Hello -
I’m trying my best to capture tack-sharp images in-camera, but as I work toward this I find myself relying on post processing to sharpen images in darktable.
I’m curious how to approach sharpening an image like this green bee.
Any suggestions would help me learn and are appreciated!
This file is licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.
DSC_1558.NEF (20.7 MB)
Very nice, my take, I’m no expert in sharpening at all.
It is a combi of DorS (2nd. part with mask on details), Local Contrast. And some general changes. Hope you like it.
Regards Jetze
I have kept my edit simple. I felt the capture was sharp. With my edits I apply denoise (profiled) default and I use the sharpen demosaicing aa filter preset in the diffuse or sharpen module. In my xmp file there is a preset for the diffuse or sharpen module called Texture. This is a preset I copied from another forum user (my thanks to that user). It can be very useful on many images to add ‘extra sharpness’ that brings out texture. I applied it to this image so that if anyone wants they can copy this preset to there version of DT. I have found it very useful for many images.
DSC_1558.NEF.xmp (11.0 KB)
Here is another edit with a little more sharpening than I usually like. But lots of people like heavy sharpening. I also tweaked the contrast and chroma a little.
DSC_1558.NEF.xmp (16.1 KB)
lovely crop, @priort
Thank you for that Terry, I want to dive a bit deeper into DorS in order to better understand, being able to tweak the sliders more or less rationally myself and finally not only to use given presets here.
Regards Jetze
Nice photo, nice bee. I think the big problem is the texture of the bee’s green body under that harsh light as well as the pollen competes with the other details. I selectively applied sharpening to the the eye, hair, antenna, etc. and tried to soften those other parts.
This might seem overboard, but I also applied some output sharpening to the reduced JPEG image with a single application of normal sharpening under DoS (not shown in the XMP). I don’t always do that, but it seemed to help here.
Thanks for sharing!
Very good! I like the targeted sharpening!
Any chance you could share the xmp so I can see how you did the masking? Tks!
Of course, I added your original file instead of the XMP. I’ll fix it momentarily after I give myself a whack on the side of the head…
Thanks everyone for your ideas!
I appreciate your time on this - I learn a lot from analyzing how others approach processing.
This is my (current) “final version”.
Nice, but wouldn’t you opt for a tad more light on the bee…? Maybe nothing more than a little difference in taste.
And if I may ask, I’m curious what you’ve picked up regarding sharpening of this beautiful picture since that was your opening question.
Kind regards, Jetze
DSC_1558-5.jpg.out.pp3 (18,6 KB)
