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Author Topic: Sharpening in Capture NX (again)  (Read 13274 times)

malch

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Sharpening in Capture NX (again)
« on: May 18, 2008, 07:37:33 pm »

I too am struggling to find the best sharpening recipes for NX. So much of the available literature (Fraser et al) is totally Photoshop centric.

And yes, while I do appreciate that standard recipes have their limitations, I really need them. Approx 10-20% of my images are discarded as duds. The best 5-10% are chose for individual attention. But that still leaves a large number of images that I want to process as a batch within minimal per-image tweaking. Most of these will need to be optimized for viewing on a (calibrated) LCD monitor. I'm shooting RAW with a D200.

Hogan suggests setting the in-camera sharpening to low or none. Odell suggests setting to high (for sharpened JPEG previews) and to none for off-line processing with NX. Having tried both methods I think I prefer the Odell system.

I've tried various recipes for capture and output sharpening with mixed results. Most of my shots are taken at ISO 200 and I'm really focused on those shots at the moment. I've noted that high ISO shots need noise reduction (no surprise there). But once noise reduction has been turned on, it seems to me the sharpening needs to be adjusted for that.

I started out with USM. Then I went with a high pass for a while. Over time I've become less enchanted with the high pass. So I'm now experimenting with a little of each and my first impressions are very positive.

By the way, I'm also impressed with how easy it is to add selective sharpening with Capture NX (a little extra USM on the eyes of a portrait works wonders and can be applied in seconds).

I would love to hear what others have learned and how they're approaching sharpening in Capture NX. And if someone would care to translate Bruce Frasers work into NX-speak, that would be wonderful ;-)
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DrJay32

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Sharpening in Capture NX (again)
« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2008, 09:27:34 am »

I have a whole litany of free sharpening settings using USM on my website for every Nikon DSLR.
The settings were developed in Capture NX 2.0, but they should work fine in Capture NX 2.0.

http://www.luminescentphoto.com/nx2guide.html

-Jason
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Jason P. Odell, Ph.D.
Author, The Photographer's Guide to Capture NX2
www.luminescentphoto.com

Almark

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    • http://www.markallenphotography.co.uk
Sharpening in Capture NX (again)
« Reply #2 on: August 05, 2008, 11:58:35 am »

Malch,

I bought Jason's ebook and haven't looked back since.
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All the best

Mark

Mark Allen Photography
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