sharpness setting in camera - on or off?

[tmphillips]

I have been struggling to get results that I like from my shots when it comes to sharpness, particularly after I've done my post processing. I read recently that when it comes to sharpening, it's bad to double sharpen, and so to have full control over the results and not double sharpen images, to turn sharpening off in camera. I have been playing around with this, and I don't know if it matters, since the default for my K100D is in the middle and I haven't seen much of a difference in the final results, except on maybe a couple tries where I thought that maybe it was better that I had it turned off/down in camera... I think the problem for me is still that I don't have good sharpening technique. I have tried a lot of stuff from high pass runs to different recommended settings with USM (in GIMP) but still don't have it figured out. I am actually thinking to try out Photoshop just to play with Smart Sharpening tool and see if it helps me get what I am looking for.

(I also think a big factor for me is resizing/downsizing/downsampling whatever it's called. An image may look pretty good to me, and then it's when I size/scale down my photos for web that they start to really look like extra crap to me and so then I try to sharpen after that to help, and it doesn't help like I think it should and often makes things worse.. )

I will confess that I didn't search the forum on this yet, so I will go do that too, but thought I'd toss this out there for any input you might have in the moment.. Thanks ;-)

[dcclark]

I leave my Nikon D40's sharpening on the default setting, which I have not noticed causing problems -- it doesn't OVERsharpen, which is the biggest risk.

As far as sharpening technique -- when posting photos specifically for the web, you need to sharpen more than you'd expect. I usually use unsharp mask, not any other method, although it's fun to play around with the high-pass method. As you mentioned, it's best to sharpen last in your process.

But the real question in -- what don't you like about your results? Do you have halos from unsharp masking? Dark "oversharpened" edges in high contrast areas? Do things look unnatural, etc.? That may help tack down any specific problems or mistakes.

[tmphillips]

Thanks for the feedback.. Actually I am usually ok with the results with sharpening except for when the wife wants copies of pics of the kids and such to post to her Facebook account. Facebook has a 600 pixel max, so I've been trying to get the best results I can when resizing down to 600 pixels and that's when I notice that the image quality really seems to suffer..

So this is why I say maybe I am not resizing properly in the first place.. But the 600px resizes look like they need sharpening, but then it seems like I can't get the same look to the image. A smile on face looks like a different smile because I've lost the detail..

(And btw, for resizing, I usually use the GIMPS scaling tool, and use the linear or sinc interpolation whichever seems to look the best to my eye..)

[wulf]

You can easily apply a high-pass filter sharpening effect with The Gimp - I wrote it up a while back. It's pretty much the only sharpening technique I use nowadays because of the control and lack of unwanted artifacts.

Wulf

[tmphillips]

Thanks! I'll go through and compare what you've written with the high pass filter plugin I have installed that usually doesnt give me better results (to my eye at least) than what I end up with using USM.. (edit: got the gimp high pass scm I've tried from here: http://ffaat.pointclark.net)

One thing I just noticed, when I use scaling in GIMP, it's set to a higher DPI than what I even have in the original images... Could this have a negative effect? I'll have to play with it...

[dcclark]

Originally Posted by tmphillips

Thanks! I'll go through and compare what you've written with the high pass filter plugin I have installed that usually doesnt give me better results (to my eye at least) than what I end up with using USM.. (edit: got the gimp high pass scm I've tried from here: http://ffaat.pointclark.net)

One thing I just noticed, when I use scaling in GIMP, it's set to a higher DPI than what I even have in the original images... Could this have a negative effect? I'll have to play with it...

Aha! When changing DPI, you might be causing gimp to actually resample your image -- meaning, it's actually creating new pixels and adding them to the image. That could cause things to look rather bad.

You really don't want to change the DPI -- it basically has only bad effects, as you've noticed! Just change the pixel sizes in the Scale dialog box, and leave the DPI settings be. They won't help you anyhow.

[kencaleno]

Talking to a Nikon repesentative,lowest in-camera setting is the best-default is normal,for direct "From camera to print". If you use Unsharp mask,add a luminosity layer,to avoid haloes. I use this simple method to sharpen:

Ctrl+J
Filters>Other>High Pass Radius 4 pixels
Blend mode "Soft Light"
Flatten-Save
Regards, Ken

[tmphillips]

Originally Posted by dcclark

You really don't want to change the DPI -- it basically has only bad effects, as you've noticed! .

crap! I think it's been set to 240dpi for a long time and I never changed it back. I remember changing it to that at least a year ago when I was messing with a project.. My default jpegs from camera are 72dpi..

[tmphillips]

Originally Posted by wulf

You can easily apply a high-pass filter sharpening effect with The Gimp - I wrote it up a while back. It's pretty much the only sharpening technique I use nowadays because of the control and lack of unwanted artifacts.
Wulf

I am getting some interesting results with this so far but want to try it again with a fresh image to see if I can really dial it in... I appreciate the tip!

[tmphillips]

Well I did a test of twelve sample runs (10 of them using different settings with Wulfs HP method) on a fresh image and posted my results to a page on my personal site because I want to check the results out from work tomorrow on a couple different monitors to see what I think and compare with my home monitor...

Here is the page in case you want to check it out.. If you do happen to look, please let me know any thoughts or even which result looks best to you.. I chose this image because of the challenge to try and get my daughter (her name is Hope) to look as good as I could in the image considering the small size.. (and just a side note, Hope is blind)

I am liking sample11 the best right now...