K200D RAW - laco of sharpness

I have a K200D and, having been given Aperture 2 for Christmas, I have been shooting in JPEG+RAW mode for the first time. When I download the shots onto a Macbook it became clear that the JPEGs were much sharper than the RAWs before processing, and even after the RAWs remained softer. Does anyone know if this is normal, or are there any camera settings I should have changed? Unfortunately I do not have the camera with me at the moment, but will have come Monday if advice is forthcoming! Thanks.

Quite a lot of sharpening is applied to in-camera jpegs. Very effective if you want to print directly from SD card. There are no in-camera RAW settings - you have to twiddle with the sharpening settings in your software - I find it best to be sparing with sharpening in the Raw converter software, and use a dose of USM after making all other adjustments in PS. Sometimes results aren't quite as 'crunchily' sharp as in-camera jpegs, but a lot smoother.

This is normal. With JPEGs the camera processes the RAW image and applies sharpening.

With RAW files you have the unprocessed (to an extent) image, you need to apply sharpening after all processing has been done. How much is required and how it is achieved is largely down to personal taste.

I have been using RAW+ on studio shoots and have now, by and large, abandoned the idea and, given the controlled circumstances, am now shooting JPEG only since everything has to end up that way anyway for me.

Welcome by the way.

Thanks guys! I guess I will have to get more acquainted with Aperture to get what I want. Still love the camera though!

Richard

Agree with all above. Just saw you were a new member and wanted to welcome you to the forum. Would love to see some of your work.

Best regards,

Stephen

I have yet to upload anything (too busy at work ha ha!) but you can see some of what I have done here link on a different site. When I get organised I will post some stuff in the gallery here too.

Cheers,

Richard