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Douglas Bolt
07-14-2008, 02:21 PM
I'm wondering about the + & - using ACR do Capture Sharpening. It seems pretty easy and does offer some control, but I've not compared it with USM etc.

I generally use something in the range of 60 - 100 for amount, 1 for radius, 40-60 for detail and then hold down the ALt key while dragging the masking slider to where most, but not all of the image is masked. Oh, I forgot to mention that the image has to be at at least 100% for the sharpening to be visible. Double clicking on the magnifying lens in the upper left corner will jump to 100%.

What do others do, or not do, or even think about this adjustment in ACR? Here is a screen clip for reference.

John Chardine
07-14-2008, 07:30 PM
I never do any sharpening until the very end of the workflow, and then only if I am going to use the image for a specific use then. Otherwise I save an unsharpened TIFF. Why would you "Capture sharpen" using ACR at the beginning of the RAW workflow?

Douglas Bolt
07-14-2008, 08:57 PM
There are at least two schools of thought on sharpening. One says to only sharpen at the very end of the workflow and the other says to do a three stage sharpening process, stage 1 to correct for capture softness, stage to for creative sharpening and the final stage for output.

Maybe someone with much more knowledge on the subject than I have will chime in on the subject. From what I've read, the three staged approach is convincing. I use PK Sharpening as my main sharpening tool, which follows the three staged approach.

I don't know how capture sharpening in PKS differes or is similar to sharpening in ACR, but sharpening in ACR seems pretty straight forward and I can see the changes.

I obviously didn't raise this issue to tout it as a solution, but rather in the hopes of learning from others more about when and if it should be used.

Dan Brown
07-14-2008, 09:18 PM
Good question Douglas. I to am confused about this? John, I to sharpen for output at the end of the workflow with good results, but I don't know if they are the "best" results. This should be an educational thread! Dan Brown

Douglas Bolt
07-15-2008, 07:16 PM
Hi Dan,

Like you, I had hoped this thread would generate some wise suggestions from the experts. I suppose I could make some comparisons between capture sharpening in ACR and PK Sharpening myself, but being the lazy type, I would rather read what others think of each approach.

Jason Elsworth
07-15-2008, 11:01 PM
My understanding is that the same can be achieved by either using capture sharpen in PK sharpener or by applying some sharpening in camera raw. You are basically countering the lack of sharpness that comes from the capture via a camera or a scanner. It is the output sharpening for print or web that needs to be done after resizing.
I use PK sharpener for capture sharpening, but a good description of sharpening in ACR can be found here http://photoshopnews.com/2007/05/31/about-camera-raw-41/. Jeff Schewe was involved in both PK and ACR 4.1. I don't use LR, but understand it also allows for capture sharpeneing. Overall I have been very pleased with PK sharpener, especially output sharpening for prints.

Douglas Bolt
07-16-2008, 10:05 AM
Hi Jason,

Hey, thanks for the link on the fine article about Adobe Camera Raw 4.1. Very informative and well illustrated. I'd call it a must read for anyone interested in the topic of sharpening digital images.

Robert Amoruso
07-16-2008, 03:51 PM
Douglas,

I have found ACR sharpening to produce a good capture sharpening. That opinion is based on impression and not based on testing. I use PK Sharpening too and generally run its capture sharpening on the RAW.

Good Frazer articles on sharpening. The second one in 2003 discusses the 3-phase approach.

http://www.creativepro.com/article/out-gamut-almost-everything-you-wanted-know-about-sharpening-photoshop-were-afraid-ask
http://www.creativepro.com/article/out-of-gamut-thoughts-on-a-sharpening-workflow

From the second article, Frazer describes the 3-phases.

1) Capture Sharpening is applied early in the image-editing process, and just aims to restore any sharpness that was lost in the capture process.
2) Creative Sharpening is usually applied locally to accentuate specific features in an image-for example, we often give eyes a little extra sharpness in head shots.
3) Output Sharpening is applied to files that have already had capture and creative sharpening applied, after they've been sized to final output resolution, and is tailored to a specific type of output process.

Some times I skip Capture Sharpening and never notice the difference - call it laziness but have not seen it to be detrimental. But generally I will do it.
Creative sharpening for me is attention to the details in the image that need to be sharp. I will not sharpen OOF BGs for example.
Output sharpening I apply more when I do a print then a posting JPG. Since I use matte paper a lot, it must be sharpened for output once I resize and rez-up to 360 ppi for my Epson printer.

This is what I do:

1) Capture sharpening - PK Sharpener.
2) PS processing the TIFF file at the native resolution. This is my base file with layers.
3) Using file from 2, I will use PK Sharpener to do my creative sharpening on non-destructive layers. This becomes a new PKS sharpened file
4) For a print, file in 3 gets flattened, re-sized and rezed up to the print size and 360 ppi. Then I do the output sharpening using PKS.
5) For JPG, take file in 2 and run an action to get it to 96ppi and 800 pixels on the long side. I then run four rounds of USM on it. In the history pallet I back up to the first USM round and then add to see the affect. When I am happy, I will then go back to the layer pallet. This way I chose the amount of sharpening. I then use Save for Web to get my JPG.

I agree with Jason, PKS works great for prints.

For the JPGs I am not fussy unless I get halos from my quick-n-dirty method. Then I give it more attention which is only like 5% of the time for JPG creation.

If I can get my thoughts wrapped around my sharpening article and get it finished, we can get that in the education forum.

Douglas Bolt
07-17-2008, 01:56 PM
Hi again,

Thanks for weighing in on this topic. It helped me and I suspect others as well.

I'd really like to see a sharpening article that you write. To tell the truth, I've never even visited the Education forum until now. Some very useful info there.

John Chardine
07-17-2008, 06:35 PM
Many thanks to all for the very useful links.

John Chardine
07-18-2008, 06:12 PM
By the way, my ACR (v. 4.4 something I think), under sharpening says "Sharpening (Preview Only)". I think it should say just "Sharpening" and I think the "Preview Only" means I'm not seeing the effects when the image opens up. Any thoughts?

Tim Vidrine
07-18-2008, 06:20 PM
John, that is correct. In previous versions of ACR it was not recommended to persist the sharpening due to the sharpening not being all that great, but was good enough to aid in displaying the user's changes to the conversion process. From what I understand ACR 4.x had a major overhaul with the help of a few guys from pixel genius, namely Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe, and is now a viable option for capture sharpening.

Peter Hawrylyshyn
07-21-2008, 08:22 PM
Doug -
Fraser and Schewe explain the rationale for capture sharpening in greater detail in their latest book ACR with PS3. By their guidelines, your settings might be quite aggressive depending on the type of image. Most bird/nature photography would constitute a medium-high frequency image. Here the rule of thumb is High-Low-High-Low : Amount: 60-80, Radius: 0.6 - 0.8, Detail:50-75, Masking: 30-50. The opposite would apply for low frequency images such as facial portraits (low-high-low-high) .

By setting your masking at 70% you're almost creating an edge mask which will negate the capture sharpening on most of the image (which is what you'd want to do on a facial portrait). You should only aim to mask out the background/sky/... while preserving the capture sharpening effect for most of the subject/bird ( ie: a lower Masking setting and smaller Radius).

The other major advantage with ACR capture sharpening is that it can be used with Smart Objects/Files in PS3. PKS/Pixel Genius won't work directly on files opened as Smart Objects. If you use ACR for capture sharpening and inital image adjustments (levels,curves, ...) and then open your files as Smart Objects in PS3, you can easily go back at any point in your PS3 workflow and adjust/modify your ACR settings.

I've switched to using ACR for my capture sharpening and initial image processing, have several actions for Creative sharpening depending on the image, but often still use PKS for output sharpening

Hope this helps