On Mon, 04 Oct 2004 19:27:03 -0400, Alan Browne had this to say:

For school portraits, once you figure the USM parameters (at various
sizes), and verify over a few different photos, can be batch processed (in
the full photoshop) for the whole set. Little is going to change kid to
kid that a single setting won't handle (for each perspective and output
size).

Now here's the thing with batch processing in PS: how do you get it to
save your jpegs without asking you confirm image quality in every single
image?

The concept of batch processing was always forefront in my mind. Just
didn't work because whenever I wanted to save the resultant image, I would
have to change the quality in the final "save" dialog. I couldn't batch
that process.

That's subjective. For some images a fine touch of sharpening is
enough, and the generic "Sharpen" a bit heavy handed... and you can see
the halos along edges that result.

I haven't seen any halos from using in-camera sharpening with either the
D60 or the D70.

And of course, as stated, for different output sizes an unsharp mask
step for that size is required.

It is, unfortunately, something that cannot be automated (as far as I
know) because it requires a human to evaluate the effect of the
sharpenning step before acceptance.

I'm happy with the job the camera is doing.

Aha! There's your rub, right there.

Not at all. If that camera irretrievably damages an image by
oversharpening, there is no going back. From RAW, you have the most
available improvement available.

The kind of work I am doing doesn't require RAW. The files are just too
darn big and the process of converting them to TIFF is just tedium that I
can do without.

Digital is supposed to be about convenience, not inconvenience, which is
why, if it's quality I want, I shoot slide film.

--
DD™
"And that's all I got to say about that" ~ FG