Sharpening question for Photoshop experts

[Harry Muff]

For general sharpening, Unsharp Mask is the way to go. Naturally, you can can go a lot further with a raw file exported to Photoshop as a 16 bit.
I've tried to use the raw sharpening but, frankly, I hate it. The artefacts are hideous, and toning it back leaves you with not enough sharpening.


For advanced users, I'd recommend taking a look the Inverted High Pass technique but missing out the High Pass part and adding 3.5 radius of Guassian Blur instead.


Another is Frequency Separation but hiding the blurred Low Frequency Layer.




All these techniques can be found online; YouTube, RetouchPro, Model Mayhem,  etc.




Also, for those with CS5 and newer, don't ignore the new and improved Sharpening tool found in the Tools Palette with the Brush, Crop Tool, etc.
It has been vastly improved. Just make sure the Protect Tones box is checked.

[Atonegro]

1 more vote for the high-pass sharpening.

When you want a stronger effect, it is most of the time better to keep the radius small, and then raise the contrast of the high-pass layer.
Or you can simply copy the layer untill you get the effect you want.

Instead of the high-pass filter, you also can use the stylize/emboss filter, it has a directional control that gives a different effect but works the same.

[digital paradise]

This by far is the best sharpening method I have found to date. I created an action that resizes the image before it does it's thing. The great part about this method is it is edge sharpening and you can feather back at at the end if you over sharpen. My default amount 300. No two images are alike. Some can stay at 300 and others I have to feather back to 50.

When you open a RAW file and do your preliminary sharpening (capture sharpening) apply masking in the detail pallet which makes it even better as even at that stage you are not sharpening any noise the image may have. I wind up setting it at about 80 most of the time. Press the Option key on a MAC if you are trying this. Not sure which key for PC.       

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/photoshop-really-smart-sharpening.html?search=edge+mask&bool=and

I made a tutorial which has my action you can download.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1099897

Using this method. 7D and 300L F4 IS. Click on it to see the full size.   

[digital paradise]

So for my personal/hobby/web stuff I use PS and this. For mass edits I just use Lightroom's output sharpening on the export page. I do apply masking in the detail pallet in both PS and LR for all my my images.