David Kilpatrick posted an article at Photoclub Alpha , a photography website for Konica-Minolta-Sony DSLR users, about the misconception of sharpness vs. details.

The writer is a veteran photographer with obvious experience in editing images digitally. He shares his insight, amidst some technical explanations, about how over-sharpened images are preceived to contain more details.

As a purist, this article will put a brake to hobbyist photographers about applying aggressive sharpening algorithms on their images. It also gives assurance to others who refuses to succumb to the temptations of overshapening the images for its sake.

However, the majority of the people would not care whether the images are ruined by overshapening. To them, a sharpened image, albeit losing fine details, is a good image.

Having said that, one should take care about using sharpening to try to fake details, especially in the commercial arena where publishers take full-resolution images to extrapolate from the original to achieve blown-up details. It is always prudent to save the image with no sharpening to retain the original details captured by the camera and lens.