Is sharpening necessary for landscape work?

[john_h.1]

<p><em>My shooting ethos is to do my work behind the lens, instead of at the computer... ...This is... ...a preference ...For me, the challenge of the photographic endeavor is to expose and compose in the field and otherwise not manipulate the image... ...is postprocess sharpening necessary to bring the image into alignment with what was actually witnessed?</em></p>

<p>If you are at the scene when your images are captured by the camera then compare the unsharpened images with sharpened ones and you can answer your own question. Then you can figure out what you want to do.</p>

 

<h2>Responses</h2>

[mike_hitchen]

<p>Jason:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I think the idea that you can spend thousands of dollars on a camera and lens and it can't make a properly sharp image, no matter what you do, is just annoying as heck.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You can if you use the in-camera defaults. But with post-processing you can make it better (remember that USM in digital processing came from a technique that was developed for printing from film!). And films differed in their 'sharpness' as well, though this was more directly related to ISO.<br>

As a matter of interest has anyone compared a print from an in-camera jpeg with a print from a negative? I keep meaning to but haven't got round to it though my ailing memory suspects the answer is that they are not much different.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>It does seem, that once you get the images into a digital world, you DO need to fix what the camera engineer thought was best.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Not so if you shoot RAW. But is jpeg vs negative any different to the old decision of photo lab vs your own darkroom for the best results?</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>The fact that you then need to buy hundreds of dollars of software to make it right makes it worse.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Nope. GIMP is free. So is the software that Canon give with their cameras. PSE is less than a $100. And the in-camera jpegs do a very good job. People shooting film will compensate for the colour preferences that particular films, and in fact choose different films for different situations their precise properties (for ultrasharp they chose ISO 50, for reds they would use Kodacrhone, for greens maybe Fujichrome etc etc) - so film was not this amprophous panacaea to recording 'reality'. One advantage of digital is that all those options exist in a single body - no more messing around swapping films mid-shoot if you need a different 'effect'.</p>

 

[g dan mitchell]

<p>In many ways, a lot of this is fundamentally no different than it was with film cameras.</p>

<ul>

<li>If one wants to just take pictures without a lot of fuss and use what comes from the camera then jpg output is quick and easy and can produce quite good results. I'd say it is better than the situation back in the film days since you still can just go with the default output of the light recording medium or, if you prefer, you have some simple and relatively effective in-camera options available.</li>

<li>If you want to get the highest possible technical quality from your images you can, just like in the film days, choose to spend more time (and money) on the post-processing of the captured image. Here, again, those who choose this route have even more opportunities to fine tune and control the final product today than they would have had with film.</li>

</ul>

<p>The difficulty comes when people "want it all" - the technically perfected output that comes from investing in the time, skills, software, and hardware but without having to make the investment in those things. That wasn't possible with film and it isn't possible with digital photography.</p>

<p>Please be clear that my point is <em>not</em> that there is anything at all wrong with wanting to keep photography simple and avoid worrying about a lot of post-production or about other technical concerns. That, too, was and is a valid choice.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[garydem]

<p><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=3989561">G Dan Mitchell</a>-my answer to jason was geared to his desire to keep the pp to a minamum. what you said about making layers and using smart sharpen certainly does not fit with jason's wishes. that was why i said to use the pse or csx auto sharpen. i usually use Focus Magic which if used means that other sharpening is skipped. personally, i would not go to layers and smart sharpen either and for the same reason. i most definately want to stay away from pping. sitting at the pc doing pping is for me akin to root canal and is the same enjoyment, like none. this is why i mput a large effort in the takimng odf the pic in the field to keep the pp at a very low amount. my rule is if i cannot pp an image in 60sec or less, and that includes sharpening, that means that it was not taken right in the field. and that is unacceptable.</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>Gary, do you assume that those who use post-processing in their work flow do not also expend a great deal of effort in the field in order to capture that initial image? Some folks seem to presume that if pay attention to the capture that you won't be interested in work in post or that if you engage in work in post you must not be very careful in the field.</p>

<p>There is no such correlation that can be generalized this way. I make extensive use of post-processing techniques and I work very carefully and thoughtfully in the field. Often the careful decisions I make about how I choose to capture an image are partly or largely based on my plan for how I will handle the image in post to get the final result I have in mind.</p>

<p>Your rule is interesting, but very unorthodox, especially if you do things like landscape photography. I'm not one to tell other photographers what they can and cannot do, but your notions would astonish many photographers like A. Adams for example, who was astonishingly attentive to pre- and post-production work and who considered it central to realizing his vision for the print. (On the other hand, I guess you could point to Cartier-Bresson who wasn't very interested in the printing process.)</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

<p>In many respects photography is like writing and a finished photograph is like a short story. Do you consider editing what you write to be necessary to getting your story clearly and in a way that engages a reader? The initial act of photography is like having a thought and scribbling it down. Processing (raw image to TIFF or JPEG form) and post processing ( what you do to the TIFF or JPEG) to get the photo into its final form is akin to careful editing and rewriting -- deciding what to leave in and what to leave out, and polishing your choice of words and grammar to bring attention to the points you want your audience to pay attention to, to make sure the audience sees what you want the mto see, to stimulate in them the emotional sensation you want them to respond with.</p>

[sjmurray]

<p>Another analogy to complement Ellis's: Ansel Adams, who was an accomplished pianist as well as a photographer, said that the creating the negative was like writing the musical score, that is, getting the notes down on paper, and making the finished print was the "performance." In other words, taking the photo with the camera is just the first step. The final presentation of the image, whether as a jpg on the web or as a print for framing, involves taking further steps to ensure it represents what you want it to, as Ellis points out above. Post processing is as important as the taking of the photo. Its always been that way. There is nothing wrong with trying to get it as close to perfection as you can initially in the camera, but getting it "out of the camera" so the rest of the world can see it takes more steps. Some images do require more work. You can't always control the things you are photographing, and that means sometimes you have more post processing work to do. The darkroom has now been replaced by the computer. </p>

[johnw63]

<p>I'm not sure about the original poster, but I sometimes get the impression that some people spend SO much time, in post production, and change SO much that the the original shot almost becomes secondary. I'm sure this is not the case, for most. Perhaps this is accentuated by uploads on the gallery here, that have been altered a lot, yet the poster lists it as " unmanipulated ". Perhaps I feel a bit deceived by this. I think I fear a slippery slope of more and more edits becoming the "norm" and so are not even mentioned. That this bothers me, rather than learning to appreciate a total process, is my hang up, I guess. I am OK with changes that have a direct correlation to dark room techniques, but the wild stuff that can be done now, that Ansel could never have been able to do, still smacks of cheating, in my psyche. That's just me.</p>

<p> </p>

[garydem]

<p><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=3989561">G Dan Mitchell</a>-first, i am not telling anyone what to do that is up tp ,them. i am saying what i do, and it works FOR ME. if someone asks for info or advce on photography i do supply it to the best i can. i should mention that i have carefully setup my 2 dslr to shoot the high quality accurate jpeg. most people on these forums shoot raw(and the needed converting and pping that goes with it). i have gotten out of shooting raw because for me i get the same results without the extra work. how many users on any forums have spent the 2+hrs on each dslr shooting checking adjusting reshooting to finally get the image that is wanted in order to adjust the jpeg to the quality needed? or are they just going with the defaults and saying jpeg is bad.</p>

<p>my workflow is a success because i have many images framed and hanging in peoples homes and several businesses and i have also shot commercial and weddings. no complaints from anyone. rather many compliments on the pictures.<br>

we went to the western national parks in august and i shot my preferred subject, landscape. all came out great. it should be noted that i shot with 2 dslrs and took 543 pics. of the 543, how many were off in terms of wb or exposure? zero. how many needed cropping in the pc? about 10, maybe. i do my cropping in the camera, it is called composition. like everyone else i have LBA but i also use those lenses for the purpose that they were designed. to adjust what one sees in the viewfinder, to get the right composition, and make cropping unnessessary. and i did shoot raw during the trip, raw +jpeg. during the visit to carlsbad cavern. of the raw shot there how got used? none, the jpegs were better. i simply wanted the raws as a hedge against the lighting.</p>

<p>in reading forums here and elsewhere, the large area of comments is what one does in photoshop and other pp programs. and the many hours are spent doing this. if this is what one wants and desires, fine for them. i just do not care for it, never will. i put my effort into shooting with a setup dslr(which is a rareity), and i shoot jpeg(which after shooting slides for 32yrs is for me the same thing(limited or no headrom m and a smaller dr)), and put a lot care and effort and trime into the field shooting. hence my 60sec limit. that is not to say i never go pp past the 60, but if i do then i know that my efforts in the field with the dslr were simply not good enough. and there fore i have to put more effort into the same kind of shots in the future. i do not shoot a lot of pics at one time but each is carefully thought out and then taken with the effort it takes to make it a keeper from the moment it is taken. this is not to say it will be kept or printed. but the intent and intial effort is there. and i use a tripod and cable release a great deal of the time, shake reduction not withstanding. all this prep work and shooting effort accomplishes for me what the rest are doing later in photoshop. the difference is that instead of photoshop(i have cs2 and pse7) i am doing other things.</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>Gary, it sounds like we agree that neither of us is going to tell the other what to do. For my part, I'm not going to tell anyone that they must (or must not) "post-process," nor am I going to say that they should spend no more than 60 seconds on a shot or that they must spend more than 60 seconds. (In my own photography I have had successful shots where I've had to work so quickly that I've barely had time to get the camera out and fire, and I've had others where I literally spent hours - in a few cases I could argue that it was days - setting up and producing the photograph.)</p>

<p>I stand by my points in my previous post. Note that I didn't say (at least not intentionally) that <em>you</em> should shoot differently or that <em>you</em> shoot in a wrong way. I did point out that any assumption that limiting your time investment in a photograph to less than 60 seconds at the time of the shot with no work in post is a much different approach than the approaches used by virtually all landscape photographers now and in the past. As such, that approach truly represents an outlier approach to landscape photography. (Though, as I acknowledged with my mention of Cartier-Bresson, it would not be so atypical of, say, some street photography. And, just to be clear, I respect and enjoy street photography and do it myself, so this is emphatically not meant as any sort of put down.)</p>

<p>Beyond the question of this being your own personal approach to landscape photography - and who am I to argue with your own choice or your success with it!? - I was commenting on the common and just plain wrong notion expressed by quite a few people that</p>

<ul>

<li>"good photographers get it right in the camera," </li>

<li>and that is the end of it, </li>

<li>and that doing any significant work in the post-production stage betrays a lack of photographic skill and vision,</li>

<li>and that post-production work is mostly done to fix mistakes or cover up for errors in judgment at the time the shutter was tripped,</li>

<li>and that really great photographers don't indulge in post-production work.</li>

</ul>

<p>Yes, good photographers do strive to get it as right as possible in the camera. No, that is very rarely end of it.</p>

<p>While your approach is different, the norm among landscape photographers at least is to both get it right in the camera <em>and </em> to get it right in post. This is not some sort of new cheap shortcut that contemporary photographers have given in to - it has been the case for a long time. Since Adams' name has come up a few times in this thread, I'm sure you must be aware of the extensive and complex and sophisticated post-processing (and sometimes pre-processing) he did both with his negatives and with his prints. In fact, his books about photography have as much to say about what we might call post-production as they do about the shutter-clicking business. The folks I know who worked with him tell me that he would fully embrace the post-processing methods we use today as a logical and improved method of accomplishing the things he accomplished so well using his skill behind the camera and in the darkroom.</p>

<p>To summarize, I'm not saying that an approach to photography that eschews attention to the image outside of the 60 seconds spent composing it and tripping the shutter is necessarily a bad thing, but I am saying that other more traditional approaches applying extensive darkroom/post techniques have quite a tradition of producing really, really fine photographic art.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[dcstep]

<p>Gary, many cameras dermonstrate more sharpness when processed from RAW. At <a href="http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos7d/page14.asp">http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos7d/page14.asp</a> DPReview compares out of camera jpeg to several RAW converters with Canon 7D. These results are typical with the current leading DSLRs. Of course, the RAW converter chosen is important, as the illustration demonstrates. Dan is using a 5D2, which indeed puts out a high quality jpeg, but its RAW conversion provides even more detail. (See the DPReview of the 5D2).</p>

<p>JPEG+RAW is indeed a great strategy, no matter what your typical subject. For landscape I can understand someone's satisfaction with jpeg. When shooting birds and wildlife near dawn and dusk you want to use your DSLR's full dyamic range, which may mean bringing the exposure value up to the right on the hystogram, with intention to pull it back in PP. I find that using DxO's Optics Pro for RAW conversion and batch processing, I get a better, more detailed result out of RAW, even if all I do is pull down the brightness. BTW, I seldom violate Dan's 60-second rule in the user friendly DxO.</p>

<p>If you do shoot jpeg only, then you need to expose as if your using slide film and will have little or no opportunity to adjust subsequently. That's fine and ok, but you give up some of the potential of a digital camera. The sensor does not act like Kodachrome or Velvia, but most of the time you can get good results by assuming that it will. An experienced photography will realize the few times when it doesn't and adjust accordingly.</p>

<p>Part of this discussion comes down to what's good enough. For my bird photography I strive for tac-sharp, even in a 100-percent crop. When I met Bob Rozinski, noted wildlife photographer, one of the first things he said to me is that maybe we set out sights too high. When we look at our images at 100% and even 200% we often forget that it'll look very good at 1024x800.</p>

<p>So, I'm changing my view a little. If the subject is interesting and the image looks sharp at 1024, then I consider it a keeper. I still strive for images that look great at 100% crop. Along the same lines, it's easy to understand how someone might decide that jpeg is "good enough" even for pro work.</p>

<p>I'll stick with shooting RAW+JPEG and using the JPEGs for review and deciding which RAW images to batch process. I use PS only for 1 out of 1,000, where I want to do something "special" whatever that may be.</p>

[garydem]

<p>g mitchell + david stephens-"good photographers get it right in the camera", yes they do. or are you saying shoot the image any old way even if the wb is off and the exposure is off by 2 stops that is fine? then you simply spend 2 hrs fixing what should have been done right in the pping. a adams is quite often used as the one who spent a lot of time in the darkroom and ended up with masterpieces. sure he did, but is anyone going to say that the images he took were not as letter perfect as is possible to take them? then he did his darkroom magic. my point is that i have already adjusted the dslr to give the image that most of the work in pping gets after the pping(except for sharpening). this leaves me in the position to only do touchup work pping and then sharpen. this is how you get the 60sec or less situation. you make sure that image when you get to the pc is as good as it is possible to make it. so what i start with is what after an hour of pping the others THEN start with.</p>

<p>i shot slide film for 32yrs. for me it was ecktachrome 64, almost always. when i switched to digital i shot jpeg and just kept shooting as though i was still shootimng slide film. it worked great. for me having a very limited dr and no headroom was normal. because that is what slide film has. you have zero headroom and a dr of about 4+stops. so getting a dr of 6stops with jpeg is heaven. not to mention the 1/2 stop or so of headroom, compared to zero with slides this also great.</p>

<p>"If you do shoot jpeg only, then you need to expose as if your using slide film and will have little or no opportunity to adjust subsequently". this is great since the image quality coming from the camera is so good. what exactly am i going to adjust? the composition is fine, so no cropping. the wb and exposure are dead on, so no adjustment there either. what is left to adjust? i fully realize that this way of shooting takes all the fun away from playing with the pp software, but that is exactly what i want. i, and a lot of shooters like me, never had pp software to do any pping to slides. you got it right in the camera or threw it out. there was no fix EVER RPT EVER. once you overexposed a slide it was a dead duck there was no fix with anything. the part of the slide that was overexposed simply went clear and there was no material to recover. if the composition was wrong there was no cropping either, you are simply stuck with what you shot. you projected the slide and then you groaned because you composed it wrong. but this is how i learnd to shoot. shooting a great many slides and getting a great many in the trash. after awhile you got better and did not throw very many or none out. before i switched to digital i got a least 95%(100% on a good day) right in terms of wb exposure and cropping. with my digital jpegs i am getting the same results now. when i started with slides in 1970 virtually every slide got thrown out. this was expensive. by the time i switched to digital i had reversed the percentage, and that score has stayed with me.<br>

i should mention that yrs ago i shot weddings with film. i said to myself never again, thoug the images turned out fine. IF i ever shot a digital wedding i would shoot all raw. this is because of the mixed and unknown lighting at weddings. and i would use white test shots for each lighting scene and later adjust the test shot then any images that were shot under the same lighting. i carry a 3 card test color card in the bottom of my camera case, just in case i need it. since the lighting was an unknown to me that was why i shot the raw+jpeg at carlsbad caverns. i wanted a hedge against the situation. as it turned out, the raws never got used. the jpegs were better.</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>Gary, you are setting up a straw man to argue with. You begin by suggesting that I hold or described an absurd point of view that is most certainly not mine. You wrote:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"are you saying shoot the image any old way even if the wb is off and the exposure is off by 2 stops that is fine? then you simply spend 2 hrs fixing what should have been done right in the pping"</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p><em>I </em> know my post was long... but did you actually read it? I wrote:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"Yes, good photographers do strive to get it as right as possible in the camera. No, that is very rarely end of it.</em> <br /> <em>While your approach is different, the norm among landscape photographers at least is to both get it right in the camera <em>and </em> to get it right in post. This is not some sort of new cheap shortcut that contemporary photographers have given in to - it has been the case for a long time. Since Adams' name has come up a few times in this thread, I'm sure you must be aware of the extensive and complex and sophisticated post-processing (and sometimes pre-processing) he did both with his negatives and with his prints. In fact, his books about photography have as much to say about what we might call post-production as they do about the shutter-clicking business. The folks I know who worked with him tell me that he would fully embrace the post-processing methods we use today as a logical and improved method of accomplishing the things he accomplished so well using his skill behind the camera and in the darkroom."</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>You also wrote:</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>a adams is quite often used as the one who spent a lot of time in the darkroom and ended up with masterpieces. sure he did, but is anyone going to say that the images he took were not as letter perfect as is possible to take them?</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>I admire Adams' work greatly, and yes, I will say without hesitation that some of his negatives were not as "letter perfect as is possible." It is well-known that while he did <em>strive for</em> perfection - who doesn't? - that he did not always achieve it during the capture phase and unlike you he certainly <em>did not fully achieve it there</em> . One of his most famous and successful photographs, the "Moonrise, Hernandez..." photograph a) was not perfectly exposed by any stretch of the imagination and looks pretty awful as a contact print, and b) was used to produce a print that relied on very significant amounts of post-processing manipulation. (Hint: the original sky looked nothing like what he gave us in the print.)</p>

<p>If you have a chance sometime, look into Adams' work more thoroughly. Especially take a look at some other well-known examples of how he radically reinterpreted the original exposure in post, and how in some cases he greatly changed his interpretation over time. And do skim some of his books on his post-processing methodology - you might change some of your notions about the "purity" of the capture and so forth.</p>

<p>Some links you might find interesting - if you have time for only one, make it the 3rd one. If two, add the 1st one:</p>

<ol>

<li>John Sexton on <a href="http://notesonphotographs.eastmanhouse.org/index.php?title=Sexton,_John._Moonrise,_Hernandez._Ansel_Adams_Printing_Notes_%E2%80%94%E2%80%9CTranslation%E2%80%9D">Adams' printing notes for "Moonrise</a> ."</li>

<li>Video of Adams <a href="http://www.sfmoma.org/multimedia/videos/100">discussing how he made this print</a> .</li>

<li>A very important discussion of the <a href="http://notesonphotographs.eastmanhouse.org/index.php?title=Verhulst,_Jeanne._The_Making_of_an_Icon">process of creating this print</a> - <em>especially see the "straight contact print" version</em> near the top of the page and the following generalized description of his "post-processing" techniques... and then get back to me about "perfect" in camera... :-)</li>

</ol>

<p>Dan</p>

[dcstep]

<p>Gary, your wedding example makes it clear that you understand the value of RAW to deal with variable lighting issues an to maximize dynamic range. I'm not sure that the OP understands that. He may be shooting all jpeg as some sort of badge of honor and not realizing that he can gain dynamic range and flexibility by shooting RAW and spending less than 60-seconds optimizing each image.</p>

<p>Dave</p>

[garydem]

<p>david stephens - i shoot jpeg almost always because i CAN DO IT and get a quality image. i am the first one to admit that not everyone can, for a lot of reasons. it takes skill patience experience effort care and time. if all or any part of this is missing or the user does not have enough, or not willing to do enough, then the user has no choice but to find another way of getting the quality image. i hope strongly that my method works ONLY if the user has the abilities to do it and make it work. if no then the user if going to be in a worse off position that before he started. i point out super strongly that what i do is only good, and going to work, if the user has the skill and experience and effort to make it work. it most definately is not for everone. please super note-i have been shooting with a slr/dslr since 1970. i am in my 40th yrs of shooting with a slr/dslr. that has given me a great amount of skill knowledge and experience in shooting in all kinds of situations. not everyone can say this. i hope the op knows this.</p>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>So, Gary, you still seem to think that those who choose another route must do so because they don't have the "skill and experience" that you have, right?</p>

<p>OK...</p>

[dcstep]

<p>Here we go... ;-)</p>

<p>Jason, the OP, threw out the question and never came back. His line, "My shooting ethos is to do my work behind the lens, instead of at the computer" made me think that he might not be aware of how digital works differently from slides and/or negatives. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, but until he responds in some way it's hard to continue the discussion in the context of the original thread.</p>

[jkaufman]

David: If you review this thread, I think you will find this is my third reply. I have kept my own comments to a minimum as

my initial query was made out of a desire to learn, not to be heard.

[dcstep]

<p>Sorry Jason, I reviewed, but missed your first reply.</p>

<p>If Picasa is your final media, then sharpening will have very little impact, IMHO, due to file size that most are viewed in.</p>

<p>Dave</p>

[david_ralph1]

<p>Jason, if you want to know more than most of us about sharpening, get the late Bruce Fraser's book on sharpening. It is the technical Bible on the topic. Jeff Shewe just edited an updated version, with references to Lightroom.</p>

<p>A couple of years ago, I would have suggested getting an independent tool for capture sharpening, artistic sharpening, and then output device/media sharpening, the three step process. It is just too much to know given the varying needs of different ink jet printers, papers, viewing screens or print presses. There are several such tools. I chose Pixelgenius' Photokit Sharpener, a plug in for Adobe CS3. I understand Lightroom, Ver 2, now has Photokit Sharpener built in.</p>

<p>The topic is worth looking into. One does not need to master Fraser's book, but it will serve as a wonderful education on the topic. As one Nikonian put it, "It'll hurt your head."<br>

http://www.amazon.com/World-Sharpening-Photoshop-Camera-Lightroom/dp/0321637550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259474792&sr=8-1</p>

[steve_wagner1]

<p>Gary, the simple fact is that jpeg is not an archival format. It has nothing to do with your skill. It's like a concert pianist recording in mp3. Nodoby's saying they aren't good, and that they won't eek the best quality possible out of the format, but there are inherent limitations that no amount of skill will change.</p>