D70 on-camera sharpening vs. Photoshop sharpening

Hi folks,

I've had the D70 for a little while now, and I'm starting to explore more of
the features. One of these is the "Sharper" setting in the "Optimize Image"
menu.

Before I launch into a mini-research project (ie. trial-and-error), is there
any obvious reason why I would or wouldn't use this feature, as opposed to
the shooting with the default settings and then using the "Sharpen" feature
in Photoshop Elements?

Thanks!
J

 

First, you probably shouldn't use Sharpen in Elements. Photoshop's
Sharpen filter has a fixed effect, and it's not ideal for most
circumstances. It's generally too extreme. You should be using Unsharp
Mask instead. Unsharp Mask has 3 settings that control its operation,
and it takes a bit of time to learn to use well, but with much more
control you can get much better results.

Having said that, you shouldn't use in-camera sharpening because

1) sharpening is usually best done *after* all other processing, not
before

2) Unsharp Mask is better than any fixed sharpening scheme.

Dave

 

Not true on a D70 if you shoot NEF. You can remove the sharpening later
if desired in Nikon Capture (and probably in PS too? I don't have a
modern version of PS and haven't tried its NEF capabilities yet).

I shoot NEF + JPG, with medium sharpening in-camera. For quick and dirty
viewing and test (4x6) prints with no postprocessing, I use the JPG's.
It's nice having them 'pre-sharpened' for evaluation.

For keeper images, and especially those I will be making large prints
from, I go into Nikon Capture with the NEF image file, remove the
sharpening, and edit and tweak as appropriate. Then I sharpen as my last
step, with Unsharp Mask.

Just my 2 cents,

B.A.S.

P.S. This workflow may change if and when I ever get around to buying PS CS.

 

In message <cdfhr9$n05$>,

How about equalizers working in the frequency domain?

Kai's Power Tools has one in an old version, but the highest frequency
is 1 pixel and the bands are all powers of two; not very flexible.
--

 

e.g. Sharpening before noise suppression will enhance noise.
Sharpening before downsizing will increase aliasing. Sharpening before
upsizing will increase blockiness.

e.g. A simple Laplacian kernel sharpening will sharpen noise, an USM
threshold allows to avoid some of that. A simple sharpening has a
fixed support, USM has variable support.

Bart

 

I mostly agree, but there is one thing to be said for sharpening
before JPEG encoding: it doesn't accentuate JPEG artefacts, which
later sharpening does.

Andrew.