to sharpen or not to sharpen in Capture One pro 7
As each camera supported by Capture One (A Nikon D3s in my case) has a certain amount of sharpening automatically applied by the software, should I apply more sharpening once the RAW file has been processed into a jpeg?
My images appear on the web and in music magazines.
I shoot live music where a certain amount of motion blur is acceptable!
My images appear on the web and in music magazines.
I shoot live music where a certain amount of motion blur is acceptable!
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Greetings!
So... the situation is that this is a huge point of debate within the industry. In fact there have literally been entire books devoted to image sharpening, the best methods, and when to do it. (yes for real).
Which means you may not get a straight answer, but what you will get is a lot of people insisting that their way is the best (or "I have no idea, but this is what I do").
I personally am in the camp of applying no sharpening until all of my retouching has been completed. This way I have an unsharpened file that I can fine tune depending on where the images will be published. Lots of people will disagree with me. Frankly, you're going to have to do some experimentation and decide what works best for your images.
My only direct suggestion is that if you are going to be resizing your images for any reason, it's usually a good idea to apply the sharpening after the resize step and not before.
Good luck!0 -
As Brian says you will get many opinions on this. Here is mine 😉
There are three general "phases" to sharpening, the first is usually done during the raw conversion and is just to eliminate the sight blurring which is often apparent from digital camera's due to the anti aliasing filters etc. This is what C1 is doing by default and is often referred to as "pre sharpening".
The next phase is "creative sharpening", whereby you sharpen parts of the image only, for example the eyes in a portrait.
The final stage is "output sharpening" and is based on the resolution, size and type of output media.0 -
@Brian
@sizzlingbadger
+1 😉0 -
Sharpening isn't actually sharpening.
It is supplying outlines around your objects - just like makeup artists use black eye liner to make eyes look more distinctive (=sharp).
For this reason I check "disable sharpening" when outputting from C1 Pro.
On some images, I don't even need sharpening through Photoshop. Sometimes using curves the right way in color contrast and sometimes luminosity contrast creates enough clarity and shape distinction. And I must say I like my images tack sharp.
But most images get sharpened using a mix of unsharp mask and high pass. If I need extreme sharpness I use LAB sharpening.
But, to come back to the original question: I don't want to introduce any artifacts before the final editing (and that's what you get when you sharpen). I have worked for a while with exporting sharpening from C1 PRO, but this is only advisable if you are editing images that are close to ready.
The more you have to work with them in Photoshop, the less sharpening export should be done.0 -
Thanks for the replies guys!.. I do find it odd that C1 has all these sharpening features if everyone turns them off!
I have been told in the past to "turn off" the sharpening so perhaps I might try this again, although recently I have left the sharpening on... i cant see the difference in the finished photos but that might be because I shoot live music so the conditions are always a bit extreme.0 -
[quote="NNN634626670447353712" wrote:
Thanks for the replies guys!.. I do find it odd that C1 has all these sharpening features if everyone turns them off!
I have been told in the past to "turn off" the sharpening so perhaps I might try this again, although recently I have left the sharpening on... i cant see the difference in the finished photos but that might be because I shoot live music so the conditions are always a bit extreme.
I very rarely move any files to another application for further processing so I use C1 sharpening.
I think if I was going to export for compositing in another application I might well turn off all sharpening before export so that the final combined image could be sharpened consistently. But would still need to see the potential in the sharpened image at some point before exporting.
I don't think there is a definitive right and wrong way to do things that always applies in all circumstances but depending on the sort of things you do there may be different ways of doing things for different final output needs. The most evident example would be the somewhat different requirements for producing a crushed jpg for a social media type web site compared to printing for a large format fine art print.
It's really a question of what works for you and your clients and, from a commercial point of view, how to deliver that with the least possible effort.
All just my opinion of course.0 -
[quote="NNN634626670447353712" wrote:
Thanks for the replies guys!.. I do find it odd that C1 has all these sharpening features if everyone turns them off!
I have been told in the past to "turn off" the sharpening so perhaps I might try this again, although recently I have left the sharpening on... i cant see the difference in the finished photos but that might be because I shoot live music so the conditions are always a bit extreme.
Sharpening inside C1 Pro is necessary - you don't want to do adjustments on slightly blurry looking images.
But after you did your key adjustments, you can export the files without the C1 Pro sharpening, which has served it purpose to give a good viewing experience.
Then, in PHotoshop, you can use a vast arrary of "sharpening" methods, like the mentioned "sharpening" through color, contrast, or the different ways to enhance the edges like unsharp mask.0
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