UKC

I know its subjective however I don't want to go too far and not realise.

Have I gone too far with this chap at the local park?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/the1lemming/52673906769/in/photostream/

I'd say no, it's not over the top.  It's teetering on the edge, but for me just on the right side.

Too far for me (when viewed on screen); print may differ

Its almost as if its one of those stone sculptures and not a fluffy ball of feathers.

Where do you think I've gone too far please?

I may have got giddy with the sliders.

The edge of bird against background just looks all wrong. 

How about this second attempt?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n-yxXCPon0P80LiZUeT2y1slVmpW85Nn/view?usp=...

I see what you mean.

I'd say a bit too far. It's created some halo type artefacts in high contrast areas, most noticeably a bright white halo where the outline of the neck and back meet, and also on the tail feathers.

As you've already said, the belly feathers also just look unrealistically defined - I can't think of a better description than your stone sculpture comparison.

To my eye there is also a bluish colour cast to the areas of shadow on the side of the bird's head and upper body which looks like something has been pushed too far. Possibly shadows or black point being boosted a bit much.

A nice crisp portrait though.

I'm pleased with my Moorhen, but going off what has been said earlier, I may have gone OTT with the sharpening for that little chap as well.

I've been getting giddy with three photo editing bits of kit to titillate these little images

I always struggle to get the balance right and generally mess it up. I think it's easier to see it in someone else's work than when you are in the middle of working on something.

The chest feathers look weird, can you share a before sharpening shot?

What software have you used?

I did a dialled back version

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1n-yxXCPon0P80LiZUeT2y1slVmpW85Nn/view?usp=...

As for the original image, I used DxO Photolabs and then for addes shits and giggles I used Topaz Photo AI to see what it could do. Its basically Sharpening on steroids. With a blurred image either out of focus or with camera shake it genuinely performs magic at recovering what you thought was a lost shot.

https://www.topazlabs.com/topaz-photo-ai

Hmm, i thought it might be Topaz, there is a guy in one of the FB groups i'm in always pushes it as silver bullet for de-noise and sharpening, i never like any of the results he posts, seems to do the same thing to feathers, almost like its interpolation is broken.

With Topaz Sharpening, I'm trying to learn that less is more. But when this skill isn't really taught then I'm trying not to fall into the 1990's HDR trap where everything was turned up to 11.

When used sparingly Topaz works wonders.

Clearly I have more tolerance for over-sharpening than others!  But in this one I can't get past the fact that all the highlights have blown.

Yep. I was quickly messing around to see if I could reduce sharpening.

Are the two later versions the same photo? Can’t make a difference looking on my phone.

Your initial photo is ‘too far’, picking up highlights that you wouldn’t normally make out with he naked eye. This could be because the camera lens PLUS editing is actually better than the naked eye, but it has a very slight un-natural look. The dialled back versions are better - something half way might be better still?

As an aside, I’ve been noticing how difficult it can be to get feather highlights on very white birds (see my egret photos), and how easy it is to have a photo that looks over exposed (noticeable when the background vegetation is spot on). Guess that’s where RAW editing would come into its own. 

This more pleasing?

Just done only with DxO and nothing else

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S131FRQlYJZoJOWeKEve6SIRvU3zoPTB/view?usp=...

I have noticed that different websites affect colours. The first shot was in Flickr, and the other images are held on my personal Google Drive.

The images on my Google Drive look blown out compared to the actual image on my screen, and vastly different to Flickr. Even images shown on this site look way better than Google Drive.

Not exactly apples vs apples 🤔

Yes. I’ve zoomed in on the face, and your most recent photo is batter - more detail and less glarey  

Cool.

Looks like my sexying up the eye wasn't too obvious then.

😃

I found this book really helpful when it comes to sharpening: 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/World-Sharpening-Photoshop-Camera-Lightroom-ebook/...

If I’m preparing an image for print publication then I will make sure I’m viewing at at the resolution and size it’s going to be printed before I sharpen for output.

But for everything else I don’t worry about it and mostly just use the auto settings for the raw file in DxO.

Did the original look so blue on the forehead or did that come from the editing. I find that distracting to the eye.

Looks like Lemming has pushed the shadows too far?

I'm happy to learn, however the Waveform did not clip either side and I have not pushed the Blacks that hard.

You are all welcome to play with the RAW file and see where I'm going wrong.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LFEzRz-44T8ht8ec1H0xpaNg7hrYdMHL/view?usp=...

that seems links to a jpg download?

I resubmitted the link, for that very reason. You were just too quick for me to spot my error.

It is all subjective at the end of the day, every photo has been processed from day dot.

thats the main issue for me!

Then please refer to the OP link, as that was the whole reason for this topic.

Erm your op was about sharpening, my comment was about the highlights being overexposed. 

I understand that. The second image was a quick attempt at redoing the sharpening and it was pointed out early on about the over exposure that was was distracting from the original sample image in the OP.

So I redid the image again.

If that is the original I would leave it as it is.

To my eyes it looks better than the edited versions.

It looks like it has been photoshopped into the picture.

Maybe it's a case of less is more and I'm using tools that are not required

I think you are getting to the nub of the issue - just because that tool/sider is there doesn't mean you 'have' to use it.

I've said this on past threads of yours, stop worrying so much about sensor noise (learn to live with it) and image sharpness. I get the feeling that you think that if you rid of every ounce of noise and bump up the sharpness to 11, then the image will suddenly be great/better/improved.

Perhaps ditch that Topaz for a while, it does not seem to be doing you any good (too much temptation to fiddle, lol).

I think you are correct. I shall uninstall it so as not to be tempted. 😃

As another more analytical exercise, take a decent sharp image  with plenty of texture, apply some Gaussian blur and then use Sharpen AI tool to try and restore the image back closer to the original. You can then see if the 'detail' in the restored image bears any resemblance to that of the original unblurred image. That's what I did when Topaz first came out and it was clear that the nice sharp detail actually had little to do with the the original object (bird in this case) - what you get is just artificially manufactured detail to give the appearance of sharpness. Yes, it worked fine on edges with decent contrast, but then so does unsharp masking and wavelets and those two tools are much more predictable and provide fewer 'surprises'. The only method I know of that does better is deconvolution, but that's only applicable in practice in very specific well-controlled circumstances (e.g., astro).

or in other words, don't believe the hype.