Workflow for D70 - comments welcome

Hi All,

Having finally decided to join the "big boys" and move up from my CP5000 setup to a dSLR, I bit the bullet and purchased a D70. So far I have not purchased a housing for this camera, however I am working on getting to grips with it topside.

Having always shot JPG, I decided to start playing around with RAW. I am so far using Nikon Capture and Photoshop CS, and I came across this suggestion for a processing workflow - http://members.aol.com/bhaber/D70/setup.html

It seems simple enough and makes sense, and I feel I have learned quite a bit through applying in on a couple of shots. But what threw me was the final step of using Photoshop Unsharp Mask to "restore blackness" (http://members.aol.com/bhaber/D70/processing/process.html).

Trying this out on an image I shot, I ended up with a load of "oversharpened" specks - cannot really explain it better! Is this technique a normal use of USM - I had never come across it before, in my limited experience. Maybe I simply used the technique poorly.

Grateful for any comments and opinions.

Thanks,

Woody

hi woody -

depending on how much unsharpening you do those specks can show up. typical setting for amount are around 100 - 200 %, radius of 1 and threshold between 2 and 4.

if it is a wide angle photo with lots of blue separate the picutre into channels (red, blue and green) and you will see that one of those channels is a little granier. Apply the unsharp mask to the other channels but not the granier one...this will usually give a better result. There are lots of other ways to sharpen pictures (using lab color) that are exaplained in Scott Kelby's book "The photoshop cs book" I try a few different techniques until I get the best result for each photo..

M.

ps. i just read that second link and his suggestion to run unsharp mask a second time for black restoration is new to me. i usually run once with a higher amount setting than he initially suggested.. something new to try!