What Sharpening Tool Do You Use?

[clm738]

Hi Everyone,
Just wondering what everyone uses to sharpen their images and how they rate what they use.
Photoshop, Lightroom, DPP, Aperture, Plug-in and if so which one, etc.
Thanks for your input.

[mikew09]

Hi Carmen,
Depends for me. I always shoot raw and use DPP for the first cut as I find it does the raw stuff best. If the shot is fine in DPP I sharpen as the lsat action before I save to tiff. If I need to do some work I use PS Elements and sharpen last then save to tiff or jpeg. My issue is that PS Elements does a very poor job with display on my Dell laptop - let me stress that this is the fault of the laptop display and not the software. I am about to purchase the new iMac which will allow me to calibrate and benefit from the PS software which is very good.

Bottom line for me is I always sharpen last, so depends what software I use to process as to what I use to sharpen.

Finally, I am far from the best at PP of photos so will be interesting to hear other comments.

Hope this helps to get your thread going.

Mike

[monkey]

I mainly use lightroom but to retouch eyes and other area in portraits I move to Photoshop and work with the un-sharp mask.

[MarkW]

Focalblade as a plugin inside Aperture.

[clm738]

Mark I have had a good look at Focal Blade and it looks good. Can you get sharpening that really pops? I use Lightroom 2 and find its sharpening not quite good enough. I have installed Mogrify, which works in Lightroom's Export but you can't see your results till it's all over. Very frustrating.

[Allann]

Nik software's sharpen tool. I use their two step process where it does the presharpen of the raw, then an output sharpen according to the device it'll be displayed on, inkjet or screen.

[Miaow]

Another using Focalblade here - is a great plug in :)

[MarkW]

Mark I have had a good look at Focal Blade and it looks good. Can you get sharpening that really pops? I use Lightroom 2 and find its sharpening not quite good enough. I have installed Mogrify, which works in Lightroom's Export but you can't see your results till it's all over. Very frustrating.

I don't want sharpening that "pops", I want the scene to look natural like I haven't used a sharpening tool at all - just the way the image would appear to the eye.

I use it in aperture and CS3 and both show a live sharpen. For LR - I don't know, I don't use it.

[Wazza]

Have a look at the recent posts on sharpening by ricktas.

I like high pass filter sharpening because of the control and ability to tweak at any time.
Wazza

[ricktas]

I use High Pass Sharpening on a layer, then will mask some sections of the sharpened layer, leaving some sections sharp, and others a little softer. Sometimes an even, whole of photo sharpening doesn't work, and doing any sharpening method on a layer so you can adjust its intensity in various areas of the photo can make all the difference.