Sharpen Settings
I don't mind applying a little sharpening to my RAWS in the conversion process but I am kind of lost with where to set the settings. Amount and Treshold. I don't want to oversharpen but a teeny dose of it helps to make pics pop and saves time in PS.
WHat are some popular settings? Mostly portrait, wedding work
WHat are some popular settings? Mostly portrait, wedding work
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I like just a little bit of capture sharpening - my default is to set CO to Standard Look, Threshold 1, and amount 34. Sometimes I follow this up with a bit more sharpening with Photoshop CS2 Smart Sharpen.
When I use Adobe's ACR to do the raw conversion, I use Pixel Genius's PhotoKit Sharpener, but I've found that Smart Sharpen give better results with images from CO.
David0 -
unclemike,
follow the discussion at this thread...
http://forum.phaseone.com/viewtopic.php ... sharpening
K C0 -
It is true that the processing of raw images should include some sharpening.
There is no easy way to answer the question of "how much sharpening?". It depends on many factors. The biggest of which are:
1. The camera in use.
2. The destination of the image, where/how it will be displayed.
3. The content of the shot.
1. Because different cameras require different ammounts of sharpening. Most (if not all) DSLRs have "anti-aliasing" (or low-pass) filters in front of their imaging sensor. This is just a fancy way of saying a softening filter. But they do serve a purpose. Because of the way the camera's sensor works--a Bayer grid where each individual pixel is only sensitive to one of the primaries: red, green, or blue--pixels need to be combined with two of their neighbors to reconstruct the color of the scene. So this bluring filter serves to smooth the color of details smaller than one pixel over it and the ones beside it. This is good, if sub-pixel sized details were recorded by only one pixel the resulting image would have much more color noise. But no filter is a brick wall, they all have a slope. So to smooth out details up to sub-pixel in size, the slope, or roll-off, of the filter will continue to have an effect details into the larger-than-pixel size. Sharpening helps to reverse this effect, but amount needed is entirely dependant on the camera, the size of its pixels, and the type of anti-aliasing filter used.
2. Where the shot will be viewed is another factor. This also includes the resolution of the medium. Will it be a web gallery, or printed? What is the printing process, offset, inkjet, film printer? Each device needs more or less. Even worse, is the fact that monitors (especially LCDs) need the least ammount of sharpening. So an image sharpened properly for a four-color seperation offset press will look overly sharp on screen. This is where experience and knowing how a particular printer behaves helps. There is a plug-in for Photoshop that guides one through these choices, but it doesn't have access to the raw Bayer grid information that I believe gives Capture One an edge (no pun intended) when it comes to restoring some of the details removed by the low-pass filter.
3. Last, is the actual content of the photo. This is actually of lesser importance than the first two items. But is worth noting as photographs of people generally actually benefit from the smoothing effect of the filter more than landscape or architecture. So portraits usually won't get as much sharpening.
An additional note: The out-of-the-box sharpening settings of Capture One seem to be for Phase One backs used in fashion or modeling. High resolution, medium format sensors with high quality (or removable) low-pass filters need a lot less sharpening than DSLRs. So don't be afraid to increase the ammount of sharpening and once you are happy; set that as the default in the preferences.0 -
[quote="unclemike"] wrote:
I don't mind applying a little sharpening to my RAWS in the conversion process but I am kind of lost with where to set the settings. Amount and Treshold. I don't want to oversharpen but a teeny dose of it helps to make pics pop and saves time in PS.
I've found that, for my purposes, Soft Look is more flexible. In comparison,
Standard tends to halo and generate artifacts at much lower settings. This,
I assume, is the result of Standard's much larger radius.
Soft Look really does a nice job, without looking harsh or digital. Fine-
tuning the Threshold control is key, but you have to do that with USM
anyway.
For my XT images, I generally set Amount anywhere from 50-150, and
Threshold from 2-15. Depends on the shot and how much time you're
willing to spend to get it right.
Rob0 -
I wish the technical details of what the three settings are actually doing was documented.
I can make a pretty good guess what the "threshold" setting does. It seems to select which pixels will be sharpened based on the difference in contrast ratio to their neighbors. But is the selection based just on the luminance Value or does Hue enter into it also? 0 seems to sharpen all pixels, and 100 none. So, is the formula something like this:
Let Px be the value of the pixel that may be sharpened.
Let Py be the average of the 8 surrounding pixels.
If (the absolute value of Px - Py) / Px * 100 is < Threshold then select for sharpening?
But what about the "amount"? What are the units? 0 doesn't disable sharpening completely, so is there a base amount applied? There doesn't seem to be any color shift so the sharpening is only be applied to the Value component (in the Hue/Saturation/Value model).
Last is the mysterious "Look". It seems to affect the radius around the selected pixel which the sharpening effect is applied. Soft would have a larger radius with the changes in Value distributed throughout the circle. With the largest changes in the middle falling off to no change at the edge. But what is the function for the curve, and is it based on pixel count or the resolution of the image? The sharpening of the "Standard" look doesn't seem to reach much farther than the nearest neighboring pixels. So all of the "Amount" is applied over a very small area. It "rings" or creates halo artifacts very quickly.
Like I said, these are just guesses based on my observations. I would like to see better documentation on exactly what the controls do, so I could more intelligently apply sharpening from within Capture One rather than just going with "what looks good".0
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