[kamisu]

Hello,

I use FastStone as my image viewer. It has a "smooth" option in the settings, which affects image sharpness considerably. Other software also have different default settings for sharpness. So depending on the software that I use, pictures taken with my K5 look different on the screen. The major problem is when I send the photo to someone else which uses a different image viewer, and the picture may look very soft or too much sharp (noisy).

So I was wondering if there is a standard setting for sharpness of image viewers, which based on that I can choose sharpness adjustment of the camera.

Thanks.

[Bruce Clark]

I would have thought a "viewer" program should faithfully reproduce the file it was presented with. An editing program on the other hand, may or may not have default sharpening and other adjustments set. Many programs such as FastStone and Lightroom have both viewing and editing modules. The difficulty to some extent is knowing where the viewer side of a program finishes and the editing module starts. Lightroom for instance has options for making certain adjustments on import although why anyone would use them is beyond me. A pure image viewing program should not alter the image. However, once an image leaves your computer, what the viewer will see is dependent on their setup and beyond your control. Colour reproduction is notorious for variation between monitors. Resolution of monitors might also be an issue.

[kamisu]

Thanks Bruce.

[emalvick]

I know FastStone and a few others have the options to sharpen in the viewer. I usually turn it off. I can see an advantage if you are potentially browsing RAW files and you want an idea of what the image could look like. I think that is the advantage to LR having some basic develop settings in its browser / viewer. If you are culling photos, you can quickly adjust exposure (for instance) to see if its worthwhile to do further processing later or just flat out get rid of the file.