Sharpening RAW images

[settons]

Hi guys,

I have just gotten into photography as a hobby. I keep reading that you need to sharpen your RAW images. I use Photoshop CS3 and I am wondering if anyone has any useful links on how to do this properly. Or if anyone has the time to explain in the post.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

 

[Alex_B]

I always do first sharpening in the process of RAW conversion already.
Then it depends on your RAW conversion.
For final sharpening, which depends on image size and the planned use of the image (small or large printing, online display, whatever), I use Photoshop, often just the simple sharpen option if it is for online display only. This usually overdoes it, so I fade it a bit afterwards.

For proper quality sharpening I would use the unsharp mask however, since parameters depend a lot on the fine structures in the scene you captured.

 

[Big Mike]

With digital photography, it's a good idea to figure out your 'work flow'. When shooting RAW files, the first step is usually opening the file in a RAW conversion program. Photoshop has a built-in RAW converter called Adobe Camera RAW, your camera will have come with a RAW conversion program as well. When you open the RAW file, you can change things like White Balance and make adjustments to the brightness, contrast, saturation and even sharpness/sharpening. You can add some sharpening at this point if you like, but many people prefer to do it near the end of the workflow.
After you have made your adjustments in the convertor, you 'convert' the RAW file...if you are using ACR, it then opens the image in Photoshop. Now you can use Photoshop to make any edits you like...and save the image in a standard format, like TIFF, JPEG or Photoshop PSD. For best quality, it's probably best to use TIFF or PSD at this point.
After editing, your last step can be sharpening. There are many methods, so do some reading about it.
You may want to save a JPEG copy of the image for printing or for web viewing...and you may want to apply a little bit of extra sharpening to the JPEG after you have resized it.

 

[wchua24]

there is this tutorial on youtube using photoshop cs3....i do my self study there.

 

[Overread]

there is also a series of articles on this site:
http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/sharpen1/sharpen1.htm
which detail how one can perfom sharpening on a photo