How Much Sharpening Do You Add In RAW?

[ElCapitan]

I've been having a discussion with some photography friends and were talking about over sharpening and how much sharpening to add in the RAW process.

When you first open an image in Photoshop RAW, the sharpening slider starts at 25 and maxes out at 150. Of course it all depends on the image and what camera and lens you are using, but where do you generally find yourself moving the slider to?

[ravncat]

I like to break my sharpening routines down to High and Low frequency photographs - images with lots of small details, or images with fewer small details. Landscape and Portrait are good examples of this. Architecture photography can vary - depending on the amount of texture on the walls - smooth or course etc...

In general, when there's lots of small detail -
My sharpening will go up (to at least 40 - sometimes more) - and my radius will go down (usually close to .5) . My detail slider, doesn't change much.

For images without so many small details - the amount stays about where it is, sometimes goes up. The radius may stay at one or go up to 2 or so. Detail tends to stay put

I do each image visually. I'll zoom in to 3x or 4x on small details and especially repeating patterns. Here I can use the amount and radius and detail to get rid of "crunchiness" I use masking if images have alot of noise that might get sharpened as detail.

You'll find the ALT key (on windows) held down will turn amount to black and white, making it easier to see. And it will give you a good visualization of how radius and detail work. It will also show you the masking. (With masking - the area in White is recieving 100% of the effects of the above sliders, and the area in black is recieving 0% of your sharpening. Radius affects your edges more, detail affects your micro-contrast more.

It's very very helpful for me to get good sharpening by first eliminating the chromatic abberations that are involved - that can have good effect at "sharpening" your image. So I tend to do that first. The overall amount of sharpening I do is prettymuch to counter softness from the AA filter.

Rarely do I go above Amount 100, radius 2 or detail 50. Masking gets used to counter noise mostly, and sharpening and noise reduction tend to find a balance.

[OsmosisStudios]

I dont use the sharpening in RAW: it stays as whatever the default is. I do my sharpening in Photoshop using high-pass filters. Amount varies from shot to shot, by colour/BW, and by film/digital.

[JFSanders]

I do as OS does. Sharpen after all else is done especially resizing.

Jim

[GTAltman]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

I dont use the sharpening in RAW: it stays as whatever the default is. I do my sharpening in Photoshop using high-pass filters. Amount varies from shot to shot, by colour/BW, and by film/digital.

OS,

Why in PS than in RAW?
I'm finding it's easier and I can do more with RAW than PS for sharpening.

Very curious about this.

Thanks.
Gary

[ravncat]

Just as a note to the above - I Sharpen following the "Capture / Creative / Output" method for sharpening. The sharpening I do in raw is just for the capture to deal with the loss of sharpness from diffraction and anti-aliasing filter.

I do any creative sharpening (to emphasize something with sharpness) and output (to sharpen for screen / print / web) in other steps.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by GTAltman

OS,

Why in PS than in RAW?
I'm finding it's easier and I can do more with RAW than PS for sharpening.

Very curious about this.

Thanks.
Gary

The RAW sliders don't seem to give me the look I want from my sharpening: I always ended up with halos around the edges and that classic "oversharpened" look. Instead, I can go into photoshop and use layers, layer styles, blend modes and inversions to get my sharpening just right.

For instance, most digital shots just need a simple high-pass filter layer set to overlay, about 2-3 pixels for a full-size (uncropped) image. For black and white film, though, doing that gives me a grainy mess because my pixels are actually smaller than the grains of film (thanks to a high-quality scanner). So for this, I create a duplicate layer, invert it, run the high-pass on that, set it to overlay, merge this layer and the background layer, then duplicate the result, run my regular high pass on overlay, and merge down. It gets rid of some of the graininess and sharpens my photos.

[Blitzkrieg]

What about the in camera sharpness settings?
I ve recently read that most pro level photographers
tend to use a minus zero number when it comes to in camera profiles.
In my a550 I use the sharpness @ +1 (min -3/max +3).

N.

[kcoppock]

Originally Posted by Blitzkrieg

What about the in camera sharpness settings?
I ve recently read that most pro level photographers
tend to use a minus zero number when it comes to in camera profiles.
In my a550 I use the sharpness @ +1 (min -3/max +3).

N.

You just blew my mind.

[dakwegmo]

Originally Posted by Blitzkrieg

What about the in camera sharpness settings?
I ve recently read that most pro level photographers
tend to use a minus zero number when it comes to in camera profiles.
In my a550 I use the sharpness @ +1 (min -3/max +3).

N.

In camera sharpening only applies to JPGs or TIFFs output by the camera. If you're shooting RAW as the original poster indicated, the in camera settings have no effect.