Originally Posted by
Isaac Grant
This is such a sweet shot of a Pintail in flight. Excellent landing pose. Sharpening looks perfect to me. I am confused about what you said though. You are importing a jpeg in PS and not a 16bit Tiff? I convert my RAW file to a 16 bit TIFF and then open in PS. I sharpen in 2 ways. Either I use the Detail Extractor set to 25% opacity and the sharpen or just sharpen using NIK output sharpener set to default for my only sharpening. I prefer that to smart sharpen but only because I never seem to get the proper settings with smart sharpen.
As to highlights here is what I do. In DPP I adjust the highlight slider down as needed. If the image is a bit hot then I will go down as much as -3. Have also lowered the brightness slider a bit as well. Usually -.17 is enough. Won't export until my whites are in the 230's. After converting and importing into PS I do a highlight/shadow adjustment with the following settings.
Shadows seto to:
Amount 3%
Tone 5%
Radius 35px
Highlights
Amount 15%
Tone 10%
Radius 30px
Of course you can make adjustments from there if needed. After using these settings I have never had hot whites on a shot that was initially exposed well but say not perfectly.