Capture sharpening

[Rickster]

Opinions please...
How does editing, such as curves, effect capture sharpening? Should I sharpen first or does it matter?

[Jeff Schewe]

It all depends on how much. . .but the perfered order is all major moves first, then capture sharpen.

[Rickster]

Ok, I'll be more specific.
I'm using a profiling script to make color corrections in ACR, so the only thing I'm having to do in PSCS is crop, set black point, set white point, capture sharpen, creative sharpen and output sharpen. I'm thinking capture sharpen might be best after black/white point but I've done no tests as of yet.

[Jeff Schewe]

Setting Black point is really important to do in Camera Raw. . .but in any event, it's optimal to do your bk & wt point settings before capture sharpening. . .is it critical? I don't know, but it's optimal.

[jsd]

Hey Jeff...my take on this was that "Capture Sharpening" was the immediate first step. You are saying otherwise. Yes?

[Rickster]

The calibration script I'm using sets white point in ACR. I'm using curves/levels to adjust dynamic range after conversion.

One other thought...sharpen before or after noise reduction?

[Jeff Schewe]

Sharpen after noise reduction, yes. Although it's a bit less of an issue with capture sharpening because that really only works on the edges.

[Jeff Schewe]

Capture sharpening ideally needs all the major color/tone moves first. If you sharpen and then tone you run the risk of altering the relationship of the edge tones and perhaps driving thing to white that shouldn't be driven there.

[Bruce Fraser]

Capture Sharpening leaves a lot of headroom at highlights and shadows, and is relatively tolerant of small tonal moves post-sharpen. Here's the trade-off:

If you capture sharpen before fine-tuning tonal moves, you get to do those moves on a reasonably sharp file, which can help you make good contrast decisions, with the downside that the sharpening is based on the file pre tonal moves.

If you do the tonal moves first, then capture sharpen, you'll get a slightly better sharpen. but your tonal edits may not be as good.

If you're making big tonal moves, do those before capture sharpening (but with raw we'd hope you did those in ACR).

[Stephen_Scharf]

Well, I am glad you guys cleared that up, because I remember Bruce mentioning at an SF Dig meeting to do the capture sharpen before making tonal moves. So, I guess it depends on the extent of the tonal moves. So, Bruce, if your tonal moves were simply to correct a color cast (like the yucky green one I get capturing JPEGs with a 1D when I shoot motor racing), would you do that before or after capture sharpening?

[Bruce Fraser]

I'd remove the yucky green cast after capture sharpen.

[Rickster]

Thanks Guys,
This forum has already been a big help.
Ok, a new question...

I'm running an actions set that calls Capture Sharpen and then Creative Sharpen. They both run without displaying the dialog boxes, or they go by so fast that I don't see them. What sharpening mode is running? Hopefully the last one I manually ran.

[Bruce Fraser]

It will run whatever sharpener was actually recorded in the action. If you expand the action step that calls PK Sharpener, it'll show you which one is being used.

[Rickster]

Thanks Bruce,
I just discovered that myself.
You've got a great product and thanks for the great support.