Sharpening

[T Paul]

I used USM, High Pass and the Custom Filter on the same image to see the differences.....

USM and High Pass produce similar results, but the Custom Filter really makes the image pop

[Janet Petty]

I'm not going to add any advice or technique to what has already been said. What I am going to do is give a big thank you to T.Paul for the research and thorough way in which the options were presented. Ways to sharpen effectively is a much needed subject for anyone with a digital camera. What was accomplished in this thread was to consolidate resources and ideas into a manageable form. Thank you. Thank you. Now I will print this and have a readily accessible file for reference and can throw away all of the multitude of notes I've stashed in my notebook over the years.

[Kevin Connery]

Bravo! That's the most thorough overview of Photoshop sharpening techniques I've seen.

There's a handful of new plug-ins as well that do a good job of sharpening, which can sometimes be more cost-effective than spending the time to learn sharpening theory. I'm partial to PixelGenius' PhotoKit Sharpener, but FocalBlade is also good, albeit only for Windows. Asiva Sharpen+Soften is a Mac/Win product for the ultra-technical sharpening wizards: it's the only one to permit using curves to define how the sharpening will affect colors, light- or dark- colors, etc.

One other variant of USM is to create a copy of the image in a new layer (merging to a new layer, duplicating and flattening, whatever), then sharpening the copy as normal, if a little stronger than typical, using any non-brightness-oriented sharpening. Then adjust the advanced blending modes ("gray" channel) to reduce the effects in the deep shadows and extreme highlights. One place to start is to move the black and white point triangles to about 15 and 240, then splitting each and bringing them 10-30 points towards the center.

It gives a simple, if not as flexible highlight/shadow "mask" effect, without the need to do the masking itself.

[byRo]

Originally Posted by Kevin Connery

Then adjust the advanced blending modes ("gray" channel) to reduce the effects in the deep shadows and extreme highlights. One place to start is to move the black and white point triangles to about 15 and 240, then splitting each and bringing them 10-30 points towards the center.

Well remebered, Kevin. With the blend-if options you can sharpen deeper without running into clipping. The little triangles can get a bit too little, I put the process in an action (button).

and now a question....

Should we divide sharpening into two distinct parts?
Seems to me that there are differences between:
- sharpening - getting things into focus;
- sharpening - putting Wow/Pop into an already good image.
Where USM and High-pass apply better to the first and Custom (convolution) better to the second.

Any opinions?

Roland

[T Paul]

Thanks Kevin and Janet! I am always trying to learn/absorb as much as I can about PhotoShop so I read a lot and research the web a lot. Most of the information for this thread came from one web site (pacificsites.com). They had several great links as well as many of the techniques listed. However, you never know when a site will go away so I recreated the information here as well.

Roland,

Originally Posted by byRo

Should we divide sharpening into two distinct parts?
Seems to me that there are differences between:
- sharpening - getting things into focus;
- sharpening - putting Wow/Pop into an already good image.

Good point as there are difference techniques to achieve both. Everyone is welcome to add their particular method for either approach.