Professional Sharpening in Photoshop
Vootie (1092 pencils) | Fri, 2009-11-27 22:08
Adapted from Photoshop CS4 After the Shoot (Wiley Publishing)
By Mark Fitzgerald
Version: Adobe Photoshop CS4
I work with lots of photographers, most of them professionals. When I first begin to work with a new photographer, one of the first questions I ask is how she handles sharpening in her workflow. That’s because sharpening is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the postproduction workflow. When it’s done incorrectly, it can have a detrimental effect on the final image. If someone is making this mistake, I want her to know before moving on to other things.
Understanding Sharpening
Digital photo sharpening is nothing more than enhanced edge contrast. Photoshop tricks you into thinking a photo looks sharper by isolating edge detail and enhancing contrast along those edges. One side of the edge is lightened while the other side is darkened. The enhanced edge contrast is referred to as haloing because of the effect it causes along these edges.
There is no magic formula for sharpening because the amount of sharpening for a particular image depends on two very different things — the content of the image and its overall dimensions. Images with lots of edge detail, like the bowl of silver rings shown below, can handle more sharpening than images with fewer hard edges, such as photos of people or a photo of a landscape on a foggy morning. This is because lots of sharpening adds to the feel of the ring photo, while it would detract from the softer feeling of the portrait or foggy landscape. Additionally, a smaller print of this shot doesn’t need as much sharpening as a larger version would require.
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I think that the unsharp mask technique works better if you only apply it on a channel basis, instead of doing it on all channels at once. The green channel is mostly used to apply this technique because the green channel - beside the green information, also has the overall sharpness of a picture in it.
Anoher way of sharpening is to duplicate your layer.
Select the new layer and go to the filter menu and choose Other > Highpass.
See that you have only the highlights and shadows and for the rest you want a neutral grey. The amount you have to use depends on the quality of your picture.
You should see a grey image with only some white and black showing through.
Click OK
And to get rid of the neutral grey in this layer, put he blending mode to Overlay
If it is to harsh you can play wih he opacity, or if it isn't enough jus duplicate the layer again, and the sharpening will be multiplied.
This one of my favorites
Professional - Photoshop?
I'm confused!
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