[Aperture Nine]

There are many, many types of sharpening. Read some books written by pro's and then try and try and try. If you are working with the JPGs from your camera perhaps you should start working with the camera settings. Perhaps in the in-camera sharpening is all you need. If you are working with RAW files, then sharpening is essential. RAW files are not sharpened at ALL by the camera.

I have many sharpening actions in Photoshop, but now I just use unsharp mask using my experience and knowledge. All the reading and trying out paid off.

Sharpen on a duplicate layer and perhaps use a vector mask, then you can sharpen just parts of the image.

There is soft sharpening for portraits, edge sharpening, sharpening for landscapes etc. etc. Some sharpening you can apply twice, some use presharpening. It is impossibe to give you good general advice.

In The Adobe Photoshop CS3 Book Scott Kelby shows how to begin sharpening and his suggested unsharp settings are not bad at all. He also describes different types of sharpening.

But again, get some Photoshop books at the library (even if you don't use Photoshop).

I stopped using Smart Sharpening it is too slow, and I am very pleased with the results I get using unsharp mask.