About sharpness

[Arild]

This pic was rather blase and not contrasty, not very .... sharp

As I have done for the past 18 yrs, I unsharpened it in Photshop.

I have always used USM.

But for the last three yrs I have used smart sharpen -- with about 150-200 % Radius ca 0,8 and reduce noise ca 10%
and "gaussian blur"

Is this correct, the way to go, still?

[Jack Dahlgren]

In my opinion it is oversharpened and over blurred. The bright halos around parts of the photo caused by sharpening look unnatural, and the blurring is inconsistent. I think you might want to look at the way photographers use light to separate the subject from the background. Bright light in foreground and shadow in back will highlight your subject without need to blur or sharpen.

[Michael Erlewine]

Is this correct, the way to go, still?

There is no "correct" way to go. If you are asking for suggestions, my two cents would be:
Decide what kind of photography you are doing. Is this an identification or “field guide” photo or is it a photo that is just for its beauty?

I would shoot this kind of photo not in full sun, but in morning or evening light.

Shooting three groups, IMO, is at least one too many.

I would give the photo more headroom.

I would spend more time (and attention) on post-processing.

I don’t intend to offend you, but just a quick work-over is included that makes it easier for me. Folks may not agree. Just trying to be useful.

[David H. Hartman]

I do my sharpening usually by starting with unsharpmask starting with a moderate percentage, a pixel radius of no more than 1 and a threshold of 4. This doesn't tend to sharpen noise and doesn't tend to create a halo. High thresholds look unnatural to me.

After this I down sample in stages using smart sharpen basic using various percentages and with a pixel radii of 1 or less. I will end with something like 5~10% with a radius of 0.3. The very low percentages and radii at the end are only to counter the slight blurring cause by down sampling.

I always sharpen on a separate layer in Photoshop. This way if it's a bit over sharpened I can fade the opacity to reduce sharpening. I normally don't sharpen the basic PSD file with my final edits but wait to sharpen for a specific use and sharpen in a separate file with just two layers, background and sharp. 

Some forum software automatically sharpens photos and in so doing over sharpens frequently. I try to upload under sharpened files in anticipation. 

I start in Nikon Capture NX-D or NX2 and finish in Photoshop. I do all of my sharpening in Photoshop.

I hope this helps,

Dave Hartman

[Arild]

Many thanks!!

Facts; I import my photos into Lightrom ver 2017 (paid subscriber) and there I pick the photos. Then I export unmodified and then opens the NEF in Photoshop ver 2017 (paid subscriber)

For beauty or field guide? Thats the problem. I shoot as I did in 1986. Back then I was professor in Botany. My kodachrome 64 slides were used in a exhibition to identify plants.

I am thinking more and more of this, maybe its time to let the past be gone, try to find the beauty in my flowers.

[Michael Erlewine]

I am thinking more and more of this, maybe its time to let the past be gone, try to find the beauty in my flowers.

For sure, the beauty is beyond their identification. As a trained naturalist, I gave up doing field-guide photos many years ago. I find relief from my tendency to want to identify and categorize everything in the simple beauty. In other words, beneath my obsessive desire to "see" with fine lenses is how beautiful plants are.

[Matthew Currie]

For myself, being not a real fanatic about some of the finer details, and put off by too many sharpening artifacts, I tend to do whatever is the minimum required for the purpose.  Especially when you can't tell what a forum software will do, or how a person's own system will process things, I do little or no sharpening for posts, which gets some critics upset.  For JPG images on forums, I have generally just used the freeware "Faststone Image Viewer," which has a decent unsharp mask.  I downsize first, and then add just enough to sharpen up the edges - in Faststone that's usually a setting of between 15 and 20.  Above about 18 edges start to glow a little. 

Here's a quick and dirty sample - a day lily shot several years ago with a D3200 and an old 85/1.8, exposure not metered and now forgotten.  The image is not killer sharp to start with.  The original NEF is downsized in Faststone without other processing, and the right hand is the same downsize with 18% sharpening.   That's about as far as I would generally go.  At some point you need to decide whether sharpening will make a picture better in its own right, or whether it's a miss from the start (no judgment required on this one, which was really just a lens test). 

[Arild]

Well then, lets takes this ferns. Late in the evening. Beauty or technique?

[Michael Erlewine]

For me, the best sharpening is to use a sharp lens that is highly corrected. That is much better than too much sharpening in post. Here is a photo taken with the Nikon D800E and the Voigtlander 125mm APO-Lanthar.

[brent_e]

the sharpness in the stem of the left flower draws my eye away from the other flowers.  I think that's distracting. 

I like the ferns! 

[Matthew Currie]

I like ferns and I like the idea of the tree trunk there to counterbalance the left hand, but find the out of focus moss at the far right a little distracting.  I'd be inclined to try cropping it a little, just to make the tree trunk less of an object in its own right.