Capture Sharpening in Aperture

Question

Is there a good source for information about capture shapening within Aperture? Using edge sharpening, it seems to do a reasonable job for files that will not be enlarged much, but when I try to print even 16x20 from a 6 MP file, the images seem either soft, or if I boost the sharpening, I see artifacts and crunchy pixels. If I export files without sharpening and use Photokit Sharpener for capture and output sharpening, all is well. I have been using Lightroom since it was in beta, and I am very happy with the capture sharpening there. I'd like to get similar results from Aperture if I am going to use it regularly. (Perhaps the rumored 2.0 update will take care of that)

Answer 1

There really isn't an Aperture equivalent to Photokit and its one of the big drawbacks of Aperture for me. The problem is that to do "Bruce Fraser" type sharpening you need to do output sharpening at the desired output resolution. There is no way to do this in the current version of Aperture.
However, I have a workaround that sort of works. I alter the sharpening in Raw Fine tuning to do capture sharpening and then I use Edge Sharpening for output sharpening. I got the settings by starting with unsharpened raw images. I exported them to Photoshop and used Photokit to do capture sharpening. I then went back to Aperture and adjusted the sharpening in raw fine tuning to match ( as well as I could) the results in Photoshop.
Output sharpening was harder because it depends on the size you will print at, but I followed a similar procedure except in this case I tested parameters by exporting the file from Aperture at various sizes after sharpening and then comparing to a version sharpened with Photokit. I did this at two sizes, full size and roughly half-size at 300 dpi.
I went through this because I was doing an Aperture book and I didn't want to have to export each photo in the book to Photoshop for sharpening. It worked pretty well both with Apple printing and SharedInk printing.
The settings I used are below, but they were created for a 6 Megapixel DLSR ( a Canon D60). You would have to alter the settings for different cameras, though the approach to finding the settings would be the same:
Capture Sharpening:
Wide Edge
Intensity:0.60
Edges:0.63
Medium Edge
Intensity:0.60
Edges:1.0
Output Sharpening;
Using Edge Sharpen:
Full size
Intensity:0.5
Edges:1.0
Fall off:0.7
Half-size
Intensity:0.5
Edges:1.0
Fall off:1.0
The settings worked better for full size than half-size.
If Apple is listening then I would suggest that they read Bruce Fraser's Real World Sharpening book and allow Aperture to match the multi-pass sharpening approach he outlines. That would primarily involve changes in edge sharpening, by allowing it to be done at final output resolution and allowing edge sharpen settings to be sensitive to output resolution.
-Will Rabinovich