M Fanelli/anyone-soft image ..me or XT?

[Peter_AUS]

Liz are you shotting in RAW mode, or are you shooting in Jpeg mode, or both.

If you are using a RAW image then they will be soft, you need to do post processing in other software like Photoshop. If you are shooting in Jpeg mode then you can adjust the in camera sharpening, contrast etc using the camera default settings in the menu to suit your tastes.

Personally I shoot exclusively (99%) RAW and use Capture One to post process the images to what I want, whether they be correctly adjusted or not. Last thing I do is unsharpen masking but I start with levels of 100%, 0.3, and 1 or 2 to start with, adjusting the middle one up to a max of 1 if necessary and the 100% up and down as necessary as well. It takes time to get used to unsharpen masking settings and finding out what you need.

Scott Kelby's books are quite good and worth getting hold of a copy or look in your local library you might find a copy or two on the Photoshop Subject there.

The other thing to think about as well, is your f/stop setting is going to give shallow depth of field as well and you might need to move this to f/5.6 or f/8 as well, best idea would be to use the 17-40 L lens and take the same image, lighting and just change the f/stops and then review the results up to f/16 maybe and see where the sweet spot is for that particular lens on your camera for you.

Also how are you focusing the lens, spot metering, partial metering, centre weighted metering, all things change images.

Sometimes I think I am focusing on a particular subject at a particular point and I discovered when reviewing Breezebrowser that the actual focusing point wasn't what I thought it was according to the point that showed up in an option of Breezebrowser.

It would be nice to have just one software that did the whole lot to see the image as you though you took it without having to look at the same image in different software all the time to get a full idea of the image capture.

Hope that all makes sense to you.

Get well soon by the way.

[Liz]

It all makes sense.

are you shotting in RAW mode, or are you shooting in Jpeg mode, or both.
jpeg

It takes time to get used to unsharpen masking settings and finding out what you need.

Yes, I'm not used to using this as with the Rebel 300D I used very little PS (Elements). I'm going to start using it though as I see what a difference it makes with Steve's editing.

Scott Kelby's books are quite good and worth getting hold of a copy or look in your local library you might find a copy or two on the Photoshop Subject there.


I have this book!

Also how are you focusing the lens, spot metering, partial metering, centre weighted metering, all things change images.


I think this may be the problem as I used the default, right out of the box settings which I think includes all the focus points.

Get well soon by the way.

Thanks so much Peter. Much appreciated! I have to make a decision whether or not to keep the camera by Friday (actually tomorrow). I want to be sure it's not front or back focusing - and I'm going to try what Steve suggested. I'm not great at this!

Liz