[twokatmew]

I shoot DNG. Does the Kx use the high ISO NR settings from the camera? What about the sharpening settings?

Also, do you de-noise everything or just those images you think have a problem? Do you sharpen everything? How do you decide how much? When I'm working on an image, if I look at it long enough, my eyes adjust, and a pretty garish image might look OK. I guess it's like editing one's own writing? Put it away for a while and look at it with fresh eyes?

I usually sharpen a little before I save as JPG for posting. Some have said I needed to sharpen more. So on the last batch of images I gave them all a bit more sharpening and then sharpened again before saving as JPG. Now I'm told they're way oversharpened.

So I'm interested in hearing your opinions on how & when to denoise & sharpen.

Here are three photos, NR'd and sharpened and with no NR or sharpening. I can see #1 and #2 sharpened ones are overdone (now with fresh eyes). Not sure about #3, not all that much difference. Would you use NR or sharpening at all on the ones that were simply developed and saved as JPG?

#1, NR & sharpened


#1, no NR or sharpening


#2, NR & sharpened


#2, no NR or sharpening


#3, NR & sharpened (I sharpened less because bird is blurred.)


#3, no NR or sharpening


Thanks so much for your help!

[Marc Sabatella]

These are personal choices, really, but in general:

- When shooting RAW (including DNG), your NR setting is not applied to the image data itself, but the setting is recorded in the EXIF information of the file, and many of the programs you might use to process your image do look at those settings to decide how to set their own defaults. So if you have NR or sharpening turned up in the camera, your images might well come out nr'ed or sharpened by default when processing them - but you can always simply turn off the nr and.or sharpening in your RAW processing program.

- No need to apply NR when there is no objectionable noise. I doubt I've ever applied NR to any image below ISO 800, and for the most part, it's really only 1600 and above. Applying NR unnecessarily just reduces detail.

- Most experts recomend a small amount of sharpening (called "capture" sharpening) during the initial RAW processing, with additional sharpening applied later that is specific to the output size. The duck image of yours look pretty good sharpened to me at that size, but I'll bet that same amount of sharpening looks terrible at larger sizes.

[slinco]

I'd go somewhere between the two settings on #1 and #2. One big tell-tale of oversharpening is clearly seen in #1 - it looks like someone drew a very thin white line around the outline of the bird. If you see that, it's an easy way to know you've gone too far (generally).

I doubt if you need noise reduction on any of those shots, although if you like it better that's fine. Just be aware that noise reduction generally reduces fine detail, and you may have to sharpen more to compensate (sort of a vicious circle). I only use it once in a great while on high ISO images (1600+).

[twokatmew]

Thanks Marc and slinco! Very helpful info. When I was shooting JPG, I only used NR if I felt the image needed it. When I switched to DNG, I used it more, figuring it wasn't getting done in camera. I guess I'll dial back the NR.

[Parallax]

#s 1 & 2 that were sharpened look just a tad bit over sharpened to me and I'm not sure any NR was required at all.