Sharpen for net tips please

oO Stevie Oo · 21 Feb 2012 at 22:56

As above please,
My photos look great in raw, the even look pretty good on the Jpeg file I save them as, but soon as I upload them, they acquire haziness and don't look as crisp.
I know sharp pictures are possible as Ive seen plenty on here and POTN.

Currently I edit in lightroom develop, then right click and edit in Photoshop, add my watermark, then go file, save as, select Jpeg from the drop down box, then im done.

I know lightroom has the sharpen and NR options in there but should I be sharpening in LR or PS?

What method do you use please as I have been struggling with this for a while

Any tips appreciated

Cheers
Ste

ChroniC · 21 Feb 2012 at 23:59

I would suggest always sharpening as the last thing you do.
I have no issues with just using the Unsharpen mask filter in Photoshop. it does a good job. I normally set it to 100% and 1.5px
You can also use a another technique called High Pass sharpening. Create a duplicate layer of your image, go to filters>other>high pass. Set it to about 6px and then set the blending mode of the layer to soft light.
This are the two most common techniques.

Temi_D · 22 Feb 2012 at 01:02

There's a pretty big about sharpening here http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=466333. Currently reading through it and I've learnt a few things already.

GTRacer · 22 Feb 2012 at 02:00

Smart sharpening -> Lens Blur -> Radius to taste. Works much better than USM.

Ice Globe · 22 Feb 2012 at 09:41

When you downsize an image in Photoshop you'll often lose sharpness unless in that window you set the resample method to Bicubic Sharper.

Although I've found this can oversharpen in some instances.

oO Stevie Oo · 25 Feb 2012 at 00:18

cheers chaps,
so what would you say is best?
set NR and sharpen to 0 in lightroom and just sharpen in photoshop?
Also im pretty sure my camera has sharpening as default (550D set to standard, but im sure that does sharpen), should i disable that?, or leave that as is?

Cheers again

Ksanti · 25 Feb 2012 at 07:57

If you're shooting RAW the sharpness in camera won't make any difference; that's a Jpeg thing I think. An unsharp mask is sufficient, and smart sharpen is slightly better. Just play around with each image and find a level that suits you. Photoshop is better than lightroom as you can mask around areas if they all that sharpening is doing in some places is accentuating noises, but lightroom is quicker. I use photoshop because I'd have to export everything twice from lightroom if I didn't (one full size, one resized and sharpened for web) and my normal workflow is lightroom -> Photoshop anyway.

Also try and resize a copy for uploading separately e.g. 640*427 so that you have the sharpening how you want it, as I'm fairly sure flickr sharpens images if it has to downsize them which could end up with overly sharp images.