In camera sharpening

[mrodgers]

I don't have a dSLR, so I don't have the capabilities of RAW. I have a sharpening setting in my camera and was wondering if it would be better to have it turned off with shooting a JPEG.

I am currently following some tutorials on sharpening in post process and wonder if I would get better results from turning off the sharpening in-camera. I have 3 levels available in-camera.

Just FYI, I am messing with levels, noise reduction, and sharpening so far in post processing. I am saving my processing files as TIFF.

Thanks

[MX962]

I'm going to say sharpen out side the camera ,Also you may want to back up your original files before you edit them ,then you always have your originals to start over with if later ,just my opinion

[JerryPH]

JPG has generational losses. Meaning everytime you save a JPG file, a little detail and data gets lost.

One should always try to get it as close as possible in-camera all the time, but this becomes more important if you are not able to use a lossless format of file like TIFF or RAW.

Sharpen in camera, see if it meets your needs. If not, you are forced to doing it outside. Most P&S cameras sharpen and saturate quite well in-camera anyways.

[Garbz]

The other problem is any artifect introduced by jpeg compression will be worsened sharpening after. In camera sharpening avoids this problem.

Really the sharpening algorithms are very similar incamera and in post processing. The only difference is you get fine control in post which can really help with things such as compensating for certain blurs where you may wish to increase the radius of sharpening.

Really though when shooting JPEG I keep my camera set to +1 for sharpening.

[tbstimp]

This is taken from UPDIG

"Capture sharpening: Capture sharpening should compensate for softness introduced during capture. The goal here is to have the sharpest, clearest image for a client to view or use. If you are shooting JPEG and are trying to minimize post-production time, it may work for you to find an in-camera sharpening setting that you like. If you put quality ahead of speed — and especially if you may want large prints later — it is best to do capture sharpening in post-production. If you are shooting RAW Files, you may find that using the sharpening controls available in your RAW processing program will work well for you. Sharpening with Adobe Camera RAW, for example, applies sharpening just to the luminance channel, which tends to minimize artifacts and noise issues. If you use another RAW processor, you should test the effect of sharpening on a noisy file to determine if the RAW sharpening adds to the problem."

[Sandspur]

Everyone's experience is different, but I long ago decided that I don't want the camera making any arbitrary decisions on its own.

So I always choose to do the sharpening in PP. In fact, I only do the sharpening after I have done everything else (no matter how much or how little that is), especially resizing to the final deliverable print or file size.

I know, I know ... sometimes the camera is probably smarter in these things than I am ... but I'm still the human (therefore rational, thinking) being in such transactions. And DAMMIT! I refuse to relinquish my right to be wrong ... occasionally.

(Fade to black is old man wanders off into the wings, muttering ...)