Sharpening

Darren Troy C

Have seen a few people talk about converting to TiFF from RAW and doing all of your unsharp masking, if any, there. Haven't researched the technique but have noticed, quite frequently, that if my RAW is not tack-sharp to begin with, rarely does unsharp masking provide me with a pleasing level of correction. I understand starting with a crystal clear image to begin with, but I guess what I am asking is can someone enlighten me on a workflow that will help me along the path of the images that do require that particular step?

ziggy53

My RAW workflow is generally ACR directly into PSCS4, 16 bit.

I run through a midtone sharpening action and, if it still needs more sharpening, I'll either apply one of my own actions (a combination local and global sharpening actions) or I use a "Luco" sharpening action.

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LiquidAir

Conventional small-radius USM is really about perserving the original sharpness as you process an image. Demosaicing, scaling, and screening all soften sharp edges to some degree and USM carefully applied can preserve the original sharpness.

If the image was not sharp to begin with, you will have to tune the sharpening radius to match the image. If you watch carefully as you increase the raduis you will see the USM algorithm start to grab onto the edges when you get the radius large enough. There is a limit to what you can do. With my camera (12mp 5D), if I end up with a 2px sharpening raidus, I can typically make a reasonable 8x10. If I end up with a 4px sharpening radius the shot will not be good past web resolution. If the sharpening raidus is larger than that I consider the image unrecoverable and toss it.

ziggy53

I should add that for a slightly out-of-focus situation, a deconvolution sharpening is in order.

In PSCS4 I will use Smart Sharpen with Lens Blur, followed by a Dust and Scratches, which works better than Despeckle. The effect is similar to FocusMagic, which is probably more effective but more costly too.

Smart Sharpen can be terminally slow at times, but if you need to save a slightly OOF shot, it can work to give you about one more paper size worth of focus recovery.

Here is a simple example (before and after, 100 percent crops):