Capture Sharpening & Contrast Enhancement? (1Ds 3)

[Andy M]

I'm a PK Sharpener user who has also followed the LL 'From Camera to Print' tutorials. I'm a little sketchy on the initial sharpening and contrast workflow, and it appears my camera (1Ds 3) appears to require more than average sharpening etc.

As recommended by Jeff and Michael in the tutorials, I turn off all sharpening and noise reduction in Lightroom, and instead use Noise Ninja and PKS in CS3.

On importing a 16bit ProPhoto TIFF to CS3 I run NN, reducing opacity until I begin to see noise reappear. I then use local contrast enhancement of 20, 50, 0 unsharp mask, usually pulled back to between 50 - 75% for portraits.

Recently, since purchasing Martin Evening's CS3 book I've also been using a medium contrast enhancement technique, usually with a High Pass filter of between 1.5 to 2.

I've noticed that this sometimes negates the need for PKS capture sharpening. In fact, with noise now a little more pronounced, I've found that PKS sharpen and smoothen takes away some of the sharpness.
Would this be correct, or would it be recommend I still do use PKS as well as the local and medium contrast enhancements?

My workflow in CS3 is basically:

Noise Ninja -> Local Contrast -> Medium Contrast -> PKS Capture Sharpen (medium 90% of the time).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

[Josh-H]

I'm a PK Sharpener user who has also followed the LL 'From Camera to Print' tutorials. I'm a little sketchy on the initial sharpening and contrast workflow, and it appears my camera (1Ds 3) appears to require more than average sharpening etc.

As recommended by Jeff and Michael in the tutorials, I turn off all sharpening and noise reduction in Lightroom, and instead use Noise Ninja and PKS in CS3.

On importing a 16bit ProPhoto TIFF to CS3 I run NN, reducing opacity until I begin to see noise reappear. I then use local contrast enhancement of 20, 50, 0 unsharp mask, usually pulled back to between 50 - 75% for portraits.

Recently, since purchasing Martin Evening's CS3 book I've also been using a medium contrast enhancement technique, usually with a High Pass filter of between 1.5 to 2.

I've noticed that this sometimes negates the need for PKS capture sharpening. In fact, with noise now a little more pronounced, I've found that PKS sharpen and smoothen takes away some of the sharpness.
Would this be correct, or would it be recommend I still do use PKS as well as the local and medium contrast enhancements?

My workflow in CS3 is basically:

Noise Ninja -> Local Contrast -> Medium Contrast -> PKS Capture Sharpen (medium 90% of the time).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated
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I have FCTP and dont remember Michael saying he turns off all sharpening in LR.

anyway... Im a PKS user as well and have a 1DS MKIII

I find the best result is to capture sharpen in Lightroom and do local contrast enhancement as well in LR using the clarity slider - which basically does the same thing. The added benefit of doing this in LR of course is its meta-data editing - not pixel editing.

Then use PKS for creative and output sharpening as required. I find I do bugger all creative sharpening though - but when you need it - its very handy.

Capture sharpening in LR is very good now - especially since you can set amount, radius, detail and build an on the fly mask. for 99% of my work its more than adequete for capture sharpening. And it simplifies the work flow to stay in LR.

I really only go into CS3 for editing that requires layers or for preperation for printing. Soft proofing etc.

Cant help you with Noise Reducution - im almost always at ISO100 so dont generally apply any NR at all.