I’m definitely not going to make screencasts, maybe this will work:

We need a starting point so lets take this Play Raw entry image as a starting point.

Discard the history and open it in darkroom view, you should see something like this:



Expand, turn on the contrast equalizer module and make sure the luma tab is highlighted. This little sharpening how-to isn’t bothering with the other 2 tabs at all.

Select the difference blend by clicking on the circle in the mask toolbar at the bottom and select difference from the blend mode pull down menu. You end up with this:



The effect is easiest demonstrated when you use it over the full width (from coarse on the left to fine on the right). So put your mouse inside the square below the luma tab and use the scroll-wheel (towards you) to make it as big as possible.

Now go to the centre of the square and very slowly raise the bar. Look at the black screen and stop when you see the first sign of the cats right ear (viewer left). You see something like this:



1024x600

Now turn off the blend by clicking on the circle.Even though I used a real crude approach by using the ears and using the full width you can already see that this is much better then the first image:Probably not that obvious this being ascreenshot, but here’s a snapshot comparison:

The hardest part is deciding what needs to be sharpened and how much, but I really like the above approach a lot better then ogling it.

In this example I would probably focus on the finer parts (the hairs below the eye and next to the nose) by using the fine and some of the middle part of the spectrum. Something like this:



If the overall effect turns out to be to strong (or not strong enough):Adjust with the mix (effect) slider.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

EDIT: Replaced the 1240x600 “stamps” with 1920x1080 versions.