings: Amount: 150%, radius 1.0, Threshold 0)
4. Convert image back to RGB mode

This is a pretty good quick and dirty method for making a RAW file look better. As others have said, sharpening should be the last step in your image editing workflow.

I also use the high pass method, but do it a bit differently. Rather than setting the layer mode to overlay (I'll have to try that) I set it to soft light, or hard light if it needs a bit more sharpening. You can also use vivid light, but that's way overkill and it looks freaky.

Thanks everyone - you bunch of geniuses!

I appreciate everyone's ideas and I'll defintely be trying some of them....I think my images look pretty good, but I want them sharp as a tack - I'll let you know when I find what works! Yall have given me some great things to try - thanks!

The secret is to leave the sharpening to the last stage, but...

First, resize your pic for web viewing (600 to 800 px on the longest side) then sharpen you will see the difference believe me -it doesn't matter if you shoot raw or jpg-. Now as to how much to sharpen and different methods... that is a whole other story.
But the most important thing is to resize to a web ideal size first. Try it and let me know your results.

Carlos Andres
ps. If you'd like to see examples go to my blog. If you go to my website you will see the difference (the images on my website were not sharpened, and since I am working on a new site I have not fixed them).

That's what I use. Works wonders. Straight out of the camera pretty much sucks.

don't confuse sharp with in focus.

if you are wide open, an dclose to your subject, your DOF will be quite shallow. here's a calculator:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

in the pic that was posted, the image is sharp, but the left eyelid of the subject is the what is in focus.

if your dof is too shallow, stop down a bit - 1/2 stop will make a deifference. (see the calculator) some lenses are soft wide open - if you are close to your subject. and lenses have minumal focal points, so if you get too close you can't focus. play with your lenses on your camera to see where you need to be. (you need to know what a stop is)

shutter speed aperture and iso all seem to play into sharpness. all that fixing later and running actions can be avoided. get it in focus and then sharpen to make it sing! sharpening won't help an out of focus image (someone said that already)

Becker actually uses Magic Sharp on every image. And as Liana stated, fixed lenses are generally sharper than zooms, especially wide open, but the difference isn't always noticeable ... depends on the lens, the aperture, and the focal length.

Liana (or anyone)... as a wedding photographer, aren't you worried about the compression of your files after you PP them? Correct me if I'm wrong but don't we damage the jpg image everytime we make a change/adjustment?

I know ya'll are SUPER awesome and don't have to adjust tons to receive your final product but I would also think that you don't lose any quality by PP'ing.... Am I clear??

I switched to RAW just for that reason (bc I'm ALWAYS PP my images as I learn...BTW, I'm very new at this as well)

Hopefully I'm not stealing this thread but just added to it??

i will attempt to answer for some of the jpeg shooters... i have shot with a few of them and during those experiences... they keep a master 'jpeg original' folder just like us raw shooters have our original raw files. then they edit they make duplicate copies.

for the sharpness answer, i second:
1. use fixed lenses and use your feet!
2. make sure the image is in focus
3. turn sharpening off in camera if your jpeg, and if your raw turn sharpening off in acr.
4. use kubota magic sharp as the final step

Thanks, I want to try some of these things too! Those of you who shoot Raw, do you set your sharpening slider in ACR to 0?

Not really. We use the lowest compression mode (biggest files) from the camera. Then they're sometimes run through BullZEye, saved as JPEG12. After that, if they have any processing flavor added, they're saved as PSD files. The files that the customer sees online are JPEGs, but they're so compressed anyway that it's not an issue.

So, at the most they're compressed once in camera, once if exposure or color corrected, and then finally for a print. That's three times, and the last two are saved as JPEG12. If you look reeeealy carefully and know what to look for, you can sometimes see a difference. But it's not enough to really matter.

Robin makes a great point here....it's worth repeating. Decreasing DOF increases the apparent sharpness of an image so long as you've focused correctly (e.g. focusing on the eyes instead of the nose).

Also, be careful sharpening too much. Some oversharpened images look fine on a web page, but come out horrible on a print.

[quote name='BEN DODDS' date='March 10 2007, 07:48 AM' post='94141']
Liana (or anyone)... as a wedding photographer, aren't you worried about the compression of your files after you PP them? Correct me if I'm wrong but don't we damage the jpg image everytime we make a change/adjustment?

The real damage to a .jpg file is through several Open>Adjust>Save sequences. One or two will not really have noticeable degradation. But make a print from the original finished file, then run the file through the ringer a few times and make another print. You should be able to see some jagged edges as the result of too much fixing. I'm sure it was much more noticeable a few years ago with lower megapixel cameras because each adjustment threw out too many pixels relative to the file size. We have more latitude now with higher megapixel gear.

Which pack is Kubota's Magic Sharp in? Anybody know?

It is in Production Pak 1

By the way, I purchased Kubota's Production 1 Pack the other day for Magic Sharp and I'm really liking it so far.....

Click to view attachment

Until I upgrade my computers I have to run CS. Will KK's Magic Sharpen work with CS? Thanks!


LOL - you sound like one of my mentors who we hire at my "day" job to cover our conferences. When I asked him what did he do to make his images so sharp his reply was "take it sharp and you won't have to sharpen." His images are wonderful and he doesn't do any post sharpening. He said he uses good glass and just learned how to "take it sharp."

Now I've noticed that my film images are sharper than my digital images. I'm thinking it's the lens, but should that be the case?

yep - correct - set it to zero.

Yes, this one is good. But, I've noticed that I'm unable to sharpen the eyes in my portraits using this technique. Do you fade your sharpening before you convert back to RGB?

Hi Sam,
I run it on CS and it works fine!
Candy

That's correct - the Kabota Production Tools 1 can work with Photoshop 7 and greater.

Adam & Chris - great explanations on the PP image-loss

I don't PP any of my files unless they are a) ordered by a client or b) going on the blog or a marketing/PR peice (and some of those don't even get any PP except Magic Sharp at the end).

So yeah, I guess the image loss is irrelevant unless you're going PP-crazy. Plus, you'll always have duplicate copies of your original files (or you should have with your back-up system) so you can always pull another original if need be.

If you use Lightroom or Aperture the original is preserved. Of course PP in Photoshop will degrade the image if you continue to save over the Jpeg file. I used to shoot Raw too, for the 'quality' reasoning. I recently switched to jpeg, using my in-camera settings. I love my images WAY more and they take WAY less time. I just tried a 20x30 print on Standout board from WHCC. All I can say is WOW. I am loving Jpeg! haha.

i go back and forth with the raw vs jpg thing but got REALLY frustrated at the amount of noise in my RAW shots compared to the same in jpg. So for now I am back to jpg. I am one who LOVES to do post processing in PS and so I don't mind. I make a duplicate of originals so I am not playing with the same jpg over and over.
Originals are burned to disk and external hard drive before coming to PS to "play"

Cool and you're not alone. Do you save your jpg's as .psd files before you PP?