› ›kelbyone.com063Over the following pages you can read about all the sharp-
ening tools and filters available in Camera Raw and Photo-
shop and how and when to use them. I feel that an honorary
mention needs to be made here to Photoshop expert Bruce
Fraser, whose research into Photoshop sharpening made a
significant contribution to our understanding of the sharp-
ening processes and evolution of the Camera Raw sharpen-
ing controls. Sadly, Bruce passed away soon after his work
was complete, but Bruce’s legacy lives on and some of the
routines described here are based on his original formulas.
MAKING A SHARP START
For the reasons just mentioned, all photographs require
some degree of sharpening at the start of the image-editing
process. Whether you’re conscious of this or not, it tends
to happen automatically. If you shoot in JPEG mode,
the camera applies the sharpening in-camera as part of the
capture process. If
you shoot in RAW
mode, the RAW-
processing software
will always include
a certain amount of
capture sharpening.
If you scan a photo,
the scanner software
will auto-add sharp-
ening. The only way
to not pre-sharpen
an image is to deliberately disable the sharpening that
gets applied as a matter of course. Capture sharpening is
therefore a necessity. But if you take control of the sharpen-
ing settings, you can refine and improve the quality of the
sharpening. For those who shoot RAW, this means being
able to adjust the Camera Raw Detail panel sharpening slid-
ers to achieve an optimum capture sharpening. So let’s now
look at the Camera Raw sharpening sliders in more detail.
(Note: These techniques will work in Lightroom, as well.)
CAMERA RAW DETAIL PANEL SHARPENING
The Amount slider is a basic volume control. The default
setting is 25, which is actually a fairly conservative sharpen
setting and is designed to add a safe amount of sharpening
that’s suitable for most types of images. The underlying
sharpening that’s applied does actually vary from camera
to camera. This is because Adobe’s aim has been to make
the sharpening response appear to be the same regardless
of the camera used. So while Fuji X-Trans sensor captures
may be intrinsically sharper, the adjusted sharpening in
Camera Raw means these photos will appear just as sharp
as every other camera at the 25 default setting. It also
means sharpening preset settings can usefully be applied
to all types of camera files. Where necessary, you can
increase the Amount setting to strengthen the sharpen-
ing effect. For example, you may prefer a more aggres-
sive sharpening than what the Camera Raw default offers.
And, if you happen to modify the Masking slider or add
Noise Reduction, you may want to compensate by adding
more sharpening.
The key to perfecting the capture sharpening is to always
take into account the image content when deciding which
settings to apply. For example, the Radius slider determines
the width of the halos. For images that contain intricate
fine edge detail, a low Radius setting of around 0.5–0.9 will
have the most pro-
nounced effect on
the fine edges in the
photo. With images
that contain wide
edge detail, such
as facial features, a
Radius setting higher
than 1.0 will have
a more noticeable
effect. When adjust-
ing the sharpening
settings in Camera Raw, you first need to consider which
parts of the image are most important and adjust the Radius
slider accordingly.
The Detail slider cleverly modifies the halo effect, allow-
ing you to concentrate the sharpening on the edge areas.
This, in turn, allows you to apply more sharpening with the
Amount slider, adding sharpness to the edges, but without
generating noticeable halos around them. The default set-
ting for the Detail slider is 25. As you take the slider below
this value, it suppresses the amount of contrast in the
halos. As you set the slider above 25, it acts as a “high-fre-
quency concentrator,” which is to say it biases the amount
of sharpening, applying more to areas of high frequency
and less to areas of low frequency. At low ISO speeds you
can afford to take the Detail slider all the way up to 100
without the risk of emphasizing artifacts in an image. In
such situations, the Detail slider can even be used to com-
pensate for the diffusion effect that occurs when shooting“The key to perfecting the
capture sharpening is to always
take into account the image
content when deciding
which settings to apply.”