Honestly, Ed, I would make up a few examples both unsharpened and sharpened to different degrees and ask someone who you trust for an opinion. I almost always use *some* USM even on softer edged subjects because it changes the contrast ratios a bit, and defines some edges where appropriate. But it is somewhat subjective.
Even with skies, I find USM makes them slightly more dramatic. What size are you going to be printing at? One thing I almost always do is if I know I will be heavily jpegging an image, I pre-USM oversharpen. This is based upon my personal taste and experience, not any specific theory. I just find jpegging softens edges, and the image looks better after jpegging if the image has been oversharped slightly beforehand. I find doing it after jpegging tends to over emphasize jpeg artifacts. It may be, however, that the image file ends up larger doing what I suggest. Art Ed Verkaik wrote: > From: "Laurie Solomon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > I am not sure that that is an answerable question without actually seeing > the various images. > > > Just imagine a typical sky -- either one with cloud elements and blue sections, > or cloudy with varyiong degree of light and dark areas (stormy sky). Surely > there are generalizations we could apply to such subjects? I always assumed > that since clouds have no natural "edges" that sharpening is not relevant and > maybe even detrimental. Unfortunately, my limited vision does not detect fine > changes in contrast or sharpness. In a perfect world, I would try to come up > with a single (mild) degree of sharpening to apply to all images, either through > an action or with dedicated software. I'm hoping the experience of others can > lead me to a solution. > > Ed Verkaik > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
