Photoshop CC Smart Sharpen vs. LR/ACR Sharpening

Could someone articulate for me how Photoshop CC's Smart Sharpening differs from Lightroom (and ACR's) sharpening in the Detail panel? Do they approach sharpening differently? Is one more powerful than the other, and if so, in what way? Are there particular circumstances under which you find it worthwhile to use SS rather than stay with LR/ACR? (I do see that SS allows one to control the effect in highlights and shadows.)
I have generally been sticking with LR sharpening, but want to be able to answer these questions intelligently (and be aware of circumstances where I should take the time to open PS and use SS).
Thank you!

Laura Shoe wrote:
Could someone articulate for me how Photoshop CC's Smart Sharpening differs from Lightroom (and ACR's) sharpening in the Detail panel?
The approach is potentially similar if you have SS set to fix lens blur and you have LR's Detail slider moved way over to the right (+50 and above). When set up like that, both tools can do deconvolution type sharpening...
Booth tools can set the sharpening radius and both have an amount (although I doubt the numbers relate–prolly a different scale).
With SS the sharpening is applied on the color data while in LR the sharpening is only on the luminance data. With SS on a layer, you can set the layer blend to luminance. With SS you can roll off and control the sharpening contours of the highlights and shadows. In LR the sharpening is preset to roll off the highlights and shadows so there's no user control.
In SS you can (in CC) can adjust noise reduction while sharpening. In LR you can as well. The only thing that SS can do that LR can't is to resharpen for motion blur. However, SS is pretty weak in that department compared to the new anti-shake filter.
Which one is better? 6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other. I would not leave LR simply to run SS on an image and be forced to work on a rendered image. I would do all the capture sharpening in LR and would only use SS if I was going to go into Photoshop anyway and even then, more likely to use SS for effect sharpening not capture sharpening.

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Input (capture) sharpening workflow in ACR 4.3.1

At the suggestion of another member, I'm posting this here in addition to posting on Windows Photoshop forum:
I shoot raw, always, and have avoided using Camera Raw in my workflow until recently (4.3.1), because so much time and organization effort is now saved by including Camera Raw 4.3.1 in my workflow, where it wasn't in previous versions.
My problem is that I had been trained in numerous Canon tutorials to always perform input sharpening as the first step in the workflow, using a radius of 0.3 and an amount of 300 in Photoshop CS2, in order to remove the effects of the camera sensor's anti-alias filter.
This is only possible in Photoshop, since the Camera Raw controls limit those parameters to 0.5 and 150. My workflow is first forced into Photoshop proper followed by Camera Raw, if I am to follow Canon's recommendation, which means I lose one of the principle benefits of using Camera Raw 4.3.1.
I have reviewed many posts and tutorials relating to sharpening in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop, and none of these documents refer to input sharpening as part of the workflow, but to the use of sharpening as a creative tool in image manipulation or for optimizing for media, etc.
Thanks for any advice.

Guy,
first thing to note, the Amount and Radius parameters in ACR and in Photoshop's USM filter are on different scales; you cannot compare their numerical values directly (Jeff, please correct me if I'm wrong!).
Second thing, of course you're never supposed to apply Sharpening for Source first (in Photoshop) and then take the file back to ACR to tweak it further. If you don't want to use ACR's new capture sharpening feature then disable it and fully develop your raw image in ACR, applying white balance, exposure, brightness, saturation, noise reduction, and lens correction settings as required---and THEN, to the fully developed TIFF, PSD, or JPEG file, you'd apply Sharpening for Source first thing in Photoshop.
By the way, I don't like ACR's new sharpening feature too much. Lately I developed the notion that Sharpening for Content (as presented in Bruce's four-stage sharpening workflow, i. e. Source, Content, Creative, and Output; see his book "Real-World Image Sharpening") conceptually belongs into one category with Creative Sharpening, not with Sharpening for Source. So the concept of Capture Sharpening---which combines Sharpening for Source and Sharpening for Content into one single sharpening stage---seems reasonable technically but not conceptually. The parameters for Sharpening for Source depend solely on the properties of the image-acquiring device (i. e. scanner or digital camera). The parameters for Sharpening for Content and for Creative Sharpening both depend on image content as well as on the author's taste and intentions. In my opinion, Sharpening for Content *is* a sort of a kind of Creative Sharpening---so combining Sharpening for Source and Sharpening for Content into one Capture Sharpening stage makes sense only when processing one image at a time (for the one-image-at-a-time workflow, I do like, and use, ACR's capture sharpening feature).
When processing a whole batch of raw images which come all from the same source, it usually makes sense to automatically apply the same degree of Sharpening for Source to all of them but to apply any further sharpening (namely for Content and Creative) individually to each image. That's why I usually disable ACR's sharpening altogether and stick to Bruce's four-stage sharpening workflow, applying Sharpening for Source via Photoshop's batch automation.
-- Olaf

LR/ACR Sharpenning

At a recent educators conference there was a bit of a disagreement over sharpening in LR or ACR (assuming a primarily RAW workflow). The presenters stance was don't use it, jump out into PS and do your sharpening there. I took the other stance, but thought I'd see what others more knowledgeable thought.
Their concerns seem to center around three topics.
1) They believe the sharpening algorithms in LR/ACR are designed for capture sharpening and not primary sharpening. I could see this thinking for ACR - which started life as a front end for PS - but LR is a stand alone. In any event they should be the same algorithms.
2) They believe that sharpening in LR or ACR would constitute a violation of the "thou shalt sharpen last" commandment. My understanding is that since we are still within the less destructive RAW area, this should not be a problem.
3) They don't like/understand the vagaries of LR's Print Sharpening Settings What do Low, Medium, High, Glossy and Matt mean in reality?
What say you more knowledgeable people?

>At a recent educators conference there was a bit of a disagreement over sharpening in LR or ACR
It never ceases to amaze me that EDUCATORS are not better educated, ya know?
Since CR 4.1 and LR 1.1, the capture sharpening was substantially improved (IMHO to be best of breed) to the point that one would be foolish to eschew CR/LR over doing so in Photoshop. And now, in Lightroom 2.0 (not Camera Raw) we have the ability to do really good (IMHO) output sharpening (which does indeed come relatively last), so one wonders what these so called "educators" are talking about?
Yes, sharpening "for effect" is still a really useful function for Photoshopwhen you need it. The "creative sharpening" part of the Sharpening Workflow as espoused by the late Bruce Fraser can only lightly be done in Lightroom 2. The local brush for sharpening and un-sharpening (Hamburg claims un-sharpen isn't really a blur) is very limited when sharpening for effect.
It should be noted that Bruce and I both had a bit to do with the sharpening in CR/LR so you may want to take what I say with a grain of salt (don't make me wrong though :~)

Sharpening - DPP vs ACR

I just started this thread over on fredmiranda.com regarding a comparison I have done of sharpening in Canon's Digital Photo Professional and Adobe's Capture Raw. I thought some of you, particularly Canonites, might find it helpful. I would also appreciate any comments or corrections from the experts out there. Here is the link (by the way, I have no monetary interest in Fred's site - I just usually hang out there and I'm too lazy to copy/paste everything over here):
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/595717
In addition to the thread, I would also just like to say that I appreciate the efforts of Thomas Knoll and his team as well as to whatever influence Jeff Schewe and the Pixel Genius guys have had. ACR continues to show important improvements and it can't be an easy job keeping up with the advances in digital photography.
With every complement has to come a request :) so I will also throw in some future feature requests that occurred to me while writing up the post above:
- Please enable sharpen-enabled views at less than 100% (and make them carry over to the high-quality preview in Bridge, too. I know that those views, as in PS, are not perfect but they are helpful in giving you a hint of overall sharpness. I think it would also make it a little easier to use the Alt-Masking function, too.
- I think it may be time to consider a radius of less than 0.5. Bruce Fraser recommended 0.4 for cameras over 11 mega-pixels and new cameras like the Canon 1ds3 are way over that.
- This may create more complexity than it's worth but you might consider adding a "highlight/shadow protection" slider that would optionally remove the halo dampening. It would violate 3-pass sharpening doctrine but it would probably make some DPP-sharpening aficionados happy.
Anyway, thanks again.
Dennis

> I have no particular interest in posting to a thread elsewhere...
No problem. I didn't expect anybody here to have to go to the other thread to post a response. Here is fine.
> I suggest reading ABOUT CAMERA RAW 4.1
Actually, I read your article right after you published it but I hadn't checked it recently. Regarding gaps in my ACR sharpening knowledge, I admitted to some of those in the post - particularly exactly HOW ACR does some of the things it does and also the behavior of the Detail slider. I notice that at the time you wrote the article you linked, you admitted not understanding all of the internals of it either :). I find the "halo dampening" of the Detail Slider to really be secondary to the way it emphasizes or de-emphasizes soft edges and fine detail. It also appears to me that ACR is always doing some level of "blend-if"-like protection of highlights and shadows, regardless of how the detail slider is set. I plan on picking up your book while I am back in the States over Christmas so maybe I will find some additional info there.
> Why, enabling sharpening previews for under 100% will be inaccurate. Why would you want inaccurate?
I am sure my reasons won't be convincing for you but here they are:
* So I have a constant visible reminder that I have sharpening engaged (instead of waiting until I have it imported into PS)
* So ACR's behavior is consistent with PS, which does provide the sharpening views at less than 100%
* So I have an inaccurate but better than nothing way of judging overall sharpness of the image. In my mind, I would equate it to something like Soft Proofing. I wouldn't call Soft Proofing "accurate" either but I can understand how some people, with a little effort and practice, can take it to the point where if they see "Y" in soft proofing, they are fairly confident that they will get something close to "X" in the final print. It may be innacurate but maybe it can be innaccurate in a sufficiently consistent way that it is still useful.
> Testing showed it wasn't needed...so if you want it, you'll have to show why it's needed.
I'll take your word for it. It just seemed that based on Mr. Fraser's observations that more mega-pixels = smaller radius that 0.5 might start being a little large and might limit detail extraction for cameras like the 5D, 1ds3, etc.. There is a lot of debate right now around the strength of the AA filter on the 1Ds3 and that is what got me thinking about it.
> Again, why? You can already ruin images easily enough . . .
Yep. I basically agree with you. That is why I had the lukewarm qualifier there. Mainly I was thinking that it could provide "training wheels" for people coming from DPP. It also might help reduce the jaggies on straight line diagonals that I thought might be at least partly due to the dampening of sharpening in the highlights and shadows (like Mr. Fraser's blend-if technique). Not really compelling reasons to add additional complexity but that was what was going through my mind.
Anyway, thanks for responding Jeff.

ACR sharpening range vs. PS4 sharpening range

I'd like to do my capture sharpening in ACR in Bridge then do output in PS4, but the Bridge Amount range of 1-150, while PS has an Amount range of 1-500; and an even more dramatic difference in "pixel" settings (ACR has .5 - 3.0 while PS has 1-64). I've read that the ACR sharpening is basically USM (unsharp mask), so is there any way to correlate these numbers? For instance, if I apply 150 in ACR does that equal 150% in PS or is the scale different so that ACR's 150 = PS 500% for an incremental increase of 3.3,
Brian

There are thousand ways of image sharpening and for ideal result there is no
such thing as 'one way fits all'
I'm no expert but don't think you can compare the two ways, better use them
both together, some even use three ways of sharpening and those ways are
again different for various purposes.
Try also pixelgenius.com
And here are two from the 2.6 million results after Google search about
Image sharpening :
http://www.pixelgenius.com/tips/schewe-sharpening.pdf
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=608637&seqNum=4
I've read that the ACR sharpening is basically USM (unsharp mask), so is
there any way to correlate these numbers?

ACR 6.7 RC1 Sharpening artifacts when capture sharpening 5DM3

I seem to be getting sharpening artifacts with ACR 6.7 RC1 at relatively low levels of sharpening with Canon 5DM3 files using the "Details" tab. For instance even at ISO 200, I see these at levels like 40 -6-25-0. If I up the masking it does get a little better, but I've never seen this before while using a 40D. I sharpen at 100% view, but even at 50% this is noticeable. I'm using CS5 on a Dell Studio desktop running Windows 7 Home Premium. This is consistent across dozens of images, all of which are properly exposed. (No exposure/brightening/contrast or clarity, etc. applied)
Anyone else seeing this?

The so-called "screen door effect" was caused by noise becoming distorted when applying a warp (e.g., lens profile correction). In that earlier example, a very high sharpening setting with no masking and no noise reduction was applied to a moderate ISO image.
I suggest applying Luminance noise reduction and using more Masking when applying sharpening. This avoids the pattern entirely.

Photoshop CC smart objects open in Illustrator CS6 instead of Illustrator CC

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Opening Nikon D600 NEF files using PhotoShop CS4 11.0.2 and ACR 5.7.0.213

Hello,
I've just bought a Nikon D600.
I have Photoshop CS4 11.0.2 and ACR 5.7.0.213.
With these versions, I'm unable to open the D600 NEF files. I get the following message:
"Could not complete your request because it is not the right kind of document"
Yet I can view the NEFs in other software that pre-dates the D600, e.g. FastStone Image Viewer 4.6.
Does anybody know if I can get a plug-in from Adobe for PS CS4 that allows me to edit D600 NEFs?
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I have an Adobe Indesign to Photoshop question - Smart Objects

I have an Adobe Indesign to Photoshop question - Smart Objects
I am copying and placing InDesign photo silhouettes and placing them into a Photoshop document for an online graphic.
I believe that the color holds up very well. It's when the JPG goes through a CMS ingest that the colors warp. A photo technician is able to correct the color.
I just need to get some insight on my process that (I think) I invented - since I don't see any discussions or videos online that back me up.
Any thoughts - or who could I access that might have an answer for me.
Thanks!

You haven't invented anything. Your server-side processing (based on something involving ImageMagik with PHP most likely) is simply stripping/ ignoring color profiles and converting the colors. This is very much the same issue as in your other post - your procedures just don't realyl make sense and you're basicalyl screwing yourself by using this methodology.
Mylenium

Photoshop CC Smart Sharpen Optimization

What is the best laptop configuration (CPU, GPU, Memory, SSD) to optimize speed of Photoshop CC's smart sharpen feature?

Laura Shoe wrote:
Could someone articulate for me how Photoshop CC's Smart Sharpening differs from Lightroom (and ACR's) sharpening in the Detail panel?
The approach is potentially similar if you have SS set to fix lens blur and you have LR's Detail slider moved way over to the right (+50 and above). When set up like that, both tools can do deconvolution type sharpening...
Booth tools can set the sharpening radius and both have an amount (although I doubt the numbers relate–prolly a different scale).
With SS the sharpening is applied on the color data while in LR the sharpening is only on the luminance data. With SS on a layer, you can set the layer blend to luminance. With SS you can roll off and control the sharpening contours of the highlights and shadows. In LR the sharpening is preset to roll off the highlights and shadows so there's no user control.
In SS you can (in CC) can adjust noise reduction while sharpening. In LR you can as well. The only thing that SS can do that LR can't is to resharpen for motion blur. However, SS is pretty weak in that department compared to the new anti-shake filter.
Which one is better? 6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other. I would not leave LR simply to run SS on an image and be forced to work on a rendered image. I would do all the capture sharpening in LR and would only use SS if I was going to go into Photoshop anyway and even then, more likely to use SS for effect sharpening not capture sharpening.

PhotoKit Sharpener over-ruling ACR ?

Ever since we started using the latest version of PhotoKit Sharpener (1.2.5) we have started having problems with Adobe Camera Raw (4.1). This problem is happening on 3 machines, both Intel and Non-Intel G5 Macs, OSX 10.4.9
Whenever we use the PhotoKit Sharpener after importing an image from ACR and save an image, the NEXT CR2 that we try to open will NOT open in ACR, but instead bypasses ACR and opens directly in Photoshop.
You CAN open the next file in ACR if you do it though -------> File > Open -------> But WHAT a pain to always have to navigate and scroll down, when double-clicking to open is SO much faster.
In order to get the CR2 to open in ACR (with double-clicking) , we must restart Photoshop. Nutz!
ANY help greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
Sara

Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the response!
We tried this but can only get it to work when opening from Bridge. Since we don't typically use Bridge as part of our workflow (for color-correcting), is there any other way to get ACR to return to it's normal behavior (as in, double-clicking on a RAW image opens it in ACR only, not Photoshop) ?
Thanks again!
Sara

Photoshop creating boxes on layer mask after sharpening

I don't even know how to explain this but I hope the screen shot I've included explains it better. I have a problem with Photoshop automatically creating strange boxes on the layer mask when I'm sharpening the image, first with high pass, then unsharp mask. After I've already created a stamp visible layer on top of the layer mask. I don't understand! Can anyone help me with this?

It seems that you are saying that you applied Unsharp Mask to the top layer and it resulted in black blocks suddenly appearing in the mask of an untargeted lower layer.
Looks like image tile corruption of the mask. There's a lengthy thread where some Mac users have reported apparently similar corruption arising from using Gaussian Blur and Unsharp Mask filters. That seemed to involve Smart Objects, though, and your example has no SO.
Link: Gaussian Blur in Photoshop CS5 Corrupting files
Here are a few comments:
"using gaussian blur, and then photoshop starts drawing blocks on my files. Sometimes it's on the actual layers themselves, and sometimes just in my layer masks."
"It's not just gaussian blurring that does it for me though (though it does); for me, it's way worse layers with masks, or groups of layers with masks that really get things tweaked out."
"Didn't even get to apply the Gaussian Blur. Saw the corruption happening while I was in the effect preview, hit cancel but it still messed up my image. Interestingly, it only effected the layer beneath the one I was attempting to apply the blur to."

Photoshop CS6 installend fresh with update to sharpen type for my new Mac Retina.

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<moved from Creative Cloud Download & Install to Photoshop General Discussion>

Photoshop CS4 smart object template just overwrote a raw file - HELP

So. I've been working in Photoshop extensively for about 6 years now and I am well aware that nothing we do in Photoshop or Lightroom is supposed to overwrite a raw file. I'm not talking about changing it to something a little lighter or darker, I'm talking about replacing a picture of one baseball player with another one - and the original? Gone.
Here's what happened: I have a poster template that contains several layers, 7 of which are smart objects. I change the pictures in the template by right-clicking the smart object layer and selecting "replace smart object," browsing to the new image, selecting, and here is what SHOULD happen: the target picture opens in Adobe camera raw, I make some small edits, click done or okay or something similar, and that new image has replaced the old one in the template. What DID happen was this: I followed the procedure above and selected my target raw file, the picture that was already in the template (the one I was trying to replace with my target file) opened in Adobe camera raw. I thought - Hey, that's wierd! Closed the ACR dialog and tried again. Same thing happened. I opened lightroom and saw - to my HORROR - that the target file had been changed to the same image that was in the template.
If it clarifies: pictures of player A (who played in 2009) is in all of the smart object layers in my template. I want to make that poster be of player B (who played in 2012) so I begin replacing all the smart objects. When I get to the 3rd image in the poster template, Photoshop overwrites my raw file of player B with the smart object photo of Player A. There were no photos of player A on the network drive that the picture of Player B was on. But there's one now. My raw file shows that it was modified about 10 minutes ago.
We tried undoing in Photoshop. That did nothing. We tried deleting the xmp file. That did nothing. We removed it from the lightroom catalog and reimported it. It is now a picture of Player A from 2009 and my picture of Player B from 2012 is just gone.
Anybody have any idea what this could be and how we could avoid it in the future?
Best,
Jamey

mojoimagery wrote:
Now - JJ - when you say "overlay files" - what do you mean? Because that feels like a good description for what happened.
We performed no save operation at any point during the sequence of events that ended with the image in one raw file being replaced by the image in the smart object.
As I wrote Smart Object layers embedded object is a copy of the original and if you replace it you replace it with a copy of some other object. Embedded object are copies and independent from the original. If after creating a smart Object layer who's embedded object is a copy of a raw file and its conversion settings. You change the original RAW files RAW conversion settings the smart object layer raw conversion setting are not changes for its a copy with independent raw conversion settings. When you replace a smart object layers contents you will replace the embedded object and you should replace it with an object the has the same pixel size and orientation. Because there is an associated transform for the object in the layer that is not replaced. The replacement is also a copy. If the original smart object was created using File Open where you choose a RAW file ACR would open with the RAW files current conversion settings. In ACR you can changes the setting then hold down the shift key to change the open image button to an Open Object button. Using that button ACR will open a smart object layer in Photoshop the contents of the embedded object is a copy of the RAW file and the current ACR settings. No File is written Photoshop is not a File Editor its a Document editor that has many data structures for different layer types. When you replace the contents of a smart object you will be put into a "Place" file selection dialog if you choose a raw file it should have the same orientation as the image being replaced because of the associated transform. When you choose a RAW file ACR will open and you can change the conversion settings however there will be no Open Image button instead there will be an OK button. There is also a save image button and you can save a RAW file that is a DNG file not a CR2 file. Like the DNG converter. If you click the OK button the embedded object in the smart object layer will be replaced with a copy of the selected RAW file and the current ACR settings. Again there is no file written Photoshop is not a File editor just the embedded smart object data is replaced in Photoshop smart object layer's data structure.
I do not think the use of smart objects in you process caused what you are experiencing and because it only happens once an a while I feel its more likely caused by some human error made during the processing in those cases. I would look elsewhere for what causing the overlay. In the place file selection dialog it is possible to rename files perhaps even by accident. Programs like LR and Bridge can rename and copy files perhaps overlay other files.

"To sharpen or not to sharpen" That's the question.

The doyen of "Photoshop Elements 4", Scott Kelby, writes..
"I sharpen every digital camera photo, either to bring back the original crispness that gets lost during the correction process, or to help fix a photo that's slightly out of focus.
Either way I haven't met a digital camera photo that didn't need a little sharpening."
As a newie to digital photography I'm finding that following this suggestion sometimes results in less realistic pictures than the originals.
Comment would be welcome.
Cliff (In sunny, hot, scorching Spain..)

My preference is usually the following, or something close:
1. Duplicate background layer
2. Go to Filter>other>high pass. Try radius = 1.5
3. Set blendong mode to either overlay or vivid light.
If I remember correctly, Barbara Brundage suggested 1.5 and overlay in her book The Missing Manual.
Vivid light will give it an extra pop. Sometimes good, sometimes not.
See what you think.
I agree with Colin, there are no formulas for this. It's probably different for each photo and all depends on your preferences.

Photoshop CC Smart Sharpen vs. LR/ACR Sharpening

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