Canon 7D: Sharpening In The Camera

What makes the Canon 7D so special is all the customization we can do. I’m currently on working to have my 7d prepare my coffee and warn me when it’s getting too strong.

Another common customization is the picture style. The style includes the sharpness, the saturation, the contrast and the colour tone. All these styles are done “in camera”. With the various picture styles, you can set the sharpness from 0 to 7. To me, a sharpness of 3 looks like a Canon 5DMk2.

The only problem is that the “in camera sharpness” only works with JPEG photos. The sharpness is applied during the creation of the JPEG. The sharpness processing is just like the white balance processing. The Canon 7D does not sharpen the raw photo. The setting is recorded in the raw photo, but doesn’t affect the photo. Some processing software may read the sharpness setting and may apply the sharpness setting.

Lightroom 2.6 does apply the style that you have created and chosen in the camera. But it’s applied during the processing of the raw photo in Lightroom in the Develop Module > Camera Calibration. Lightroom 2.6RC did not read nor apply the style/sharpness setting.

DPP, Canon’s own raw processing software does apply the picture style settings to the raw processing. Even Lightroom’s 5.7.1 doesn’t.