Making Images Look Sharper

[Jakaleena]

View Here

I have this trick I use to make soft images look sharper,
so I've written a tutorial for it.

[d_kendal]

wow, those are excellent tutorials you keep putting out Jak!! I'm learning lots from them. thanks!

- David

[jeaniesa]

Yes - definitely COOL!! Thanks so much for sharing this. It's not something I've seen anywhere else. I like how you adapted it from your traditional retouching techniques.

Jeanie

[Jakaleena]

Originally posted by jeaniesa
Thanks so much for sharing this. It's not something I've seen anywhere else. I like how you adapted it from your traditional retouching techniques

It's like I mentioned to Doug - I think I invented this one. I don't remember anyone ever teaching it to me, and certainly not digitally. I could have possibly gotten it from a fellow traditional retoucher, but I've been using it so long that I honestly don't remember being taught to do it. It's so basic to my technique that I had almost forgotten I even do it, except today I went to do it and all of a sudden thought of writing a tut for it.

I'm really glad you guys liked it...

[DJ Dubovsky]

Great tutorial Jak. I've done something similar in the past just to give the appearance of sharpness when the unsharp or overlay weren't enough.
DJ

[cyberartist]

Interesting... I also worked sometimes this way... when images are too small and i had to blow them up to over 200% i traced the edges with a smear tool and then make them cleaner, especially eyes, mouth etc., doing the same you describe in your tutorial. Then after shrinking the image to 50%-70% and applying a sharpening filter, the results becomes cleaner as the original was with a bigger image size. - Cyberartist

[Jakaleena]

Originally posted by Jakaleena
I think I invented this one.

Then again, perhaps not....

[cyberartist]

Dont mind... I also thought i had "invented" my odd colorization method, but some days ago i saw another one who did the same on the photo of Lisa / Challenge #12 in Photo Retouching.

[Ed_L]

I can't believe this one has been here almost 2 months, and I just saw it! Excellent tutorial Jak. And one that will surely come in handy. Thanks bunches.

Ed

[Jakaleena]

You're welcome bunches...

[Doug Nelson]

One trick I found over the years is how to make a slightly fuzzy image LOOK like it's sharper. This doesn't always work as well as I hope, and for images that are downright blurry, there's really no help. But some soft images can be faux-sharpened. [details]