When I import my RAW photos into lightroom they always look so flat. The part that drives me nuts is when I first click on a photo for the first time it shows it much more saturated, sharper and usually just better overall but then jumps to a flat look. I guess that is some kind of RAW preview that would have matched the jpeg camera settings? I sometimes struggle to get that look afterwards. In the past I rarely used the sharpening in Lightroom. If I found a pic I liked I would open CS3 and sharpen it. I think this may be some of the problem my pics sometimes don't pop as much in RAW in Lightroom. What are some good default sharpening settings? The default is: amount 25, raduis 1, detail 25, masking 0. I don't even know what the masking does.
It would be nice to have a default setting that would come close looking like the out of Camera jpegs. I use a D40x with setting on vivid most of the time.
I would recommend the Luminous Lanscape Lightroom video tutuorials. Jeff Schewe, who had some influence on the sharpening in LR, gives a great explination on how it works. Also consider using the Clarity tool for adding a little punch/contrast to your images works great.
Try the LR sharpening presets for a starter and experiment with them. Also, you can see the effects of sharpening better when zooming in to 1:1 and clicking the Alt key while positioning your cursor on one of the sliders.
