Panasonic S1R: How Much to Sharpen During Raw Conversion in Adobe Camera Raw + Adobe Camera Raw Enhance Details

See my L-mount mirrorless wishlist

As a prelude to presenting the Panasonic S1R Multi-Shot HighRes mode, I felt it was important to critically evaluate the appropriate level of sharpening for standard frames. Factors to consider when choosing a sharpening value include:

• Starting level of micro contrast— a mediocre lens or diffraction losses might demand more sharpening even if there are downsides.
• The point at which the image starts to look “crunchy” or “stressed”. This effect is separate from accentuation of noise, though both tend to come on together.
• The point at which noise becomes accentuated producing a grittiness or worse.
• How well subtle differences in high-key values are distinguished. Often this can be at odds with other areas in that what looks good for high-key may be too much elsewhere.
• Presentation medium (prints of course, but even different computer displays!), personal preferences.

This page looks at how much sharpening to apply for standard single-shot exposures during raw conversion when converting using Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) in Adobe Photoshop (also applies to Adobe Lightroom). In diglloyd L-Mount Mirrorless:

Panasonic S1R: How Much to Sharpen During Raw Conversion in Adobe Camera Raw

Panasonic S1R: Adobe Camera Raw Enhance Details

Three different crops are shown across a range of sharpening values.

Note: on Retina displays, see the 2nd crop.

Enlarged crop with low and high sharpening

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unknown camera, unknown lens

[low-res image for bot]