Photography Forum | A bit unsure.......any advice please?

Hi,

I can offer what I generally use for edits that I now submit here, and have also submitted at A.net for many years - if they get through their sharpness requirements (which I personally think are rather too extreme) then they must be pretty sharp. I've used the same process on each of the bodies I've used 350D/400D/550D/7D, the last two still in use. I do use it in CS2 but the same settings are available in PS Elements 9, so I guess 10 is pretty much the same.

I do all my other editing before sharpening at the full size straight out of the camera, then I apply the following before reducing size.

Amount 500%
Radius 0.2
Threshold 0

Then I reduce down to the size to be used, usually 1200x800 pixels for here and A.Net. I will then do a second run, as above, but varying the amount between 150-500% depending on how soft the image is. but usually in the 150-200% area. In rare and extreme cases (usually if it requires this as well, then the pic ought to be dumped as unrecoverable) and when a pic is otherwise interesting enough to warrant an attempt to save it, I will do a third run at the setting below;

Amount 20-40%
Radius 0.3
Threshold 0

The effects of a 0.3 radius on a 1200 wide pic will be quite harsh, so this needs care if used, the recent twin Vampires over North Weald and a couple of the head on Typhoon shots of mine on the site were sharpened in this way.

Gary

Hi again gents.

Good idea about posting up a comparision listed above. Problem is I can't seem to get any image files into a post on here. Attempting the usual forum [img] link, but it just hangs the forum when I post so what I've done is uploaded two originals to my photobucket account and will link them. I'm not sure if they will come out at 100% of size or not, so you may have to click on them to bring them to full size. Interesting thoughts above, personally I will try and minimise the number of edits I make in photoshop to the smallest number required. Another point to remember is that the effect a sharpening will have varies depending on the pixel size of the image it is applied to. The 500% at 0.2 radius has quite a small effect on a image still at the pixel size it comes out of the camera, but will make a massive amount of difference to a image that has been resized down to 1200 pixels. So as long as the image is still in the 3 to 5 mega pixel range, the above settings do have not much of a effect (the reason I do it is mainly because I will also save a image at 3400 pixels for personal use before sizing down to 1200 pixels for the database websites).

This is a link to my original at Photobucket of the two Vampires at North Weald shot on Friday. The 7D puts this out as 5184x3146 pixels at the highest JPEG setting. For the comparison I have sized it down to 1200x800 pixels, the uploaded size here, but no other changes (crop, levels, saturation, noise, colour balance all untouched).

http://s410.photobucket.com/albums/pp189/gary1701/?action=view&current=test1.jpg

This is the edited version accepted onto the site yesterday.

http://www.plane-mad.com/aviation-photos/view/private/-/off-airport/43254.html

As you can see, it's one big crop (not to mention the one sharpish image from about a dozen frames!). This went through the following on unsharpen mask with Photoshop CS2

5184 pixels wide, 500%, 0.2 radius
1200 pixels wide, 500%, 0.2 radius
1200 pixels wide, 30-40%, 0.3 radius

Last one has the variable as I can't remember which exact percentage I used. All the above was done after all other editing. I must say though that I don't normally do this amount. I usually only do the first two runs at 0.2 on the radius. As posted earlier, I only get to this stage if a image is interesting enough to try and save. As previous poster said, if it's just very soft, then sharpening may bring it back, motion blur or focus problems cannot be saved, regardless how much sharpening is applied.

The other example below was a more steady shot, but was taken at a large zoom in rapidly deteriorating light. This was offset by planning it advance with a manual exposure, yet the 7D, despite it's high cost and usually impressive performance, is not good in low light as noise becomes a issue.

Same as above, this is the original.

http://s410.photobucket.com/albums/pp189/gary1701/?action=view&current=test2-1.jpg

With the edit on this site as below, same settings as above, the difference on the extreme tip of the nose cone is a good indicator of how much sharpening was involved.

http://www.plane-mad.com/aviation-photos/view/uk-royal-air-force-(raf)/eurofighter-typhoon/raf-coningsby/42700.html

This one is also on A.Net (took two attempts!). I hope that helps a little bit more but by all means shout if there's any other queries.

Gary

Pete, apologies for not responding to your earlier post. PS Elements 10 is the first version that I've used, so you will appreciate that I'm not really in a position to comment re. the advantages (or otherwise) of using version 10 versus version 3. Sorry!