| You'll notice some wee little tabs just below the histogram section in the adjustment pane, and when you start you are in the Basic tab. After you finish there, click the next tab, the one with the little sharpening tool icon, and you will find yourself in the Sharpening and Noise Reduction section. Notice the advice at the bottom to zoom up to at least 100%--do it. Some very helpful features will now be enabled, not to mention being able to see more clearly the details of your photo where both sharpness and noise will be more visible. I found the setting you can see above for Amount, Radius, Detail and Masking seem like a good point to start. So try those settings, and then start fine tuning by dragging the sliders. |
| If you have zoomed up to 100 or more, and if you then press and hold the Option key, when you start to drag the Amount slider you will be surprised to see your image is suddenly in gray scale. I discovered that it really is easier to gauge how much sharpening you are getting without the distraction of color. What you see when you Option drag the Radius and Detail sliders is harder describe, and impossible to get a screen shot of, but I sort of faked it above. What you want is to drag the sliders so you can just see a faint outline of your features against a sea of gray. This will show you where ACR is drawing the sharpening line, increasing the contrast between pixels along the line. The Masking slider, when you Option drag it, creates a black and white mask, which restricts the sharpening to edges and protects the inner areas. The further to the right you drag the slider, the more black you will see, and sharpening will be more restricted. |
