How sharp do you want it?

It's quiet on here, so I'll post a pic, or two.

The first pic is a full-size crop from a portrait, unretouched, unsharpened and otherwise unaltered (save for adjusting gamma/contrast). The original was a JPEG. The other pics are of the same image with various degrees of sharpening.

Any thoughts on which is the optimum sharpening level?

G

The critical thing will be how the image looks on the print, so it is the final "output sharpening" that will largely definew this and it may need to look a litle over-sharp on screen to achieve the effect you want.

One of the things I do is competition judging, and there has been a definite tendency for some photographers to considerably over-sharpen. This gives a dreadful unnatural look to a picture, where edges are so sharp they could be scalpel blades. IMHO I think the correct amount of sharpening will be the least possible, avoiding the srtifacts that scream "digital print" at us. After all, it's the picture content we want to catch our attention, not the technique used.

Portraits are another matter, and most models will not thank you for sharpening all the defects in their skin! Sharp eyes are a good idea, but nicely smoothed skin will meet with a higher level of approval.

George,

Just using the texture of the skin of the lower eyelid, I find the unsharpened 1st shot to be very pleasing and the 4th shot actually disturbing.

Just my humble opinion of course, and I'm not experienced in digital work where things can be manipulated (improved?) like this.

I sure like the iris of the eye to be brilliant, but eventually when the surrounding veins become too evident / emphasised, they become distracting.

Any chance of seeing the whole portrait?

What are the specs of the exposure, flash, lens etc?

Cheers,

Question: I have done most of my "serious" photography in the digital age. Were photographers quite so obsessed with sharpness when it was all film?

Regarding the picture, I can see jaggies on the reflection of the softbox in the third photo, so I'd say that's the boundary between enough and too much.

Tricky question. I would say that for screen display, at that size, either the 1st or the second. I would go more with the second around the eyes and important details.

For printing, I would say the 3rd for film output, and the 3rd or 4th for inkjet output.

Regarding the eyes, it might be worth hopping over to ePhotozine and checking out my little tutorial on eye enhancement
http://www.ephotozine.com/techniques/viewtechnique.cfm?recid=376

(DO let me know what you think of it!)

Matt

Thanks, guys. I tend to agree that for screen display the first or second are best. Given that the first has had no sharpening applied at all, it rather gives the lie to those who claim that Pentax DSLRs are soft (the camera was set to medium sharpening, not high).

The exposure/lens details are available if you download the pic and examine the EXIF data. Briefly, it's the 77mm at 1/125 at f9 with studio flash.

It's obviously taken quite close, but even so, the shallowness of the DOF surprised me.

G

PS: Matt, I've bookmarked your tutorial and will try out your techniques when I have a bit more time. Thanks. Any tips on smoothing skin (not for this model, who doesn't need it)?

here's a different tip for skin softening I sometimes use..(not standard use but has it's place in your repetior).
create new layer.
apply heavy gausion blur try 15-35 pixels.
desaturate layer.(55-65%)
set blending mode to pin light or hard light.
set opacity to 40-80% (more art than science)
erase from areas you don't want it.

gives sort of a (controlable) diffusion filter on a darkroom enlarger effect where the shadow flare out and highlights get subtler smoothing.

I'm sure there's other ways to get better effects. but it never hurts to play around with your software.

George,
There's a reasonable one on www.retouchpro.com :
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213

And the "Dior" look:
http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=209

Hope that helps!
Matt

GL

I prefer the no1. Even before I had opened the tread, just from the title I knew this was going to be a 77mm thing. I borrowed one once, never had results like it, before or since. Pentax know more about producing quality optics than I know about sharpening, so I leave it to them.

Jayson

No. 4, from a purely technical point of view.
The amount of detail is stunning but the lashes are just becoming messy and unnatural looking (is that what they mean by 'jaggies'?)

Given the subject matter and the fact that we are just seeing a crop, I think I prefer No. 2 and imagine that the whole image is both pleasing to the viewer and flattering to the subject

Actually, the whole image is not especially good.

The picture is from a set I did with an aspiring fashion model recently. I don't usually do this sort of thing, and I am now having to hurriedly learn the techniques used to produce pictures for the glossies, otherwise she won't be impressed.

The problem is not so much in doing one picture, but in doing a hundred or so in a reasonable amount of time.

Normally I shoot RAW, but I was away from home and ran out of space on my laptop. As a consequence, I have now invested in a 250GB portable drive (which cost a lot less than a 2GB CF card). It has both USB2 and Firewire interfaces, so is pretty flexible and works a treat.

G

Have you tried 7Dayshop of CF cards, George?

http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/default.php?cat=6&type=6010&go=SEARCH&r=20060406

my experience with external hard drives is this:
It is almost always cheaper to buy a usb2/firewire case and seperate hd and assemble it yerself than to buy an external drive.

I did try the DIY method once, but whilst it was cheap, it didn't work very well. The one I have just bought is pretty good, and no doubt when the disk dies, I'll be able to fit another one.

G

Just paid £54 for an iPro 100x 2Gb card from Davoom
Matt