Beginners question, pp sharpening

Until now, ie for about a month, I've been using Microsoft Office Picture Manager. Today I thought I'd be adventurous and tried out Picasa2 which does seem to have more editing possibilities apart from the fact that I don't understand their file manager at all - it takes me ages to find a specific photo, I usually end up scrolling through the whole list! It's also a bit annoying that I can't get that nearly full screen view that I get with MOPM. But then it's a lot faster and I can actually see the effects of any changes as I move the cursor along instead of having to wait for ages. But what I want to ask is, there is this button that sharpens the photo and it does improve some of my nearly but not quite sharp photos. What exactly is it that it does? And is it cheating??? Or have I just not moved mentally from film to digital yet?

I'll be most grateful for any input! Thanks!

Mette

Don't know your programs but have read advice here that says pics should be sharpened before posting and probably printing. Something about digital photos generally being soft.
I use photoshop elements 6 which has this unsharp mask but after several attempts fooling around with it, I just use the auto sharpening and it seems to do fine.
It isn't cheating any more than adjusting shutter speed or aperture as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks Frog! Actually, they are very simple programs, one comes with Microsoft Office, and Picasa2 is freeware.

I feel so much better now, I had been wondering about this softness, thinking it was me and my failing eye sight :D I didn't remember my photos having this in the old days when I used film. The sharpening button definitely helps - I just had this old fashioned notion about post-processing that certain elements were "cheating" but I'm sure I'll get over it. Just too lazy to spend much time playing around, I'd much rather be out there with a camera in hand :)

Thanks again for replying!

Mette

How sharp your images are depends on a lot of factors. But some of it happens on a software level. If you shoot RAW, there will be no in-camera sharpening. If you shoot JPEG, there's always some sharpening and other in-camera image adjustment. One reason to shoot RAW is so that you get to decide exactly how your images are processed.

I'm not going to claim I completely understand it. But software sharpening works mostly on edges in your images. That is - the contrasty areas it can detect. It adds a little contrast to those areas, giving the impression of more sharpness. Using some sort fo sharpening is critical whenever you resize an image because resizing redistributes the pixel information and always softens your images. Standard practice is to resize and then apply some Unsharp Mask at the final size. For the Web, I resize in steps with two Unsharp Mask applications. I've found that produces the best results for my taste. For sharpening, I always use the Unsharp Mask filter in Photoshop. Auto sharpening hits them way too hard for my taste.

You mentioned that you feel some of this software stuff is cheating. It's not. In the past, with film, a lot of these things went on behind the scenes, and you just didn't know they were happening. You also didn't look at your film images at 100% on the computer. If you did, you'd see how soft they really were. If I made you an 8x10 from one of my old film images and an 8x10 from one of my digital images, you'd see the difference. We definitely have more powerful tools available now. And there's nothing wrong with using them. Ansel Adams, who is considered by many to be one of the best nature photographers, manipulated the hell out of everything. What you see in an Ansel Adams print has multiple layers of tweaking and interpretation. So don't worry about it. Use the tools you have to make your images look as good as they possibly can. There's absolutely no honor in saying, "No Photoshop used." That just means you let some camera engineer determine the look of your photo. It's your photo. You decide :)

Hmm, thanks for sharing. I don't know what type of program you are using, but got lot of information from your article, thanks for sharing, it is very informative, i had got learned from your article that pics should be sharpened before posting and probably printing. Something about digital photos generally being soft.

Thanks Photo-John for the tips, tells so much significant info.