Hello and sharpening test.

Hello to all. I’ve been lurking for a while now, enjoying both the photographs and comments posted here. I am impressed with the quality of both. My ability to participate in forums is inconsistent, but if that’s permissible I hope to join the fray. I’ll feel more comfortable joining the discussions on others’ photos if I post a few of my own as well. I’ll try to post a few of my summer favorites in the near future.

First though, I’d love some feedback from the regulars on this forum on how sharp their monitors are. In the past, I have struggled with the sweet spot, often finding what looks sharp on one monitor looks soft on another.

This 3x7 stitched photo looking south from the viewpoint at Ecola State Park is a “wannabe,” but it is my most recent so I’ll use it as a test. (I was hoping for a dawn sky full of dramatic color to do this iconic view justice, but had to settle for a small patch of light shining in on Cannon Beach.)

Does this photo look sharp enough? Too much? Too little? Thanks for any feedback; it will hopefully help me sharpen appropriately in the future.

John W. Williams

Welcome, John.

I would say it appears to be a bit oversharpened; especially being evident in the immediate grass; as the sharpening artifacts present a difficulty in being able to distinguish the natural-grass details. The sky also seems a bit overly grainy. Very good in the respects of composition and exposure, though.

Looks a little overdone to me. One thing you might want to try when you sharpen is to duplicate the image layer, sharpen one, then mask out areas that look oversharpened (the sky, grass in the foreground, etc) so you can control it a bit while not necessarily sacrificing the effect in areas that need it.

Looks a little oversharpened on my end also.

Somewhere on this site there is a thread on web sharpening technique developed by Marc Adamus. I am sure if you search enough you will find it. I use it almost all of the time with a lot of success, though truthfully I tend to over sharpen. Knowing that I set the sharpening where it looks right to me then back off a bit. I think everyone has their own way of sharpening but Marc's technique, when mastered is really great.

JG

John

I found it --here you go:

JG


http://pacificnw.naturephotographers.net/tips/photoshop.htm

I'll second the recommendation of Marc's technique, it really works.

I do wonder how he discovered that, there has to be a story there... (And I mean that in the spirit of my imagination running amok, and dreaming about things like how they discovered Penicillin... if it's something as mundane as he read it in a book, I don't want to know! I mean how do people think or find these things, it's sometimes just amazing! )

Kudo's Marc, and thanks for sharing that!

Thanks everyone for the feedback!

For those of you using Marc's tip, what filter do you use to do the initial and final resizing (bicubic, bicubic sharper, lanczos, etc.)? Has anyone played with this method to see what it is actually doing different than USM?

Hi John.....good to see you over here......Welcome to this great Forum....
your image looks dead on to me on my 19" CRT......and I do mean TACK sharp......

Hi John, I've been using Bicubic sharper for the initial resizing to 1500 piuxels in the big dimension, and then straight bicubic AFTER the sharpening, down to 720 pixels.

It seems to do the trick quite nicely.