# Sharpening Amount for JPEG



## David PZ (May 29, 2017)

I do not work with RAW files. I understand that there is a default setting 25 for sharpening amount. Is this amount automatically applied? If you set the amount to say 50, then 50 is the actual amount applied? Since I shoot JPEG files with my phone camera, I understand that sharpening has already been applied in the camera. Let's assume that the amount applied is equivalent to 25. If I now set the amount to 50, is the actual amount applied now 50 + 25 = 75?


----------



## clee01l (May 29, 2017)

Sharpening applied in the camera is not the same as sharpening applied by LR   Here is an older two part  article on LR sharpening that is a pretty good tutorial on LR sharpening
sharpening-in-lightroom-part-1-of-2


----------



## Ian.B (May 30, 2017)

I saw an interesting comment recently basically saying many tend to over sharpen or sharpen for the shake of sharpening --- some goes for noise reduction. A jpg has average sharpening and noise reduction added in camera .
Many will jump up and down; however I feel sharpening is one of those things we can get too technical about and what was needed earlier in the digital times does not apply so much these days with the cameras producing so much better files but as we all have different needs and uses for our photos our photos all need slightly different sharpening 
Sharpening should not be used the make a blurry photo 'sharp' 
If I can find that video / article I will post it


----------



## David PZ (May 30, 2017)

Thank you, Cletus and Ian. I remember I did read both parts of Sharpening in Lightroom before. Rereading them is most helpful.


----------



## clee01l (May 30, 2017)

Ian.B said:


> Sharpening should not be used the make a blurry photo 'sharp


GIGO (Garbage in =  Garbage out)


----------



## David PZ (Jun 1, 2017)

I still have the question. Let me ask it differently to be clear this time. LR has a couple of presets for sharpening the face and the landscape. I believe that they are designed for sharpening RAW files, but I am dealing with JPEGs which have been sharpened to some extent by the camera (in my case, the phone) already. Say one of the presets (or some other sharpening) sharpens the RAW file perfectly, shouldn't I start out sharpening the same image in JPEG with lesser sharpening?


----------



## Johan Elzenga (Jun 1, 2017)

David PZ Wong said:


> I still have the question. Let me ask it differently to be clear this time. LR has a couple of presets for sharpening the face and the landscape. I believe that they are designed for sharpening RAW files, but I am dealing with JPEGs which have been sharpened to some extent by the camera (in my case, the phone) already. Say one of the presets (or some other sharpening) sharpens the RAW file perfectly, shouldn't I start out sharpening the same image in JPEG with lesser sharpening?



Yes, and don't rely on presets so much. View the result and play with the sliders until you get what _you_ want, not what some presets builder thought you might.


----------



## David PZ (Jun 1, 2017)

Thanks, Johan, for you answer. With my images, there are times I know I don't need any sharpening, but at most other times, the "right" amount of sharpening and masking becomes a matter of guess. I suppose that's all I could do.


----------



## Ian.B (Jun 2, 2017)

best not to do it imo when not sure whether to sharpen or not 
There are books written about the "prefect" sharpening although I'm not sure if there is a "perfect" way or even the perfect photo.


----------



## David PZ (Jun 2, 2017)

Ian, I agree with you. I am going to try minimal sharpening only if it looks like it could help and choose Low when exporting. I did some testing and couldn't detect any difference between output Standard and output Low. My lab (ProDPI) does add a 3% sharpening, whatever that means.


----------



## Roelof Moorlag (Jun 2, 2017)

Do you zoom in enough to judge the variations in sharpening?


----------



## David PZ (Jun 2, 2017)

Roelof, I do zoom in. Perhaps sharpening is less "critical" to my kinds of images (only JPEG) than it would to most landscape and portrait works shot in RAW. In my case, the interest in the subject matter, not so much the various detailed parts of the image. Your Instagram photos show your personal style nicely. I didn't want to go on Instagram because I thot every shot had to be formatted square and I didn't want to crop any of my images. Apparently, I was wrong. You might be interested in looking at my works which also show a personal viewpoint. Just google David PZ Wong. By the way, I notice that you are on various social media, I am on none because I didn't want to spend time managing them. Have you found any advantages of posting your work on them?


----------

