Sharpening in Capture NX vs. Lightroom 3

[DVC Mike]

I have a Nikon D7000 and I shoot in 14-bit NEF (raw). I’ll develop the photos in both Nikon Capture NX 2.2.6 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3.3. After doing any post-processing in NX2 or LR3, I’ll save the photo for use on the web as a downsized JPEG (1024 pixels wide).

I’m consistently getting sharper results in the resulting JPEG files using Nikon Capture NX2 than using Adobe Lightroom 3.

With NX2, I’ll do minor capture sharpening, resize the image to 1024, and then use an UnSharp Mask for output sharpening. I get great results.

With LR3, I’ll use the Details tab to do capture sharpening, and then export to JPEG, which resizes the photo. In the export settings, I have output sharpening turned on for Screen and amount set to either Standard or High. However, the downsized JPEGs generated by LR3 look less sharp and focused.

Is there any way to have more control over the output sharpening in Lightroom 3?

Any suggestions?

 

[KmH]

Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw and Lightroom by Bruce Frazer & Jeff Schewe

will tell you everything you need to know about image sharpening, and the other side of that same coin, noise reduction.

 

[Garbz]

Ultimately the problem is one of sharpening being done for the 100% preview rather than for the resized variant. If you can't get a decent result playing with the "Sharpen For" settings in the export dialogue then you may need to pre-sharpen with a different settings which may at the time look quite bad. There's really no other way around it for Lightroom (which may I add I can get perfectly sharp photos out of so I'm not quite sure what you're after, can you post examples?)

One way is to presharpen with larger radius. Set the radius to 2-3 pixels rather than the 1 default. It may look bad in the 100% preview, but once scaled down the picture looks quite different. The only other option if you don't like that is to open the exported file and sharpen after, but again why you can't get a sharp picture out I don't understand.

 

[DVC Mike]

I can get perfectly sharp photos out of so I'm not quite sure what you're after, can you post examples?

This is the same photo taken with a Nikon D7000 using a 16-85mm lens. I processed the 14-bit NEF/raw file with both programs.

The first JPEG was created with Nikon Capture NX.


TrainStationNX2 by DVC Mike, on Flickr

The second JPEG was created with Adobe Lightroom 3.


TrainStationLR3 by DVC Mike, on Flickr

 

[KmH]

I would venture the difference isn't the sharpening, but rather differences in the algorithms used for mid-tone contrast.

All Raw converters will render images somewhat differently because of differences in the algorithms.

 

[DVC Mike]

I would venture the difference isn't the sharpening, but rather differences in the algorithms used for mid-tone contrast.

All Raw converters will render images somewhat differently because of differences in the algorithms.

Thanks for the feedback!

I was actually hoping to switch to LR3 from NX2, but since I'm not getting the results I want - maybe not.

Here's two more samples. For both, I just applied the camera and lens profiles, without doing any additional processing (no WB, tone/contrast, etc.) except for sharpening.

I still want the LR3 JPEG to be just a bit sharper.

Lightroom 3.3


EpcotLR3 by DVC Mike, on Flickr

Capture NX2


EpcotNX2 by DVC Mike, on Flickr

 

[pbelarge]

I know that from one person's screen to another there are differences.

From my screen, I think you may have a tonal/contrast issue as Keith mentioned.

Cameras/LR3/NX2 do not have exactly the same treatments of the image.

You may want to set a download to add a little contrast/tonal treatment upon download to LR3 and see if that works for you. Try it on a few images, instead of a whole download, tweeking it until you are satisfied. You can change these for different cameras/lenses.