Optio Sharpening Settings

Looking at some of the cheap Optio compacts (RS1500 etc) as a pocket snapper on holiday, but looking at some of the online image samples, there seems to be a lot of sharpening with halos visible even at reduced web sizes, and creating a 'stained glass window' effect viewed at 1:1.

My question is, can the in-camera sharpening settings be toned down? And does this improve image quality or does it turn to mush without this high level of processing?

Compacts often have more in-camera processing to make up for the fact that most users will not apply much post-processing.

I use far less Photoshop sharpening on compacts than on a DSLR, but of course it depends on the compact.

I would, for web sizes, start off with maybe 50%, radius 1.3px, threashold 3 as a starting point and adjust the amount until you are happy with the result. I'm assuming around 1000px on the longest side.

A PS to the above. Sharpening can usually be turned down in the menus and where available I tend to use the default setting of zero, applying neither minus nor plus amounts.

Thanks John. I was actually talking about the in-camera sharpening, which I don't find to my taste - tree branches etc having a white halo all round them. See 1:1 crop below:




I would be interested to know if the RS1000/1500 actually does have the ability to reduce that sharpening!

I tried reducing the image file to a normal web size, and it still looked oversharpened, you wouldn't want to add any more to it.

(I have my own regimen for sharpening for web: I use a much smaller radius but a higher amount, which works very well for me).