Too much sharpening? (Mt. Hood , Oregon)

[thehikingdude]

What do you think? I think I may need to back off. Is this what's causing the blotchiness in the sky. How do you when it's too much? They looked fine in full res NEF, at least to me.

No cropping. Fixed curves via NC and Unsharp mask. Nothing else.



Here's a few more: http://jeffandjean.smugmug.com/gallery/432893/1/17385212/Large

Thanks, jeff

[Nicole]

I don't think the mountain looks oversharpened. Maybe the blotchiness is caused by the jpeg compression but I'm not sure. You could fix the sky up in photoshop by blurring. Nice pic too.

[thehikingdude]

Thanks for the compliment. Looks like it may be somewhat related to how the gallery reduces the image. I will have to do some more experimenting.

thx,

jeff

[Oneputt]

I believe that most images from the D70 need only minimal sharpening. There is an excellent commercial sharpener available called Photokit. I'll see if I can find a link.

[MHD]

Prudy!!!!
I rarely sharpen images and almost exclusively the images I sharpen are portraits...

[Gordon]

Just tried to post but my connection dropped out and it didnt seem to appear...

I'm fairly sure the marks around the high contrast boundaries are jpg compression artifacts. Sharpening a jpg image and resaving will make them worse, but essentially its just caused by the compression algorithm. If you made a higher quality jpg from your NEF I think they would vanish (depending on how much better you make it)

Gordon

[jethro]

great result! sharpening is a personal choice which to an outsider is spot on!

[leek]

I'm not sure what might have caused it, but it looks as if you have a little noise happening in the sky (and maybe elsewhere)...

Try running the jpg through NoiseWare and see what happens...

[Matt. K]

Mountain is not too sharp...but try this...select the sky with the magic wand and invert the selection...Now sharpen only the mountain and you should avoid getting artifacts in the sky.

[Geoff]

I don't think the mountain is sharpened too much at all Stay as is!

Geoff.

[the foto fanatic]

I beg to differ, but I think the mountain is oversharpened, hence the halo effect that can be noticed around the edges.
I agree with MHD - I rarely find it necesary to sharpen landscapes.

[sirhc55]

I have checked this image on 2 monitors and have seen no undue halation. There is absolutely no halation on the dark side of the mountain - sounds like a good name for a tune!

The mountain, IMO, has not been oversharpened. The colour and contrast appear spot-on too.

I have found that a good generic sharpening procedure in PS is 181%, radius 0.5 and threshold 0. I apply this and do a command z to see the original and command z to see USM applied - I then decide whether or not sharpening is applicable.

[kipper]

I've never really gone much on the USM in PS for some reason. I haven't tried using NCE at the end process to apply USM to, however when loading up a full size image I find that the USM feature in NCE is brilliant.

[thehikingdude]

OK, I think I have figured out what's causing the "noise". I will try to explain as best as I can.

The original post's image was uploaded at "Original size: 1600x1064". When viewed at "Large size: 800x532", the compression the site uses adds noise to the image, as some have noticed in the first post - this is regardless of USM or not, based on the tests I've done.

However, if I upload the pic at a size of 800x532, there is very little if any "noise" as you will see here:


So now I'm beginning to wonder if makes any sense to upload pictures at a higher resolution since (I believe) most users view at something other than the very high res version. The only real advantage that I can see is if someone really wants to view it at a higer res or possibly print one out.

Thoughts? Sorry if I'm rambling.

-jeff