How do you sharpen?

[ronald moravec]

It is at least a two step process, once at the capture stage , once at final print stage.

The final sharpening on the computer must be seen on the print on the final medium, glossy is different than matt, both far different than computer screen, and it depends on final print size. Portraits are different than landscapes.

It is kind of a black art, but the book will help get through the weeds. $35 at Amazon.com

[mrladewig]

I shoot landscape primarily. For a while I was sharpening right up to the bleeding edge and sending it to the printer. At some point, it seemed to me that this was looking a bit unnatural and I decided to tone my sharpening down. Keep in mind that I'm sending to the Epson printer at 360ppi so the driver is not doing any interpolation. WYSIWIG in this case.

I let the scan software apply low USM before taking the file into photoshop. I'm of the mindset that the capture sharpening is beneficial to the final outcome, but I usually make a mess of it trying to go too far when I try to do it myself in photoshop.

I found that smart sharpen usually does a nice job with files originally captured digitally, but for me, it makes a mess of film scans and I avoid it unless I've resized down to web size. For prints I use unsharp mask in multiple passes. If I don't want the sharpness to bite, then I typically make passes at 75,.6,1 and 35,1,2. If I want more biting detail, then I'll make a first pass at 150,.4,1 before the other two.

[Sideshow Bob]

I use the action developed by Dan Margulis: http://layermonkey.com/node/115

Gale

[Mike Anderson]

I shoot landscape primarily. For a while I was sharpening right up to the bleeding edge and sending it to the printer. At some point, it seemed to me that this was looking a bit unnatural and I decided to tone my sharpening down.

One thing I've learned from this thread is that it's likely that I oversharpen.

...Mike

[Chris Strobel]

I sharpen by shooting things that are sharp to begin with