How much USM is too much?

mercphoto

I've been taking sports photos like these with my 20D as in-camera JPG's at Parameters 1, which is +1 on the sharpening. Lately I've been playing around with Photoshop to sharpen further. I've taken three images and applied USM settings at 150%, 1.5 and 4. I can't see any obvious halos, and I think the images look better. I'm not sure, other than halos, when an image starts to look unnatural due to sharpening.

I'm also looking for a rather generic and safe sharpening to bulk apply. If I shoot 2,000 photos this weekend, as I hope to, I don't want to process them very much. It takes enough time to rate, sort, upload and tag as it is.

Originals are available. Thanks for any critiques. I'm seriously considering moving to +2 sharpening on in-camera JPG's this time out.





Other examples at http://mercphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/388115/1/15473833, password "noel".

adrian_k

doesn't look bad
150/1.5/4 does seem quite excessive, however I don't see any haloing on your shots.
And you have a good idea of what looks unnatural, however, I'd say the real test come when you come to print the shots.

mercphoto wrote:

I've been taking sports photos like these with my 20D as in-camera JPG's at Parameters 1, which is +1 on the sharpening. Lately I've been playing around with Photoshop to sharpen further. I've taken three images and applied USM settings at 150%, 1.5 and 4. I can't see any obvious halos, and I think the images look better. I'm not sure, other than halos, when an image starts to look unnatural due to sharpening.

I'm also looking for a rather generic and safe sharpening to bulk apply. If I shoot 2,000 photos this weekend, as I hope to, I don't want to process them very much. It takes enough time to rate, sort, upload and tag as it is.

Originals are available. Thanks for any critiques. I'm seriously considering moving to +2 sharpening on in-camera JPG's this time out.






Other examples at http://mercphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/388115/1/15473833, password "noel".

spockling

How does this one look to you? I resize it to 800*533 at 72 dpi and applied FM's 20D CSPRO sharpening to it. It can be automated to a point.



And here was the original

mercphoto

spockling wrote:

How does this one look to you? I resize it to 800*533 at 72 dpi and applied FM's 20D CSPRO sharpening to it. It can be automated to a point.

Looks better than the original. Hard to tell at small screen size how it compares to my USM @ 200%. Where can I find FM's 20D CSPRO? I need to get some JPG's captured in-camera at sharpening+2 as well.

mercphoto

mercphoto wrote:

Where can I find FM's 20D CSPRO?

Never mind. Found it. Thanks for informing me it exists.

spockling

Bill, This is Fred Miranda's action. Here's the link:

http://www.fredmiranda.com/actions

dashphotography

Wow.. the difference was amazing.
I think the difference was amazing. The outfit the guy is wearing you can really see all of the stitching and seams where you could not in the original. It really makes it pop.

One note about sharpening in Camera with the 20D. I had set mine to +1 sharpening and then afterwards in Photoshop CS I would do USM of about 200 to 300, .1, 0. The jpegs would look fine in CS. But when I posted them on my smugmug site....I have been told that they do yet another sharpening of your jpegs before the post them and something is producing halo's when you view my photo's online. They are either saved at too low of a compression for the web...or the process of them being sharpened yet a 3rd time....is giving them the bad results when viewed on smugmug. The first step I do is batch run them through neat image to clean up the noise a bit but again...they always look just fine with no Halos....until I view them on smugmug.

I've read comments about not doing any sharpening in camera and doing it all afterwards. The last batch I shot set to no sharpening and I'm going to still run them through neat image, and then possibly try Fred Miranda's action, and then check these in Smugmug to see if I still get the Halos.

I guess it boils down to trial and error to see what works for you. For me it's trial and error to see why the Halos are forming.

Shawn.

mercphoto

dashphotography wrote:

I think the difference was amazing. The outfit the guy is wearing you can really see all of the stitching and seams where you could not in the original. It really makes it pop.

I agree. I think Fred Miranda is doing better than USM as well. (I'm assuming you think the FM was the amazing one, rather than the USM version I posted). It might be better to go 0 on in-camera sharpening, then do it batch later.

Question, which settings on the Fred Miranda run were used?

As per the halo problem, I think if I turn on watermarking nobody will care what they look like on the net.

gus

I have no idea about the USM...but i really miss my kart :cry

Sam

Humungus wrote:

I have no idea about the USM...but i really miss my kart :cry

And do you miss your little hat to?

Sam