gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

I sharpen in RAW. Using the Alt key and the sliders you can hone in on the effects. For example, Alt+ Masking slider shows an outline of what exactly will be sharpened in order to fine tune your edits.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

I have read that you should address noise first otherwise you sharpen the noose making it more difficult to remove. Is this correct?

clemente21

This is a good reference for the questions you have. Perhaps more information about sharpening that you ever use.
https://www.amazon.com/World-Sharpening-Photoshop-Camera-Lightroom-ebook/dp/B002NQSMWW/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=image+sharpening&qid=1562676031&s=gateway&sr=8-1#customerReviews

bleirer

Thanks. After reading that book how do you personally approach sharpening, what methods, and why one method vs. Another?

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I use either unsharp mask or high pass sharpening in Photoshop... occasionally both in an image. I rarely use smart sharpen.

I may do some very minimal, light sharpening early in my workflow... (for example, my Lightroom has default sharpening during RAW conversion). However, I always do my final sharpening after the image has had any noise reduction applied and after it's been re-sized for it's intended use. If sharpening is done too early in the workflow, it can lead to problems. If an image hasn't had noise reduction applied, any noise that's in it will be amplified by sharpening. An image that's reduced in size for it's intended use will naturally look sharper... something that's smaller and/or lower resolution such as internet display in a typical size an 100 ppi, will not need - or tolerate - anywhere near as much sharpening as and image that's being prepped to make a 16x24" print at 300 ppi. Much sharpening appears to be done by enhancing micro contrast... so any more major contrast adjustments to an image should be done before applying sharpening, too.

I'll sometimes do selective sharpening, as others have mentioned.... I usually do that with high pass, but sometimes with unsharp mask too. In either case, I do this with layers and masks.

On very rare occasion I might use Photoshop's sharpening tool to touch up a very small area.

Part of the same process, I'll sometimes also selectively add blur effects to the out of focus areas (usually gaussian blur, though I might experiment with other types of blur). This may be needed to keep sharpening from causing the OOF area from looking "grainy", but also can serve to make the sharpened portions of an image appear even sharper. Again, limiting it to select areas of the image is done using layers & masks in Photoshop (usually at the same time sharpening is being done).

nickims2 Loc: Mississippi currently

Topaz Sharpen AI is the best!

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

A possible book to order if someone is interested in pursuing this...Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom. It's an older book but offers good insight into sharpening. It's by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe and they were both instrumental and involved in the creation of PS and LR, although I don't know a lot about that. I believe it was in the sharpening processes if I recall correctly. A good read.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

I've noticed that any sharpening looks too sharp on HD TVs, while it is fine for prints.

I have to make two versions of a file depending on its end use.

RRS Loc: Not sure

As to radius, is that .7 or 7?

Thomas902 Loc: Washington DC

Only sharpen at the end of the work flow...
And then at 100% view...

Every image size needs to be sharpen individually...
And selectively....

How you do this is where the art comes into the equation...
Only with time/practice and careful analysis are you going to improve rather than degrade...

Sharpening is all about edge contrast... the sooner you get your head around this and stop thinking about the "tools" to use the sooner you'll begin to optimize your imagery...

As others have stated, never shoot in 8 bit jpg... always in RAW...
Unless you want to invest major time tweaking your camera's picture control settings... I actually know a very successful wedding shooter who never shoots RAW but he is amazing at fine tuning Picture Control settings on his Nikon... Yes you can fine tune .jpg sharpening... but it is a universal setting...

RRS Loc: Not sure

Yes, once you sharpen the noise it's more difficult to reduce it. Sometimes all you can do is to reduce the noise depending on the shot and not eliminate noise completely or you will have a soft image.

saxman71 Loc: Wenatchee

I asked the same question here a couple months ago and the answers, not surprisingly, are pretty similar. I personally have been using the high pass filter to sharpen what I think are my better images. To do this, I make a copy of the background layer and turn it into a smart object. I then apply the filter (usually a radius of between 2 and 3.5) and look at the difference between the "overlay" and "soft" blend modes to find a sharpening amount I like. Once this is accomplished you can use a black brush to remove sharpening from background areas that you really don't want sharpened. You can take the same approach with the blur tools. As others have noted, any noise reduction done should be applied before sharpening.

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

Good point. The human visual system perceives contrast as sharpness. The models show maximum sensitivity in the 8 to 10 cycles / degree on the retina, which of course depends on the image and viewing distance. To make a complicated subject simple, increasing contrast makes an image "look" sharper.

davidb1879

Re:Bleirer (sharpening). If I want an image to be sharp (many excellent images are not sharp) I use a tripod. If the subject is moving I use a very fast shutter speed. If possible I also use the lens' sweet spot to set aperture). If the image is still unsharp I use post processing as per the advice of hoggers (above).

elent

I've been using topaz gigapixel ai more for it's ability to give me great sharpening! I just set the enlargement to 2x and let it do its thing. It does have a tendency towards luminescence in some cases, but that's easily corrected.