I made an error while comparing, sorry. Edited the post above.
And here is a version where I replaced your darktable screenshot with mine (xmp file below). In my opinion it’s all a matter of settings. For dt especially DoS.
1X1A7276.CR3.xmp (8.4 KB)
Because little changes in settings can result in big differences, comparisons without posting the sidecars are not really usefull. Also pixel peeping at mor the 100% is a bit odd.
And anyway, “sharpness is a bourgeois concept” according to Henri Cartier-Bresson 
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Certainly lots of detail but it has those points/pixels that are over sharpened. This used to happen a lot with RT and RL deconvolution sharpening.
Hope no one minds but here’s RT with default capture sharpening settings. RT automatically adjusts sharpening depending on the image. For this one it deemed an appropriate “contrast threshold” to be 7. As you can see the windows of the University building (just right of the copper clad church spire show similar detail to the dt file but with no “dotting”
I have to emphasize that this is without any intervention. Just out of the box with RT.
But we’re sharpening out demosaicing artefacts… The fenestration is basically vertical.
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My darktable 100% screenshots pasted next to your ART versions from the ART - dt comparisons posted above. Don’t do the comparison in the browser – at least with Firefox, the the images get fit to the screen, and Firefox’s upscaling does something weird. Download these a and compare them in an image viewer, or in Gimp etc.
MJD04337.ARW.xmp (16.1 KB)
I think you had substantially higher contrast in the ART image than in darktable, which can influence perceived sharpness.
1X1A7276.CR3.xmp (17.1 KB)
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You really managed to get the detail on on the bee one. The Zurich view looks “crunchy” and full of colour artefacts in comparison to the rather natural looking but more detailed ART image.
Depending on print and size the dt Zurich view might look better but with RT/ART you can add macro scale sharpening when needed. The initial sharpening just brings you to the maximum fine detail.
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He would know coming from a textile factory and land owning family!
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I think much of the colour artefacts are due to CA. I’ve tried to suppress them, and tweak the sharpening a bit.
1X1A7276.CR3.xmp (15.7 KB)
I don’t find anything wrong with Firefox, I just compared the 1:1 image in Firefox to the 1:1 image in Geeqie and both are identical.
In both screenshots you provided, to me the DT version show some strong (bad) sharpening halos. The bee image from DT looks better than the ART one only at lower magnification (in-post vignette) but it looks worse at larger zoom up to 1:1. The Zurich DT version looks worse to me whatever the viewing size.
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I don’t know what my Firefox is doing. It insists on filling the view (4K display) by upscaling.
I usually don’t care much about sharpening and 1:1 view. I usually export at 2K resolution.
It’s not Firefox, it’s the way the forum is configured to display images when you click on them in a post (it’s the same in Chrome/Chromium). Under the image if you click “Original image” it will open the image scaled to window size but you can click inside the image to show it 1:1
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Yeah, thats what I always tend do in these cases.
I don’t think the versions from @kofa and @Thomas_Do hold up to the ART version in respect to the fine details, even the bee image is still not as fine 
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When comparing sharpening algorithms, I think its valid. In normal image development I mostly couldn’t care less about sharpness. But there is at least one valid use case, where sharpness/details matter. If you are going to massively crop the image down and you end up at basically 100% view. Then you have not much options, but to resolve the fine details as good as possible.
I’m aware of that and I tried to match the two pictures first, but admitedly only sloppy, knowing that a perfect match can get really time consuming.
Actually, I did learn some things already, I will especially work further with the DoS settings from @123sg
I do fear, that the DoS settings might be picture dependend, meaning you can’t just apply them as preset 
We’ll see.
In the meantime, have a shot at this picture, if you like… it’s the first one from the OP. I probably want to print it in larger size - so that’s what triggered my investigations initially.
A7_06224.ARW (67.5 MB)
(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed | Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International | Creative Commons)
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A7_06224.jpg.out.pp3 (14.2 KB)
capture sharpening and a bit of dehaze in RT. Can’t really compete due to the upscaling so looks noisy in comparison. On the other hand Topaz looks a bit vaselined or something.
I like it 
The upscaled version is actually unusable, because of artefacts and distorted cars in other regions, so …
Thanks for your feedback I will take a look…
I think it would be really helpful to have the arp and xmp files for these comparison… in the bee pics @hatsnp 's DT attempt looks a bit better and there is more “color” in the ART ones above… There will be some subjectivity but of interest to me are the actual setting people use as a reference to what I use or would perhaps use…
One issue I think that needs to be done is to export the jpgs and pull them into the same software… DT for sure has nuance to the display preview vs the exported jpg and ART may as well. In the end the final JPG output should be the comparison and in the same software and not screencaptures… I love all the comparisons and I will take time to scan through the thread later but to be fully useful at least making sure both the arp and xmp settings are provided will help… perhaps on a second scan of the recent posts it will be there…
That sounds good, but also has a caveat, as you are now comparing also the JPG artifacts. Also, at least darktable, has nuances in the export process.
And, shouldn’t the 100% display in ART/darktable provide the truest display?
I guess you can argue in both direction. In the end I decided (having the comparison done in both ways!) for my point (showing the level of detail) it’s enough, to quickly make a screenshot.
Be sure to check out the DoS settings, that @123sg discovered. They work very well for fine details on some pictures I tested them on. It’s not exactly the ART/capture sharpening, but it is a close neighbour, so to speek.
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One trick I have seen before (in Photoshop and Gimp tutorials, but one can use it in any software) is unsharp mask (USM) with a fractional radius and high value. Here is an example in darktable:
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Thanks I will… I have played around a bit… for a while I know is was not recommended but I just used a single slider in the module ie the sharpness…this was supposed to be used to tweak blurs but I often like the simple straightforward result.
Then i used the dehaze preset for some time and dialed back the iterations if I got the grain artifacts…
Not generally I will use the no AA preset. Then I slowly add iterations one at a time again until I see the artifacts…and then I use the edge threshold seems like around .2-.3 ish and from there I can also then sometimes add a couple more iterations… this seems to be lots sharp in most cases and not too laced with artifacts…
I’ll check also the ones you recommend
I am really beginning to think that the difference in look is less about the sharpening tools and more about using filmic and sigmoid and the DT starting point… they can just often give that muddled look in the highlights. It can even seem to impact that appearance of brightness/brilliance/crispness that you can see sometimes in other edits… I did some comparisons using only basecurve or tone curve or tone eq… and they seem to avoid some of that and can look cleaner… For sure that image you shared with the bay and mountains in the backdrop comes in so much different. ART is much more saturated and darker. I know this is part of the DT way to have to correct the tone and color and saturation and so forth but if you dont’ do a good job I think in the end it impairs the overall look and result.
Thanks everyone for sharing thought’s comments and examples…
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