Help with sharpening photos

[LarryD]

I use Elements 5.0 and My secret is to scan at the best my scanner can do then downsize the picture hit the Auto Sharpen button 1 time maybe 2 if needed... And your English is just fine... My Spanish and Russian suck.... And any other Language I try to speak...

[Harry Haller]

lol Larry -- well, I scan at the best my scanner can do because I have the time to wait for it to do so ... Nikon scanners are said to be slow (and slower when with Vuescan - at its best setting !!).

but I've heard a point on this: it may be unnecessary to scan 16x regarding bitdepth, can be justifiable if you want to recover data buried in the shadows with the least possible noise. I never completely understood the reasoning supporting this, but several people agreed (maybe they were speaking in Russian for me ). anyway, in my monitor I do see a difference between 1x and 16x. and no, even at 16x I'm not happy with the amount of shadow detail I can recover.

auto sharpen !? where is that button? wish CS3 had one ...

sharpening after downsizing is something not unheard of, but in the last scan I did, downsized with SI 2 - and sharpening was not necessary: check a .jpg of mine at the Maitani thread and tell me what d'you think.

[LarryD]

I shall at the moment I have a family problem.. My daughter got a nasty spider bite and is in the hospital.

[Harry Haller]

ugh :confused: - wish you could have brought the smashed spider corpse, it may be important to decide which antidote ... and if one is or not necessary. good luck !

[LarryD]

She got out today they pulled the core out and got here on meds... She is improving she only lost a few Grams of Skin and meat. She is improving.

And thanks.

[Harry Haller]

good news, regarding that it must have been a quite dangerous species. despite necrotic lesion kidney function should be ok, otherwise she wouldn't be at home now.

must go to sleep - nite, Larry.

[LarryD]

Me too sleep well.

[P C Headland]

The Light is Right site has some good tutorials, as well as some scripts / actions for capture, creative and output sharpening.

Also, Bruce Fraser published an excellent book on sharpening, taking you through all the why's and wherefore's, and took you through building up a series of actions for the various sharpening stages.

In short, one of the current "expert" trains of thought is to sharpen in multiple stages - capture sharpen, creative / scene / subject sharpening, then just before printing, output sharpening tailored to the output device and size.

[Harry Haller]

thanks for that, P C Headland. 'though I had little time today, I managed to explore the site and found very interesting material. what you wrote and what I found written there made me feel more confident about my own findings on multiple stage sharpening  :cool: