But…..this is a great article non the less!

Jimmy is not creating a “Sharpening Law or starting an argument”, he is just trying to help.

Thanks Jimmy.

Hi Ellis,

You make a good point, but if you’re not a sharpening whizz, this sounds like an intimidating process. The less steps needed, the better. After all, the article is about making a complex subject simple.

“The multi-step sharpening process is a designed to customize sharpening for each image. It’s a longer and more involved workflow than a single-pass. With respect to time, sharpening at the end of photo editing is a better option when you’re in a time-crunch, or when you’re working with multiple images.”

Not necessarily true, and totally untrue if you use Lightroom. You can set the basic capture sharpening parameters as an import preset and incorporating output specific ( size, resolution and type of reproduction, including glossy or matte paper if you’ll be printing) sharpening when you export is a click of a couple of buttons.

In Lightroom 5’s Develop module also has a feature that allows you do area specific intermediate custom sharpening and/or blur at various strengths.

Hi Grant,

Good question. ACR’s sharpening is a slightly different process known as capture sharpening. Sharpening can be done at this point if the images need it, but it’s a much different beast than sharpening at output. In my opinion, it’s risky. Over-sharpening at the beginning of the workflow can augment digital noise that remains unseen until you start manipulating the photo in Exposure, Photoshop, or other programs. Also, be aware that some raw processor applications will add sharpening even when the sliders are set at zero. If you choose to sharpen the raw file, I’d use preset settings per your camera model, but not much more.

ACR does have an output sharpening function, which is similar to Lightroom’s. I advise to reserve their use only if you are printing directly through these programs. Should you plan to perform other work outside of them, I’d stick to the advice in the article and wait until the end of processing.

Of course, this is just my opinion. ;-)

It’s good practice to save layered full-res files previous to sizing and sharpening. This way you always have a high-quality file to revisit when the need arises. Other than that, yes–the workflow you outlined looks solid.

You can forgo the sharpening on the large image, but still apply Exposure effects. Then, save a copy as a flattened Tiff for use as a master. That way you won’t need to remake any customized Exposure effects, just perform sizing and sharpening.

Hi Ellis,

The multi-step sharpening process is a designed to customize sharpening for each image. It’s a longer and more involved workflow than a single-pass. With respect to time, sharpening at the end of photo editing is a better option when you’re in a time-crunch, or when you’re working with multiple images.

Hi Dave,

The LAB color space includes all perceivable colors, meaning its gamut exceeds those of the RGB and CMYK color models. ProPhoto RGB includes about 90% of all perceivable colors.

To clarify, sharpening the color image and fading the Luminosity attempts to prevent the sharpening from affecting the colors, whereas LAB sharpening doesn’t sharpen the colors in the first place.

Hope this helps.

I’m going to play with it and do some comparisons.
Do you know what the color gamut differences between say pro photo rgb and lab are? I wouldn’t want to go back to lab if were more narrow, but you have me thinking. I don’t usually think much at this time of the morning either, lol.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the comments. A workflow using layer based sharpening with the Luminosity blend mode will take care of color fringing issue, but it’s still not a perfect solution. Lightness and Luminosity assign levels of gray for each color. The formulas for assigning the gray values are similar but different in the end. In my experience, the Lightness channel yields slightly better results.

Thanks for your feedback, Michael. As mentioned in the article, sharpening, as with a lot of areas in photography, is subjective and open to debate. As such, there is no right or wrong way to do it, just different ways. Thanks for sharing yours!

Michael