Architectural Photography - capture sharpening option

[walkerphoto]

Been using Photokit Sharpener for some time now. A question if I may.

In reading the PDF documentation which offers visual examples of Wide, Medium, Narrow etc. I am wondering which setting would be best for a typical exterior image of a building or house. More often than not these images feature many lines from siding, windows, architectural details, and oft are framed with trees and bushes.

I am presuming Wide is not the best choice. But amongst the remaining three choices which might serve the image best? These would be typical architectural images of a skyscraper or large custom home both of which generally have a goodly amount of lines but also a fair amount of detailess sky and possibly clouds. What would be your choice if staring at an architectural photograph? Medium? Narrow? Superfine?

These are specifically 4x5 transparencies which are best created sharp to start with IN the camera. :-)

And I am most interested in hearing your reasoning why. (I understand no setting is best for all images, I am looking for generalher guidlines here)

Thanks very much,

Doug Walker, FP
"Specializing in Images of the Built Environment in a Clean, Bold Classic Style!"
website: http://www.walkerphoto.com
Member, ASMP, PPW

[Bruce Fraser]

The rules of thumb.

1.) Look at the general tendency of the features you want to emphasize, and choose the width accordingly. Superfine is for emphasizing features on the order of a single pixel. Wide is for emphasizing the kind of wide edges you get in a head shot without unduly emphasizing skin texture. The others are somewhere inbetween.

2.) If in doubt, try Medium first?it's the all-purpose setting.

This is the major subjective element in capture sharpening. We're still looking at ways to analyze the image and choose the setting automatically, but it's something that's much easier done by a pair of eyeballs connected to a brain than by an algorithm!

Probably the easiest way to get a feel for this is to pick a handful of representative images, run all four settings on each one, and compare. It'll take an hour or so of your time, but you'll learn much more than you will reading any amount of verbiage any of us can generate!

[Jeff Schewe]

To add to what Bruce said. . .selecting the PROPER edge width is the single most important aspect of capture sharpening-after selecting the proper capture sharpener for the source that is.

Our deffinition of frequency is one where when looking at a row of pixels, how many strong occurances of alternating light and dark is there in the image? If there are a lot of alternating lights & darks, then the frquency is higher, if less, then lower. Selecting the edge width determines the actual sharpening routine and the edge mask, so picking the right one is important.

It can be argued that many/most images contain aspects of several edge widths. . .which is true. But, generally when looking at an image and in light of the aestetics of the image and what is imortant to you, the photographer, there is one edge width that can be said to be most optimum.

Also note that between the three main widths of wide, medium and narrow, what is super critical is to not invert the choices. For example, sharpening a woman's portrait using narrow will produce poor results. So will using wide edged sharpening on an image with lots of high frequencyy such as a landscape with trees.

The Super Fine is really more of a specialty edge width whose use is indicated only when the image contains a lot of super high frequency texture. It should not generally be used for average images.