So, I've been trying to figure out why there was so many "jaggies" at the edges of details in photos from the nc2000e as compared to the more natural look of details from later cameras like the D2h, which I use on a daily basis. At first, I just chalked it up to the camera just being such old technology, but some photos I've shot depicting natural things like flowers didn't have that problem, so I had to re-evaluate what might have been causing it.
One of the thing I've discovered is that after opening the Kodak .tiff in Photoshop Raw module, there are default settings in place for some sharpening to be done right off the bat. If these are not changed, any additional sharpening of the photo later will result in a piling on of pixels which makes detail get blotchy in spots around any given photo, but mainly where a light and dark contrast appear, say black against a white, or where there are many details that come together, like shingles on a roof.
After pondering this for a bit, I tried a couple of things that, I think, have improved photos a bit.
(Feel free to download the full resolution photos for your own comparison. Especially to see the 300% cropped pics. They have to be opened in PS to see the details clearly.)
The photo at top is brought in from Photoshop Raw and left at it's default settings which were: Sharpening is 25, Radius is 1.0, and Detail is 25) Notice the 300% blow-up of details in the label and you can see the muddled look, and that is without extra processing as a jpeg later. The second 300% photo show Unsharp Mask added later, causing even more artifacts and "jaggies" to appear.
The second full-size photo is the same scene but with all Raw settings brought back to zero. After it was opened in Photoshop from Raw I then applied Unsharp Mask at the following settings: Amount - 100%, Radius - 2.5 pixels, and Threshold - 10 levels. (What's interesting here, is that for years I'd use sharpening at lower levels. The radius would never be set higher than 0.7 and the Threshold was never more than 6. Making the amounts higher here have helped.)
Notice the 300% blowup of that detail and I think you'll agree that this is a better, more natural looking representation of the photo. (Also note that I applied Noise Removal which is built into Photoshop CS4. It does a good job of removing moire and artifacts from photos)
