An Overview of Sharpening in Lightroom.
RAW files are digital negatives.
RAW carries a huge amount of information that can be revealed using a RAW editor. Lightroom is arguably one of the most intuitive and powerful RAW editors due to its integration with Photoshop, and its RAW handling capabilities.
A RAW file can be compared to the digital form of a film negative. It's the file your camera records before you see the final image in JPEG form. In that file, your camera is recording a large amount of highlight, shadow, midtone, and color information before applying the settings that determine how the final JPEG image should appear. Forcing your camera to skip that step and just give you the RAW file gives you much larger editing capabilities than with a flattened JPEG.
What's important to note about RAW files however, is that they have no in camera settings applied to them. Your camera usually handles the recovery of the highlights and the shadows- In RAW it doesn't even touch them. The bonus is that you have access to all the information that your camera would have had access to, so you can make your own modifications to create a final JPEG.
One of the biggest things to remember with RAW files is that there is no sharpening (Other than the base LR profile) applied. If your image looks soft when it's imported don't fret! Those sharpening settings will fix it right up and make it tack sharp.
The Detail Palette.
Five rows down from your basic RAW editing capabilities lies the Detail Palette. By default Lightroom has applied an Amount value of 25, at a Radius of 1.0, and the Detail is set to 25. There is an additional option titled Masking that we'll get into later in this tutorial- but first, let's define those options. These terms are universal to Photoshop's sharpening tools so these terms apply there as well.
- Amount: A percentage value that is simply the amount of sharpening you'd like to apply to your image.
- Radius: The size of the edges you wish to sharpen. Smaller values will sharpen smaller details, while larger values will target the thicker edges. This is represented in a pixel value.
- Detail: Targets areas with finer detail and increases the sharpening in those areas. Do note that higher values will increase your overall Amount value without it being reflected in the Amount option.
- Masking: Adjusts the focused sharpening regions to apply to areas with only higher brightness difference. This setting is useful for applying sharpening to details only, while avoiding sharpening grain.
Sharpening your RAW Files.
Now that we have those settings defined, let's jump into the workflow involved in sharpening your RAW file. This is called Capture Sharpening. It is the same step that your camera uses to sharpen its RAW files before outputting the JPEG image.
Quick tip: Holding down the OPTION key or the ALT key will show a mask of your sharpening in your main Lightroom window. It's also a good idea to zoom to 100% to see your sharpening in finer detail, this is achieved by left clicking the image in the main window.
- The first step is adjusting your Amount value. This is subjective to your image contents. Start moving the amount slider up until you start to see grain becoming coarse and very visible. Of course, this is dependent on the ISO setting you shot at which will capture more grain at higher values.
- Don't worry too much about the grain right now though. The masking step will hopefully fix that to some degree, and of course, you can go back and adjust your amount once you have applied masking.
- Now we'll move onto the Radius. If your image contains a large amount of fine detail such as tree leaves and textures that are in focus throughout your image, you'll want to lower this value. If you have a subject in focus with detail only being contained on that subject, try raising the value. Dropping below 1 pixel is perfectly acceptable in either of these cases. It truly depends on the content of your image and generally relies on your experimentation.
- With the ALT or OPTION key held down, you can see how the radius setting broadens the sharpening edges outwards in both directions of the edge.
- A high radius setting in the value of 2 pixels or 3 pixels will cause your edges to be over-exaggerated. Try raising it to a higher value to see the destructive nature of a high radius setting.
- Next we start adjusting the Detail. Start moving the slider up until the edges in the details of your image become bright due to the amount of sharpening applied. Once you hit this value, start gently lowering it to tone it down.
- Too much detail will begin to add things called "Artifacts" to the edges. Bright white lines will surround them as Lightroom begins to apply excess sharpening to those areas at a dramatically higher value than your defined Amount setting.
- Finally, we adjust the Masking. Higher Masking values will start to avoid areas that are out of focus and contain grain, while also targeting the overall sharpening to areas that contain detail that is similar to its neighboring pixels.
- Simplified: If ten pixels are grey and black on one side, and ten pixels are white and black on the other side, Lightroom will begin to target the grey and black region and block out the white and black region.
- Masking can also be malignant to your sharpening efforts if raised too high. Only very specific regions will begin to be sharpened leaving other details soft. Hold down the ALT or OPTION key to see how the masking value changes where the sharpening is applied- The black areas are regions that have no sharpening, and the white areas are regions with full sharpening.
- If you find that even after masking your image contains too much grain, adjust your overall Amount value to be lower until the grain is acceptable or gone.
Output Sharpening for Web or Print.
There is one additional step that isn't in the Sharpening Palette. It's called Output Sharpening.
Output sharpening is a global (applied to your entire image) sharpening step. You get access to it when you export your image(File>Export, CTRL + SHIFT + E, or right clicking in the film strip and choosing export). It's located on the sixth row of the Export dialogue box.
The rule of thumb for Output sharpening in Lightroom is that you consider your output medium, be it web or print, and then choose the desired type option. Then, you consider the viewing distance from your final print and choose the desired sharpening strength- Low, Standard, and High.
Generally, if your image is being printed and viewed from a decent distance you'll want a setting of Standard or High. If it's for web, consider the strength of your Capture Sharpening and choose Low or Standard. Enlarging your image will also require stronger output sharpening, so generally if the image is being enlarged, you'll want a setting of High.
Additionally, if your image is being downsized for the web, it can soften the sharpening you have already applied. Raising the value to standard is a good idea to bring back those sharp details.
Output Sharpening doesn't contain a preview window, and your monitor might not accurately reflect how the sharpening will look on print. It requires some thinking and calculation to determine how much sharpening you'd like to apply.
Thanks for reading!
If you have any questions, ask them in the comments below.