The goal of any sharpening is to create a halo that increase contrast at edges in the image. Darker darks and lighter lights at the edges increase apparent contrast that we interpret as increased sharpness. The trick is controlling the width and brightness of the halos so that they increase edge contrast without making the image look “crunchy”. It’s also worth mentioning that sharpening is not intended (and can not accomplish) to overcome lack of sharpness due to incorrect focus.
Modern sharpening practice is to do sharpening in three separate steps at different times during the workflow:
Capture
Creative
Output
While the screen shots in this series of posts come from Lightroom (LR), the same base code is used in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) so everything in this, and subsequent posts, applies equally to sharpening in ACR. In subsequent posts in this series I will go into more detail in how to implement Capture, Creative and Output sharpening in LR (and ACR). Read the rest of this entry »