Sharpening Textures

[gmitchel]

Jeff Schewe described a technique for sharpening rough surface textures like weather barn wood. I modified the technique by adding Blend Ifs to protect the extreme highlights/shadows and doing all of the work in a Photoshop CS3/CS4 Smart Filters layer.

You wouldn't want to use this on every photo, but it is helpful, especially when the effect is brushed in over wood, stone, brick, textiles, etc.

• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 100,0.5,5 and Fade to Luminosity 50%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 500,0.5,3 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 500,1,3 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 500,5,3 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 100,5,0 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 100,10,0 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.

All of this is wrapped up in a free Photoshop action set. Feel free to download it.

http://www.thelightsright.com/TLRTextureSharpener

Cheers,

Mitch

[amica999]

Thank you Mitch, will try and post examples later on

[gmitchel]

Super. I hope you like the effect.

Mitch