I need some help posting sharp pictures

[drg]

The D80 does have sharpness setting by using the Optimize Image menu (which is were Vivid is set) and then going to the Custom option. Image sharpening is near the top and it ranges from none to Auto. And it is fairly aggressive for in camera JPEGS!

I took the full size marina image and played in the Lightroom

1. I reset the white balance via a custom white point on the umbrella at the top of the image.
2. Then I kicked up the exposure 1/2 to 2/3 of stop (+.67).
3. I settled on Medium Contrast preset as quick solution after playing with the curves experimentally.
4. The Clarity +29 and Vibrance +19 were adjusted to provide some preliminary sharpening effect and to offset some of the exposure and white balance effect.
5. The I reset the Black Clipping level by +6 by dragging the histogram.
6. At the same time I increased the Fill Light +5.

These adjustments were primarily to offset the image being underexposed (grey whites, too blue a sky, lack of obvious detail in some area except at full size, etc). I could not completely recover the image exposure from a JPEG without introducing more noise.

Then-

7. I made these settings using the built in Lightroom masking visualization tool (hold down alt and move the appropriate slider and get the gray scale visualization on a full size image)
Edge Masking=+6 Sharpening Detail=+2 Sharpening Radius=0.6
7a. Sharpening Amount was set to +54.

8. Still working at full size and with the type of adjustment that have been made Noise Reduction could now be used to eliminate some of the added problems:
Luminance Smoothing was set to 35
Color Noise reduction was set to 83
Both of these settings were as a result of detailed examination of the image at full and zoomed size. It isn't perfect but an improvement worth making with this image.
9. At full size looking at the image I adjusted the RED Chromatic Aberration by -29 to offset the original lens issues that were amplified by the JPEG compression and my other adjustments.

The photo was exported to have a long side of 750 as the other images posted were of that size rather than the 800 was mentioned in the post. I was just trying to be consistent for comparison.

Because this was done with a JPEG as opposed to a TIF or RAW file, I performed a few adjustment after the sharpening to offset some of the ill effects it introduced. Normally it would be the last step.

There was Standard Sharpening for the Screen applied to the exported image.

There have been several threads on 'sharpening' and other post processing techniques in the Photography Software and Post Processing forum. If you cannot find them let me know and I'll link them.