Newbie - RAW to JPEG conversions

[reheat module]

Hi all
Seeking advice from you team of guru's. Up until recently I have been shooting in JPEG and tweaking sharpness in CS2. Now I started shooting RAW and using Canon DPP as my tool to sharpen and convert to JPEG. The RAW shots (even before any work) in DPP look super sharp on my monitor, - if I then apply a little sharpen and convert to JPEG it appears 'Fuzzy-er' in the saved JPEG image and nowhere near as sharp as the RAW. Should I just convert to JPEG immediately without sharpening in RAW and do any tweaking in CS2? - I guess my basic Question is 'which is best to sharpen in?'
Really appreciate your experience and help
Paul

Canon D40 and 300mm F4L IS USM

 

[singlespeed]

Resizing a large raw file down to a smaller size means the information from alot of pixels have to be combined and the software has to come up with a best fit colour tone for a pixel which may have been 4 or more pixels previously.

I beleive it's best to sharpen as the last stage of processing, otherwise it will be wasted if you resize before saving as a smaller size.

If CS2 can't handle the D40 raw files, maybe the DPP software can export unprocesed full size DNG files, then you can open them and adjust exposure etc in CS2.

An option for sharpening in CS is using a copy layer of the base layer. Apply a highpass filter and adjust the slider so the finer detail just starts to show, set the highpass layer to overlay blending mode.

 

[ramyad]

I beleive it's best to sharpen as the last stage of processing, otherwise it will be wasted if you resize before saving as a smaller size.

I agree with this statement, my last step is always "output sharpening". Remember that for print, your sharpening will be different to that for screen. For screen, your output sharpening will again be different dependant on your output resolution, for example web versus desktop.

Print typically needs a little more sharpening than web/screen. Resizing in Photoshop (reduction) should be preset to bicubic sharpen. Rarely will you size up. Post sharpen after resizing if it needs it.

I agree that high-pass sharpening is best method as it won't sharpen any noise or high contrast areas in blurred parts for example. Plus you can mask the high-pass layer for more control.

BTW - Your JPG "should" look the same as your "processed" RAW. Note the quoted terms.

 

[Just Dave]

I always save my raw images after any PP, as Tiffs, then theres no quality lost, bring them in PS, do PP and sharpen resize, then resharpen

 

[PhilC]

If you view Jpegs in Canon DPP they do tend to look very soft. After you have converted from raw load them into Photoshop and see the difference they should still be sharp. Or select the transfer to Photoshop option in DPP this transfers as a tiff file with no loss of quality.

The comments earlier are spot on always sharpen last..