Sharpening in LR4 and CS5

Question

I  shoot RAW with Nikon cameras and use both LR4 and CS5 for post-processing.
My question is about sharpening in LR4 and/or CS5.
Can I do sharpening in LR4 and then again in CS5 by "Edit in Photoshop CS5"?
I recently read an article descrbing that in case we do sharpening in CS5, it did not recommend re-sharpening in CS5.
Could someone advise me which approach is the best for sharpening images between LR4 and/or CS5?  

Answer 1

Big question, and one with a lot of answers and also a lot of differing opinions (certainly in forums!). My take, having studied this aspect of image processing a great deal over the past couple of years (this assumes you're shooting in raw):
Break up your sharpening into two (or three) stages. Two of them are key - capture and output sharpening:
- Capture sharpening. Sharpen in the Develop module of LR to "bring back" sharpness lost during the process of capturing the image and converting it into a digital form. Sharpness is lost during the conversion, and also due to the anti-moire (or anti-aliaising) filter that typically is present in most digital cameras (there are some expections, the only Nikon one without this filter is the new D800E), and the Bayer colour filter. The capture process robs some of the sharpness from the image (even when using top-end gear), and you need to recover that in Develop: this is specifically what the controls there are designed for. Note that in-camera sharpness settings have zero effect in LR. Note also that the beauty of being able to do this in LR is that you can tailor the sharpening to your particular image attributes. IMO, capture sharpening is a vital part of any post processing workflow.
- Creative sharpening. Optional (don't do this very often myself, but as with all things, that depends on the image), but you can do this if you want to emphaise a part of your image (the classic example that tends to get rolled out is a portrait where you may wish to add additonal sharpening to the eyes). This can, and generally should, be done in PS (in theory you can do it in LR using the adjustment brush, but from my experience that doesn't tend to give the best results.
- Output sharpening. This should be done at the very end of the process to an image that has been re-sized to it's final output dimensions (so for example if it's for a print, set up the print dimensions/ratio and the ppi before output sharpening). Furthermore, output sharpening depends greatly on the output device: print sharpening will typically need more (and use a different "thickness") than screen sharpening (for web viewing, etc). LR has built-in capture sharpening (available in Export and the Print module) which I'm finding to be very good, but some prefer other tools for this task. You can also do it in PS, but it will be more labour intensive to do so. Do this on a copy of the master file - never on the original.
This is a very brief overview, and there's quite a bit more to it than that, in particular the actual techniques and tools to use (and how to use them). Like I say, a big subject. If you're serious about learning more, I highly recommend the Real World Sharpening book (2nd ed): of all the material I've read on this subject, that's by far the most comrpehensive and informative work. Yes, a whole book just on sharpening - said it was a big question!
IMHO the "sharpen once and once only" approach is outdated, and it's just not flexible enough to cover all the bases. But not everyone will agree with this I'm sure...
M