Sharpening

[mdm]

Can anyone recommend a book on the principles of sharpening, more than just a mindless photoshop how to? Perhaps more relevant to scanned film than to digital camera files.

Thanks
David

[Mark Stahlke]

Real World Image Sharpening (http://www.amazon.com/World-Image-Sharpening-Adobe-Photoshop/dp/0321449916/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1323467603&sr=1-2) is probably the bible on image sharpening. There's a lot more to it than "just a mindless photoshop how-to".

[mdm]

Thanks. Bless the Kindle.

[Peter De Smidt]

I agree with the recommendation of RWIS.

I usually make a combined image on top of the layer stack. ctrl+Alt+shift+E. I change the layer's mode to 'luminosity", and use Smart Sharpen on it. Many times I mask areas of the image that I don't want sharpened.

[bob carnie]

I prefer Dan Margulis take on sharpening, he teaches sharpening at extreme levels and then using opacity to media .
I use various sharpening techniques on layers and in some cases use different methods for different areas of the image.

Poor sharpening is the cause of most bad images we see.
Lack of sharpening is not good, each image benifits sharpening.

unless you are working with a soft portrait in fog or something where you would even consider adding blur.

[Ken Lee]

Beautiful subject + large format + good sharpening => ;)

[sully75]

I use high pass sharpening, which is quite easy.

When you are done with your adjustments, I duplicate all layers, than merge all the duplicates. Go to filter -> other -> high pass. Then change the layer style on that layer to "hard light". Adjust the amount of sharpening with the opacity on that layer, usually 20-30% is best.

It's very easy and works quite well to me. Better than anything else I've tried.

[bob carnie]

Blending mode Hard Light, what is the difference between the different modes, ie soft light, or lets say just normal?

I use high pass sharpening, which is quite easy.

When you are done with your adjustments, I duplicate all layers, than merge all the duplicates. Go to filter -> other -> high pass. Then change the layer style on that layer to "hard light". Adjust the amount of sharpening with the opacity on that layer, usually 20-30% is best.

It's very easy and works quite well to me. Better than anything else I've tried.

[sully75]

Blending mode Hard Light, what is the difference between the different modes, ie soft light, or lets say just normal?

No clue. It just works good. I can't remember where I got it from, it might have been in the Online Photographer by Ctein, but I'm not sure. I generally don't like much of anything he has to say but if he did this one I owe him one.

Just try it. I honestly think it works really well. I've tried a fair amount of other things and find this to be at least 90% of everything else if not more and much simpler. You can set up an action to do most of it.

[mdm]

Thanks, I will check Margulis out too.

[bob carnie]

Just a guess but hard light spreads the contrast at a mid way point much like softlight but to a greater . This would tell me its like a high radius setting that I use for flat areas in a scene. Probably you would notice greater midtone contrast when you apply this sharpening.


No clue. It just works good. I can't remember where I got it from, it might have been in the Online Photographer by Ctein, but I'm not sure. I generally don't like much of anything he has to say but if he did this one I owe him one.

Just try it. I honestly think it works really well. I've tried a fair amount of other things and find this to be at least 90% of everything else if not more and much simpler. You can set up an action to do most of it.

[Ari]

Nik software uses a pretty nice sharpening program, with adaptive sharpening tools and control points, for both RAW files and output files.

[Brian Ellis]

You might try PK Sharpen from Pixel Genius (the outfit started by the late Bruce Fraser, who wrote the RWS book mentioned above, and a couple other guys). They offer a 30-day free trial IIRC. You should spend some time with the instructions before trying it though, it isn't totally intuitive. I think I do a better, at least more consistent, job with it than I did on my own. Customer support appears to be non-existent since Bruce died but that's o.k., once you spend time with the instructions you shouldn't need any customer support.

[Ed Kelsey]

Just buy PK Sharpener and be done with it.

http://www.pixelgenius.com/sharpener2/index.htm

[sanking]

PK Sharpener is a good tool and the current version is a big improvement over the last one. I use the capture sharpening and creative sharpening routines of PK Sharpener
for all nearly of my film scans of MF and LF film.

For final output I generally just use unsharp mask with a large radius, with threshold at 0, and adjust amount as needed.

Sandy

[Preston]

Ed, I'm getting a 404 error from your link.

Here's the correct one http://www.pixelgenius.com/sharpener2/index.html

--P

[mdm]

Thanks for all the replies to this thread. I read the 1st book recommended and am in the process of reading the second. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a subscription to photoshop and have been working with Photo Kit Sharpen and layer masks. Intelligent sharpening has really made a big difference to some highly detailed 5x7's that have been printing as mush up to now.