articles/Nature/verysharppractice-page2

Very Sharp Practice - part 2 of 1 2 3 4 5 6

by Mike McNamee Published 01/06/2010

Martin Evening and Jeff Schewe have written extensively (and very well) on the topic. Their 'best practice' is to pre-sharpen from RAW and then apply a second, 'output' sharpening according to the device, and size of print. This is indeed good practice for 'best' work, but may not be needed for run-of-the-mill album and wall-portraiture work. There is a difference to what you do for this and what you might do for your 16"x20" Convention entry. This is not to encourage sloppy work, it is about fitness for purpose; you may not want to sharpen an image just after you have softened it to a dreamy, mood shot!

Aside from these issues there is the perennial question, 'what is the correct level of sharpening'. This is an unanswerable question, it depends upon lots of factors, including some, or all, of the following: the viewer's eyesight*, the viewing distance, the print size, the paper surface, the illumination level, the subject properties (eg a bird's feathers or a model's skin) and finally the taste of the viewer. A neutral response to an image is probably the best measure of success.

If a group of judges are viewing an image and sharpening is mentioned it might well mean 'too sharp'; it could also mean unsharp! By a neutral response we mean that none of the judges says anything, suggesting everybody is concentrating on the image and issues of sharpening are not under consideration. Obviously a grossly over-sharpened image with haloes around everything is flawed and will probably be viewed as such by all present.

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