Thanks for all the replies thus far. I started reading Bruce's Real World Sharpening book. Looks like a must read for professionals. As far as a hobbyist enthusiast like myself I see it has tremendous value except that I really don't have the time to absorb this stuff - the usual excuses....1 1/2 jobs, 3 month old newborn, dogs to walk....Now I don't print my photos so I don't know if I can slog through much more on the book if I have to subject myself to discussion about output sharpening at various DPI using matte papers....
I also use ACR so I'd like to think the enhanced sharpening of ACR 4.1 would act as capture sharpening phase.
To be honest I understand how sharpness improvement arises from using Bruce's 3 stage sharpening technique but don't know if that extra work sharpening is worth the extra work for my non-critical photo work. I get the impression his book would be a must read for me if I were printing my shots but I prefer to view them online and my output source for my RAWs is a 1000 pixel length web-viewed JPEG.
Long story short - I still wonder if it is worth my while to finish Bruce's book right now. I would if my livelihood depended on it - clearly Bruce's techniques are superior. But for my purposes learning them may be impossible as this is my hobby - something to keep me sane in an otherwise busy life. So I guess I might be able to find a way to combine the content/creative sharpen and the output sharpen phase until just after I downsize my file to 1100 pixel length.(ok my baby's crying and need to speed post this up). FAST FORWARD TO QUESTION...
I guess my question is about using ACR for the capture sharpening phase. Are the ACR defaults a good start or is it important to fiddle with the sliders in ACR to obtain good capture phase sharpening in ACR.......or must I finish Bruce's book to get the answer to that?
In other words, are the ACR sharpening defaults a good starting point for capture phase sharpening or are they set for those who typically do one pass sharpening. Or neither?
...yes, I'll finish Bruce's book some day but seriously. This is my hobby, not my job. I just moved from film where everything was grand. I understood it, got great results. Now having learned about PCs, RAM, diskI/O, swap files, memory settings, bus speeds, overclocking just to get a PC running for digital processing I am seeing the learning for digital never ends. I just wanna have sharp photos and enjoy what little time I have TAKING photos rather than learning MORE abstract concepts like masks, filters, adjustment layers...
OK gotta run. Baby ISN'T crying, that's even WORSE!! THANKS!!