Swallowtail Kite

[ArthurDent]

July 14, 2019 near Belleview, Florida. Nikon D500, 300mm f/4 PF, 1/4000 sec., f/4, ISO100.

[PeterN]

Nice catch! Congrats with your 300mm PP? It is a great lens!
Pardon me for asking but is it possible that you over-sharpened?

[ArthurDent]

Nice catch! Congrats with your 300mm PP? It is a great lens!
Pardon me for asking but is it possible that you over-sharpened?

Peter- Yes, I think so. I didn't notice it on Lightroom, but I saw it immediately when I posted it here. No time to correct it this morning, but I intend to do so this afternoon when I get back from work and then will repost it.

[ArthurDent]

Peter- The first image was sharpened then the head, claws and insect the bird is holding were given some additional sharpening.The image was then run through the Nic collection presharpener.  This image is moderately sharpened (45) and some additional sharpening (also 45) is applied to the head, claws and insect the bird is holding. The presharpener was not used. I'll post one more after this and I'd appreciate your comments as well as the comments of anyone else who would like to join in. Sharpening artifacts seem less obvious to me in the second image, but still present.

[ArthurDent]

In this,  the third example, all sharpening was removed. The image was run through the Nic presharpener and then was sharpened to 30. Additional sharpening of 65 was applied to the head, claws and insect. I like the third one the best, but I'm certainly no expert at post processing. Any thoughts?

[beryllium10]

Beautiful bird!  They're both fine, but of the two I also prefer the final version, for the increased detail in the claws and in the bright feathers.  I still see a slight outline around the upper tail and wing which may be a sharpening artifact, but I don't think it detracts much in a high-contrast photo like this.  I also see a bit of noise or patterning in the sky which could be due to sharpening, or perhaps a jpeg compression artifact.  Did you save the jpeg file at a fairly high quality setting?

Cheers,  John

[ArthurDent]

Beautiful bird!  They're both fine, but of the two I also prefer the final version, for the increased detail in the claws and in the bright feathers.  I still see a slight outline around the upper tail and wing which may be a sharpening artifact, but I don't think it detracts much in a high-contrast photo like this.  I also see a bit of noise or patterning in the sky which could be due to sharpening, or perhaps a jpeg compression artifact.  Did you save the jpeg file at a fairly high quality setting?

Cheers,  John

Yes, the export setting for the quality of the jpeg  from lightroom was 100%. I also set it to export with “ high” sharpening for the screen  at 72 dpi, so I’m wondering if my export settings might be why I didn’t see the sharpening artifact in Lightroom but it was apparant in the first image I posted, and to a lesser extent in my later images which were exported using the same settings. I’ll have to experiment with that and see how it affects the output.

[PeterN]

I am not sure if I am the right person to comment on sharpening, Arthur. I still like the moment in the photo! Perhaps Ann and others could jump in and share her/their thoughts on sharpening in PP.
I noticed similar issues like you in LR when I shoot a subject contrasting with the background. E.g. I shot a building in Sydney with a fence and some plants between the two parts of the building. I shot in Raw with D750 and a 35mm sigma art lens. After importing into LR I noticed an outline around the buildings, the plants and the fence. I was not sure if it was caused by LR conversion or the lighting situation. One thought that occurred to me was that is was caused by "automatic" chromatic aberration removal but I did not further look into it. Others are much more knowledgeable than me. In your case I am puzzled as well. You shoot at ISO 100, so I wonder where the noise comes from with a 45 sharpening setting. Did you shoot in jpeg? If so, you may want to lower sharpening settings (and noise reduction) in-camera or shoot in raw instead. Personally I prefer to set sharpening and NR as low as possible. 

PS: I now read your comment in export sharpening. I am curious what happens if you change these. 

Could you share the original file for some further inspection?

Regarding sharpening in general: I purchased Topaz Sharpen AI and am quite impressed with that program. It delivers results that are difficult to get otherwise or require quite some work in photoshop. It does not always work though. I haven't taken the time to test the program thoroughly so I can't tell when to use it and when not to use. Nevertheless, I can recommend it.

[ArthurDent]

I am not sure if I am the right person to comment on sharpening, Arthur. I still like the moment in the photo! Perhaps Ann and others could jump in and share her/their thoughts on sharpening in PP.
I noticed similar issues like you in LR when I shoot a subject contrasting with the background. E.g. I shot a building in Sydney with a fence and some plants between the two parts of the building. I shot in Raw with D750 and a 35mm sigma art lens. After importing into LR I noticed an outline around the buildings, the plants and the fence. I was not sure if it was caused by LR conversion or the lighting situation. One thought that occurred to me was that is was caused by "automatic" chromatic aberration removal but I did not further look into it. Others are much more knowledgeable than me. In your case I am puzzled as well. You shoot at ISO 100, so I wonder where the noise comes from with a 45 sharpening setting. Did you shoot in jpeg? If so, you may want to lower sharpening settings (and noise reduction) in-camera or shoot in raw instead. Personally I prefer to set sharpening and NR as low as possible. 

PS: I now read your comment in export sharpening. I am curious what happens if you change these. 

Could you share the original file for some further inspection?

Regarding sharpening in general: I purchased Topaz Sharpen AI and am quite impressed with that program. It delivers results that are difficult to get otherwise or require quite some work in photoshop. It does not always work though. I haven't taken the time to test the program thoroughly so I can't tell when to use it and when not to use. Nevertheless, I can recommend it.

I checked the box for automatic chromatic abberation correction. I’ll go back and uncheck it and see what happens. I always shoot nefs, so if it is a jpeg problem, it occurs when lightroom converts the nef to a jpeg for output. I’d be happy to share the file if you would explain how to go about doing that. Thanks for your input.

[ArthurDent]

Here it is with the jpeg export sharpening set to "normal." No other changes. Also, I was mistaken in my earlier post when I stated the box for chromatic aberration removal had been checked. When I reviewed the image it was unchecked. So, I will check it and repost to see if that makes a difference.

To me, it seems there is less sharpening artifact in the image, but it is a very small change.

[ArthurDent]

Sharpening for export back to "high," chromatic aberration correction box checked.

I don't see much difference between this post and post 4, but I'm certainly no expert and my eyes are not as good as they used to be.

I think the best results were obtained by removing all sharpening, running the image through the Nic presharpener, applying moderate final sharpening in Lightroom and selective higher sharpening for those areas people tend to look at closely, for a bird, the head, claws and anything in the claws, then exporting using standard sharpening. See Reply #9.

[ArthurDent]

After reading some on the internet, I found a post which suggested not using output sharpening in the export dialogue. This is the image with output sharpening deselected. To me, it looks slightly less sharp than the image posted with normal sharpening enabled and has less sharpening artifact. Any thoughts?

[pluton]

I have concluded that the output sharpening in Lightroom is optimized for inkjet printing, not for web display. (Inkjet prints from Lightroom look very nice indeed). 
There is some image processing involved in the forum software also.
I generally use the "High" sharpening in Lightroom for images to display here on NG. When those 'highly sharpened' images display here, it looks like a very modest, small amount of vague sharpening has been applied.  Clearly, in my mind, there must be other more effective sharpening tools for website display.

[Ann]

What I think you may be looking for is more definition in the creamy feathers in his underwing?

For that purpose you might want to experiment with using adjustment brushes to brush in more texture and high-frequency contrast into that area.

[In passing, I should mention that I never use any of the Preset Sharpening settings but adjust all the sliders individually depending on the subject matter. You might also like to google "Deconvolution Sharpening" because you might like the results which you can achieve with it.]

[ArthurDent]

What I think you may be looking for is more definition in the creamy feathers in his underwing?

For that purpose you might want to experiment with using adjustment brushes to brush in more texture and high-frequency contrast into that area.

[In passing, I should mention that I never use any of the Preset Sharpening settings but adjust all the sliders individually depending on the subject matter. You might also like to google "Deconvolution Sharpening" because you might like the results which you can achieve with it.]

Ann- Thank you for the tip. This is with deconvolution sharpening applied to the entire image (radius=0.5, detail=100, masking= 0, level = 40) and detail sharpening of 65 applied to the creamy/white feathers, head, talons and grasshopper. I also have +0.95 stops of exposure compensation added, which may be hiding some detail. I'll repost with that substantially reduced.