The Art of Evaluating Images - Pixel Peeping? What to do?

(I decided to post this in this forum not knowing where else to put it and also hoping to avoid a camera brand fanboy argument if it went to another forum - I'll stick to the Nikon body family where I am comfortable with the present level of complete hysteria).

I am always trying to learn, thus this crazy post. After 7 years of owning and shooting Nikon DSLRs, I confess that I remain mystified as to how best to evaluate images that I've taken. Please digest my whole post here first and then give me your feedback. This may seem like a crazy, naive post (maybe it is). My question is simply how do you evaluate image acuity or sharpness? Never mind the composition, color, noise or whatever part of the evaluative process. I speak only of NEF raw images that are not high ISO where things can become a mess.

I cannot help but bring up the subject of "pixel peeping." Pixel peepers are supposed to be awful, really bad people, right? And pixel peeping is naughty, right. OK, fine. but how else do you evaluate the sharpness without at least magnifying your image somewhat. My monitor is 1920x1200 hardware calibrated regularly. My D800E produces an image that's over 7000 pixels wide. Looking at my NEFs in CNX2, my "Fit to Screen" setting reduces the image to less than a 1000 pixels wide. At that reduction everything looks tack sharp. But of course that's not telling me the real story. Can I assume you magnify your images to evaluate sharpness? To what extent? I assume the answer to that might depend upon what you plan to ultimately do with the image - print, web or other. That said, the simple question is whether the image is sharp enough to start with to keep or not?

So, how do you evaluate you images' sharpness (raw files)? Do you pixel peep just a little? I do because I don't know any other way to decide what's sharp. But at 100% view - pixel for pixel - have I crossed into a territory where my image sharpness expectations are unreasonable? What's acceptable (but avoiding becoming a dreaded pixel peeper; really, I don't want to be a bad person)? Seriously, I'm a little bit lost on this subject. Hopefully, you understand my inquiry. >> Jim

-- http://jamesfarrell.smugmug.com/