He thinks he's in GQ. I'm shooting like a hipster. It sorta almost works.
Sharpening is a very misunderstood subject, especially when it comes to RAW files. I suppose this is probably because no one ever really explains it other than to say “it makes your photos sharper”. I suppose this is true, but hardly enough of an explanation. This article is the overview of sharpening using Lightroom 3 and CS5. Good? Good.
There are three types of sharpening, generally accepted as capture, output and creative. In this series we will focus on capture and output sharpening because I have never actually used ‘creative’ sharpening and thus probably shouldn’t be trying to explain it. I suspect its code for when you over-sharpen and try and pass it off as ‘artistic’.
Capture sharpening is the first step in the sharpening process. With this step you are reintroducing the sharpness that was lost when you took the photo. I generally think of it as the step where you make the sharp things actually sharp instead of just sort of sharp. If you were to shoot Jpeg this step would be done in-camera. Shooting RAW means you have to do this yourself. It also means you have total control over this step, a very good thing. The trouble is that most people (in my experience) either only apply the default sharpening in Lightroom or apply some sort of custom capture sharpening without really having a good idea of quite what is going on.
Output sharpening is almost always ignored (less so now that it is an export option in Lightroom, but still not understood). Output sharpening is specific to (surprise) the type of output that you are using your photo for. The two most common are screen and print. The output sharpening in Lightroom is fairly straightforward and works reasonably well for screen and most print outputs. Where things get dicey is high-end inkjet printing and I’ll be covering the options for that (mostly in CS5 plug-ins).
So there’s the very basic overview. Check back for the real meat and potatoes stuff sometime in the sort of near future.
S'all good.
