I was wandering around the links on the John Houston site that Chris just posted and found a great technique for sharpening (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/smart_sharp.shtml). I tried it on a photo and what a difference!! Some of you may already know this technique, but I thought it was a really cool find. Between this technique and the one DJ posted for lightening dark areas, my photo retouching has just taken a huge leap forward.

Thanks Chris and DJ for sending me down this path. :D

Jeanie

Jeanie
I'm glad you feel like you're getting alot from this crew. I have seen that sharpening technique and think it is a good one. Thanks for posting it as I know everyone will find this a good technique for their skill library.
DJ

Jeanie,

That's a great link! Thank you very much. There is also a *lot* of other information on the home page at http://www.luminous-landscape.com/table_of_contents.htm
I could spend a lot of time there. :)

Ed

Originally posted by Ed_L
I could spend a lot of time there. :)I already have! :D I thought I was going to catch up on paying bills today. Oh well - they'll be there tomorrow. :( Jeanie

Hey Jeanie, life's for Photoshoppin', not for paying bills. :)

One note for others who might download the image from the site. When I went to make a new channel, it was grayed out, and I couldn't do it. Looking to see what else was grayed out, I found many things (most) were grayed out. Aha! A clue! You have to convert the image from a 16 bit file to an 8 bit file. Then you're all set. Thanks again Jeanie, it worked very well.

Ed

I visited the site you gave and they have some good equipment reviews for those of you buying some new hardware and some interesting tutorials and lots more I didn't get to check out yet. I didn't get to really examine all of the tutorials or reviews but I plan to go back there and play around for awhile. Thanks again for the great link.
DJ

Originally posted by Ed_L
You have to convert the image from a 16 bit file to an 8 bit file. Then you're all set.Huh. Is that what it was? I just converted the RGB file to grayscale and that worked too. ;) Once again, many ways to accomplish the same thing!

Jeanie

Yeah, that's the beauty (or the problem) with Phoptoshop. Just when I think I'm doing something good, I find out there's a better/easier way to do it! :D

Ed

The problem for me is that as I learn new techniques, I think back to all of the photos I've already worked on and know how much better they could be. :( Oh well, I guess that's the "price" of learning. ;) (And yes, I would be quite bored with it if I thought there wasn't anything more to learn. I doubt that's going to happen for a very long time!) -Jeanie

Jeanie
You too? I have done so many pictures over the years and now I think that if I only knew then what I know now they could have been so much better. I almost wish I could go back and redo them. :D
DJ

Today I tried the sharpening technique on something that I wanted. The restore is not yet done, but I wanted to show you the results when using "smart sharpening". The image on the left was put on a new background, and there is a lot of junk in the photo. The one on the right has had noise put into the background to approximate the original image. I used gaussian blur on the one on the right to get rid of some of the noise on the face, and made the mask as suggested on the original link above. I couldn't get rid of a lot of the noise on the mask, so I painted those areas with white to make the mask better. I did my sharpening in lab mode, then brought the image back to RGB. Thanks again Jeanie. This was my first attempt with it, and here is the result.

Ed

Here it is.

I'm impressed! I can really tell a difference. Smart thinking to clean up the mask with white - I haven't found a need to do that yet, but I thought of the same thing. Great job! :D

Jeanie

Thanks Jeanie. I didn't think you could really see the difference very easily on that one, so I'm posting a larger version of the important areas.

Ed

Actually, I could see a difference on the one you first posted. But now I REALLY see the difference! :D -Jeanie

Ed
I can see the deffinate difference. Thanks for showing us your results. Sometimes unless you do a comparison side by side like you just did, you don't really know how much of a difference there really is.
DJ

Very good link!There was a technique on the above mentioned site which described sharpening using a high pass filter. I tried it and got excellent results. It was also quite simple to do. I'm wondering if you tried this one also Ed and if so, how do you think it compares to the other method.
Re the various methods for fixing up an image where the subject is in the shadows I did a comparison between a few methods and had the best success with a technique described in a Kelby book on Photo Retouching. Basically you open your image,go to levels and drag the middle slider to the left to lighten the part in
shadows. Next you go to the history palette to click on the original open state Then click a soft history brush next to the "levels" state.Paint over the part in shadows only. Decrease the opacity if necessary.
I wasn't initially very crazy about this book at first but I find that I'm starting to consult it more often than I used to.It's like using an everyday cookbook .Paulette

Hi Paulette,

I didn't read the one using the high pass filter, but I have sharpened using that filter. I think it will depend on the individual photo as to if one is better than the other. The image with the link above is the only one I used the "smart sharpen" on, but I was *very* impressed with the results. That one gets a spot in my "best of" folder. :) Jeanie turned us on to a good one!

Ed

Almost forgot! Thanks for the tip. I've got it copied so I can try it soon.

Ed

It's a year later, and that link appears to have vanished into cyberspace. Any clue as to what this wonderful sharpening technique was???

Macky

Hmmm - I'm pretty sure I printed this off a year ago. Now, if I can just figure out WHERE I put it!!

Jeanie

I think this is it folks

www.luminous-landscape.com (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/)

Debbie

Yes, that's the general website Debbie, but finding the actual tutorial was a bit of a challenge. After a bit of searching, it seems that the URL has changed to: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/smart_sharp.shtml.

Jeanie

Oh, right...high pass sharpening. Thanks, got it!

Macky

Oh. NOT high pass. Very :cool: Thanks, jeaniesa!! Having the correct tut helps!!!

Macky

Actually, this is a different method than High Pass sharpening. It uses the Find Edges filter to create a selection so that only the edges in an image are sharpened rather than the whole image. This reduces the increased grain in faces and skies that can occur with other sharpening methods.

Jeanie

Some related links:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/PSTV_links.html#S

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/ST_utilitymasks.html

Stephen Marsh.

Thanks Stephen...turns out your site was already in my FAVOURITES!!

Macky

Can someone tell me where this technique is? I clicked on the link in the original post but evidently that no longer exists. I sure would appreciate it if someone could briefly give me the steps involved, if the link is no longer available...:classic: pretty please?

Six messages back is a link that works (seven, now!)
:wavey:

Thanks for asking Sweet-P. I should have updated the link in my first post back when I found the new link that BK pointed you to. I've now updated the link in the first post as well.

Jeanie

Thank you...and you are welcome :)

I downloaded JB's custom smart sharpening .atn and found it to be fabulous. I installed it on my desktop (mac) and laptop (mac) as well (Photoshop 6). I even took it in to work to install it on our (pc), Photoshop 5.5, but I got an error message saying something to the effect that it was not compatible with that version. Any one have any suggestions on how I can add it to my workflow at work? Is it possible to print out the steps in the .atn?

Christo, from the help system, presuming v6 or higher:

>> Press Ctrl+Alt (Windows) or Command+Option (Mac OS) when you choose the Save Actions command to save the actions in a text file. You can use this file to review or print the contents of an action. However, you can't reload the text file back into Photoshop <<

Then decipher and rebuild the action in v5.x (which is why I build my actions in v5.x as it is still in wide use in production settings).

On the subject of sharpening:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/ST_USM1.html

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/PSTV_links.html#S


Regards,

Stephen Marsh.

Stephen,
When I go into PS6 and highlight the action, do a control option, the save actions command is grayed out.

I realise that this is an old thread but I just downloaded and installed the Smart Sharpening action into PS7.1 and when I run the action it says that the Black Channel is not available consequently the action does not work fully and seems to stick . Has anyone any clues to what could be the problem?Thanks for any help

Peter, The action probably refers to the Black channel at some point when your version of Photoshop needs the Gray channel - there's some inconsistency between versions.

Hi Leah, thanks for the reply , does that mean that I just cant use the action but would be able to do it manually ?? must read through the whole tutorial

Thanks Chris and DJ, picture a kid in a Candy Store!!

Thanks for the link! I really like that method.

Thanks again

Browsing round, I happened on this site and found it very interesting, so I registered and hope someone can help me with a problem I have when trying to use JB sharpener, Namely, that when I start the action, I get a message in the second stage,--" the object "black channel" is not currently available".

Looking through the Help section I can see nothing refering to a black channel.

Can any of you good folks help me out here?

P.s I notice Peter has the same problem a few threads back too. Problem also crops up on a couple of other actions too.

RGB mode (red, green, blue) will not have a black channel.

CMYK mode (cyan, magenta, yellow, & black) has a black channel.

I'm assuming the creator of the action was using CMYK as the basis for the action.

Thank you for that, I will go and give it a try.

I was wandering around the links on the John Houston site that Chris just posted and found a great technique for sharpening (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/smart_sharp.shtml). I tried it on a photo and what a difference!! Some of you may already know this technique, but I thought it was a really cool find. Between this technique and the one DJ posted for lightening dark areas, my photo retouching has just taken a huge leap forward.

Thanks Chris and DJ for sending me down this path. :D

Jeanie

The article on Smart Sharpening describes edge sharpening. You're right, many will be familiar with it.

The article leaves out some steps that are important, if you want really good results. For example, it does not use Blend If to keep sharpening away from the highlights and the shadows.

My TLR Sharpening Toolkit is a free download. It is a sophisticated Photoshop action set for sharpening images.

The toolkit is based on the three-pass sharpening philosophy described by Bruce Fraser, although it can also be used for single-pass or two-pass sharpening. I engineered this toolkit to include the best features of commercial sharpening tools, like Focal Blade and Photokit Sharpener. Features include:

• Sharpen with Highpass Filter or USM sharpening.

• Sharpen edges and surfaces separately (or either alone).

• Sharpen light and dark pixels separately.

• Generate masks using luminosity or color boundaries or a composite of the two.

• Brush in creative sharpening/blurring.

• Blend If settings protect against sharpening highlights and shadows.

• All sharpening is done non-destructively using layers.

http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/DigitalDarkroom/PhotoshopTools/TLRSharpeningToolkit.htm

The action set comes with illustrated instructions in PDF. I also have tutorials, tips, and a learning gallery to help with sharpening.

http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/DigitalDarkroom/Tutorials/PutAFineEdgeOnYourSharpeningSkills.pdf

http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/DigitalDarkroom/LearningGalleries/SharpeningToolkit/SharpeningToolkit.htm

http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/DigitalDarkroom/TipOfTheWeek/2004OCT11/2004OCT11.htm

http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/DigitalDarkroom/TipOfTheWeek/2004NOV01/2004NOV01.htm

http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/DigitalDarkroom/TipOfTheWeek/2004NOV29/2004NOV29.htm

Cheers,

Mitch

Hello .thanks for a terrific site and all your contributions.

Sharpening has always been my problem. Jeaniesa mentions John Houstons sharpening technique and another technique for lightening shadows.

Would it be possible to put a link to the posts mentioned .many thanks

Gary

the fastest way to sharpen an image is by "UNSHARP MASK" however it may sharpen all the iamges and will create ugly noise.. so the best way is go to channel and choose what channel (can be one or two channels) you would ONLY sharpen (not the four channels) and presto you will see a great result!