Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
If you shoot in JPEG, your digital camera applies sharpening to your photo right in
the camera itself, so no sharpening is automatically applied by Camera Raw. But if
Camera Raw
you shoot in RAW, you're telling your camera to ignore that sharpening, and that's
why, when you bring a RAW image into Camera Raw, by default, it applies some
sharpening, called “capture sharpening.” In my workflow, I sharpen twice: once here
in Camera Raw, and once more right before I output my final image from Photoshop
(called “output sharpening”). Here's how to apply capture sharpening in Camera Raw:
Step One:
When you open a RAW image in
Camera Raw, by default, it applies a
small amount of sharpening to your
photo (not the JPEGs or TIFFs, only RAW
images). You can adjust this amount (or
turn it off altogether, if you like) by clicking
on the Detail icon (it's the third icon from
the left) at the top of the Panel area, or
using the keyboard shortcut
Command-
Option-3 (PC: Ctrl-Alt-3)
. At the top of
this panel is the Sharpening section, where
by a quick glance you can see that sharp-
ening has already been applied to your
photo. If you don't want any sharpen-
ing applied at this stage (it's a personal
preference), then simply click-and-drag
the Amount slider all the way to the left
to lower the amount of sharpening to 0
(zero), and the sharpening is removed.
Step Two:
If you want to turn off this automatic, by
default sharpening (so capture sharpen-
ing is only applied if you go and manually
add it yourself), first set the Sharpening
Amount slider to 0 (zero), then go to the
Camera Raw flyout menu and choose
Save New Camera Raw Defaults
(as
shown here). Now, RAW images taken
with that camera will not be automati-
cally sharpened.
(Continued)
