More on sharpening

I think a general issue I have with sharpening and editing shots in general all comes down to what I touched on in my last post about focus. I've got every conceivable bit of kit for editing & printing photographs, any limitation I have are in my approach not in my kit. It's true that I like shooting more than editing but I do actually know what I'm doing, I just don't devote enough time to it, I want to get through it quickly. I'll bale as soon as I can and that's lazy and it means that I go back and work on the same shot again and again which in the end only costs me more time.

I'm more careful when printing, ink and paper aren't cheap. But I've wasted a few bob on bad prints, as I said I've got all the kit to get it right, when I don't it's down to me.

A great bit of software for sharpening is Nik Sharpener pro 3.0



First stage is input sharpening.

This is the part I'm most lazy with, I tend to just use the sliders which is pretty lazy considering the amount of effort I put in to shooting. I never use the control points or colour ranges (more on those in the next image) at this stage, I don't even brush the settings in. It's just a global first pass bit of sharpening. Lazy man... no wonder I'm always going back to shots

After you've done your standard kind of editing it's time for some output sharpening. NSP3 has some really good options for output sharpening.

There's plenty to chose from here, this is one for the paper and printer resolution that I use

As you can see you can pick the type of paper you use, the resolution of your printer (lots of options) even sharpening to suite the viewing distance though they recommend auto. You can make global adjustments using the sliders but there's a lot of options for fine tuning. One of them is sharpening using the colour ranges method, just use the eye dropper and choose the colour you want to selectively sharpen. I've got to admit that I've been neglecting this option but it's actually very cool.

Control Points

Rather than using colour ranges you can opt for control points which you can place anywhere on the image many times over.

You'll get a lot more info on their site it's a great bit of kit.

Put the work in and you'll get a lot out of it ( I jsay that when I'm meant to be sorting my site out today, not blabbing here)