[Anvh]

Does a photo need to be sharp, have good contrast colours bokeh, little distortion and vignetting to be a good photo?

[Miguel]

Sharpness certainly isn't the most important factor, but contrast, colors, overall punch, bokeh, vignetting, distortion, etc. aren't really pixel-peeping, because you can analyze them without zooming in so far...so this thing helped me a bit with my pixel-peeping.

Sorry, but your response is a non-sequitur. You are providing bad advice to cure yourself of a problem that has a much more benign solution: don't pixel peep.

M

[emalvick]

My cure for pixel peeping was a couple of things:

1. quit doing it. Everything seems to look worse on a monitor when your monitors are really so poor in terms of pixel density.
2. Print out a photo you think is marginal based on pixel peeping (but appears fine or even fantastic otherwise) and do that at a few sizes. I was amazed at how knowing what the prints are going to be like make you realize how much we tend to over-sharpen and over-reduce noise. The apparent noise and lack of sharpness on a screen is deceiving.

If you can quit pixel-peeping, I think you'll find that PP and photography become a much more pleasurable experience and hobby (if you've been frustrated in the first place). I tend to be bothered, but am not as much. I've always disliked PP, but relaxing a bit on sharpness and noise has made PP much more enjoyable.

Import sharpening to a setting of 75 would seem to look worse. Over-sharpened images tend to look cookie-cutterish. The default import sharpening in LR always seems ok for me.

[SpecialK]

The cure to pixel peeping:

Own only sharp lenses.

and be a skilled and talented photographer.

There is no cure for pixel peeping - it is the nature of the obsession :-)

[GabrielFFontes]

It's not like i could just quit pixel-peeping :P it's not that easy.
And well, i still enjoy PP'ing...i have a lot of fun doing it too...but sometimes my pixel-peeping made it a bit less fun, and setting the default sharpening to 70 made it much better...also, at that amount, it never oversharpens...

Does a photo need to be sharp, have good contrast colours bokeh, little distortion and vignetting to be a good photo?

It's not that they need to have those, but have you ever wished your picture was soft, with weird looking colors, nervous bokeh, with heavy distortion and with a lot of vignetting? I certainly haven't.

[Anvh]

Oh yes and i ain't the only one.

There are lenses specially made to be soft and you have filters for that as well, this also effect contrast of course.
Bokeh is also very subjective, i like the smoother kind but seeing how many here love the DA*55 for example i seem to be the minority but for some photos it can look very good, that's for sure.
And vignetting, perfect way to set the focus more to the center of your image and distortions, how many people here like fisheye lens?

there are so many tastes and whats good or not is very relative, i wont worry about it.

[Miguel]

I assume that the OP was referring to Adobe Camera Raw when he stated "camera raw to 70."

Like you, I go easy on the sharpening at the outset and ramp it up as necessary.

M

As far as I know you cannot sharpen in-camera when shooting RAW so I have no idea what you guys are talking about frankly. I usually set up LR to do basic sharpening on input and then tweak it as needed.

[GabrielFFontes]

Oh yes and i ain't the only one.

There are lenses specially made to be soft and you have filters for that as well, this also effect contrast of course.
Bokeh is also very subjective, i like the smoother kind but seeing how many here love the DA*55 for example i seem to be the minority but for some photos it can look very good, that's for sure.
And vignetting, perfect way to set the focus more to the center of your image and distortions, how many people here like fisheye lens?

there are so many tastes and whats good or not is very relative, i wont worry about it.

Well, yeah, vignetting can be really useful to isolate a subject, but it's something that we have to use selectively...i would rather vignette in post production than have a lens that constantly vignettes...it could get annoying.
And well, i love my fisheye, but it's a special use lens

[Anvh]

Vignetting happen with most of the very fast lenses but those are for the most part only sharp in the center to begin with so the focus should be mostly in the center and all else is out of focus anyway.
Different type of lenses with different type of crachters, nothing wrong with that and i believe this discusion isnt really part of the original question.

What i find most important is the content, if the content of the photo isn't interesting then it doesnt matter how good the photo technical is.

As for the PP... i do it as well but in the end most of these details arent shown in the end, but i keep zooming in at some points just to get it as best that i can. Nothing bad but some times it feels a bit pointless.
It's a bit like the different camera galleries that are on this forum, if you accidently post Kr photo in the K5 gallery i wonder how many will actually see that?

[wildman]

Sharpness certainly isn't the most important factor, but contrast, colors, overall punch, bokeh, vignetting, distortion, etc

It seems to me that any factor that allows the photographer to manipulate the viewers perception of the final image is fair game. All these factors are just part of the photographer's palette to be used as the photographer sees fit.

I can't see any creative advantage to favoring one factor over another up front and thus losing flexibility in the later final PP.
Take a properly exposed RAW, get it into ACR, see what you have, decide what you want, and go on from there.

[Anvh]

Good beginning is everything with editing, the better the material the easier it is the get the result you want.
So good exposure and good lenses are indeed very appreciated.

[Smeggypants]

For those using Lightroom: Add any sharpening ( and NR ) last. Those processes really slow lightroom down, especially with adjustment brushes. So do all your editing on a pic and then apply the sharpening and NR.