Sharpening in Lightroom

Sharpening is something every digital image needs to some degree. JPEG files come out of the camera with some processing, including sharpening, already applied. I’ve been shooting RAW for years though and bypass all this pre-processing. Adobe Camera Raw has sharpening options, but other than some initial adjustment I have always felt that sharpening should be the final step in the workflow.

The reason for this is simple. The amount of sharpening needed is going to be different depending on how the image is going to be used. The same image will need different settings if it’s going to be on the web than it will for print. And, even when printing it’s going to depend on how large it’s printed, and on what type of media.

Even if I wanted to sharpen in ACR, I didn’t have the level of control I could get with Unsharp Mask. This has improved with the latest releases of ACR, but it’s still the wrong place and time for sharpening.

Now I do most of my editing work (all of it when possible) in Lightroom. Of course, the raw conversion is essentially the same in both Lightroom and ACR, and the controls for sharpening are now identical. But, Lightroom seems to give better results than ACR in my experiments. And, there is no image sizing in Lightroom until you either export or print. So, you’re stuck with sharpening after your other edits, or exporting to Photoshop for final adjustments. Luckily, this isn’t a problem for me as the results I’m getting when printing from Lightroom are very good.

If you haven’t used the sharpening controls in Lightroom yet, one of the best features is the ability to use the preview option to see exactly what is being affected by your adjustments. To do this, you need to zoom in to 100% or more. Now, hold down the Alt/Option key while moving the sliders the image will change to grayscale, making it easer to see your adjustments. Amount controls the strength of the sharpening by finding edges in your image and increasing the contrast between them. Radius controls the width of the effect - detailed images need a smaller Radius setting, while less detailed images can usually use a higher setting. Detail handles how strongly the effect is applied. This is one of the most important settings as too high of a detail adjustment will add an artificial look.

Here's the image I'm starting with:

Here I’ve set the Amount for this image after zooming to what I felt was the critical area for my sharpening.

Next the Radius is adjusted. With the Option key held down, I can see exactly how large of a radius is being applied to the edges.

The Detail preview lets me see what areas are being affected by the sharpening.

The final setting, and the one that won me over is Masking. Set to zero, every part of the image has the same degree of sharpening applied to it. Increasing the number. restricts the effect to the strongest edge areas. Like a mask in Photoshop, white reveals and black conceals.

If I know that I’ll be going into Photoshop for further work, I still save my sharpening until then. But, for those images that don’t need anything beyond what can be done in Lightroom, the sharpening controls here work very well for my needs.