# Output sharpening in Lightroom



## Jotho (Sep 23, 2012)

Sunday night where I live. I am processing some family pictures from this weekend and just discovered a feature that I haven't seen or used before, it's the output sharpening feature in Lightroom. I've only used Lightroom a couple of months so far and still consider myself to be on a steep learning curve. Is this a useful function according to those of you who have used it? Is this a stupid question as I should always use it? Any advice is appreciated.


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## rwmson (Sep 25, 2012)

Yes, you always apply sharpening as the LAST step in your PP (because sharpening is dependent upon image resolution). Most digital images will benefit greatly from sharpening, just don't overdo it.


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## RLPhoto (Sep 25, 2012)

Jotho said:


> Sunday night where I live. I am processing some family pictures from this weekend and just discovered a feature that I haven't seen or used before, it's the output sharpening feature in Lightroom. I've only used Lightroom a couple of months so far and still consider myself to be on a steep learning curve. Is this a useful function according to those of you who have used it? Is this a stupid question as I should always use it? Any advice is appreciated.



Web use require more aggressive sharpening than Print use. So yes, Use output sharpening.


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## DavidRiesenberg (Sep 25, 2012)

But should one use both the "regular" sharpening in LR and output sharpening?


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## DB (Sep 25, 2012)

rwmson said:


> Yes, you always apply sharpening as the LAST step in your PP (because sharpening is dependent upon image resolution). Most digital images will benefit greatly from sharpening, just don't overdo it.



+1

Recently I've begun using 'Smart Sharpen' in PS CS6 as my final step in 'post'. I find that all pictures benefit from a small to modest amount of sharpening e.g. 1.5px to 2.5px (radius) coupled with 24% to 45% amount (depending on the image), especially with images shot with my 24-70 mk I


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## 2n10 (Sep 25, 2012)

DavidRiesenberg said:


> But should one use both the "regular" sharpening in LR and output sharpening?



Yes, especially when you are outputting to JPEG due to the quality loss. It seems to show up in sharpness the most to my eyes.


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