If sharpnness is the goal, as in landscape, what are the downsides to always pushing the sharpness, detail, bokeh sliders all the way right? I’m not noticing halos or artifacts, but am I not looking close enough.
What are the nuances to that tool, what do you watch for to judge how far to push it?
Hi and welcome here!
Check the result in 100% view, if YOU like it. – In general, oversharpening doesn’t look good, the same with to much Clear View plus and Micro contrast.
I have two main presets — one for my aviation shots and one for wildlife. The main difference is the lens sharpness slider is substantially lower on the wildlife one.
For sharp panel lines and every rivet and stencilled paint mark, I have +1.00 sharpness, but this tends to overdo fine foliage and grasses in wildlife shots, where I have +0.25. Sometimes even 0.25 is too much, depending on the subject. Fine grasses often look terrible if over sharpened.
I should note I always downscale my images for publication and this may exacerbate some cases.
I never touch the bokeh or detail sliders.
Oversharpening introduces non-existent detail, which are also called artefacts. It also irritates the eyes, as eyes automatically analyse verisimilitude and oversharpening fails the eye test.
Oversharpening looks worse on faces (as a general rule) as the human eye is extremely sensitive to anomalies in people’s faces.
Oversharpening is more like an effect on architecture as square angles and sharp lines benefit to some extent from crispness.
Alec,
With regard to artifacts over sharpening creates strong white lines along objects edges, as you know.
Mark
I surely avoid that in things like unsharp mask, smart sharpen, etc., But I’m not noticing halos in lens sharpening in PL6, maybe have to look closer.
I thought you were referring to sharpening in general. You are correct. the lens sharpness tool does not not usually create obvious halos even when at its maximum setting.
Mark
I wouldn’t call what I see a “halo”. It’s still fine detail, but it’s detail you probably don’t want. Find a photo that has fine grasses, sharpen it to the max, then output it downsized. That’s when I notice the issues.
Can you give us an example (raw + dop-file), so we can have a look ?
→ as soon you are allowed to upload (some restricions for new members)
otherwise via a sharing portal like Dropbox, SwissTrans, WeTransfer …
At this point being new to the program I’m interested in how experienced users say they do it. If its usual practice to stick with the default or limit it to around +1 rather than really cranking it I’ll go with that for now. The side by side at 100% seems to give a good indication.
There is no exact science here. It really depends on the image being edited and your preferences for it. In general it seems to me that those new to post processing tend to over sharpen compared to users with more experience.
Mark
While I’m experienced at post processing, lightroom, photoshop, dpp4, and traditional sharpening methods, this lens sharpness tool doesnt seem to be in the same category as the unsharp mask, high pass, etc. with the artifacts, crunchiness and halos. Thats why I was wondering how others handled it.
Sharpness of lenses often vary due to how the respective lens was created. The lens sharpness tool corrects such variations based on DxO’s lens measurements and resulting camera/lens modules.
Lens sharpness could be like this…
And therefore, sharpening should increase near the edges in order to make the image look uniformly sharp from edge to edge.
While DXO recommends using the default setting, perhaps half the time I increase it a bit How much really depends on the image. Since the majority of my images tend to be taken indoors in lower light, how I use the sharpening tool might be different from those who generally use it outdoors in brighter lighting situations. When I do shoot in brighter lighter situation’s outdoors, I tend to leave it at the default almost all the time.
Mark
Thanks to all that took the time to answer. Appreciated.
