Sharpening Techniques - What's Best Practice?

PhinglasPhil

Hi All,

I have been admiring all your images and am often struck by the clarity and sharpness of many of the images. I seldom achieve successful results in my mediocre attempts with the unsharp mask in Photoshop. I would be most grateful to hear about the workflows used by you.
Any advice would be most welcome.

oshead

There's loads of different ways you could sharpen an image.

The probably the most important thing to do is to concentrate on your focusing. Make sure you get that right. Use the center focus point if you have problems.
The thing to watch out for would be shutter speed should not be below the lenght of the lense. Ie.. If you are shooting with a 100mm lense, generally you'd try not to shoot below 100th sec. Though I do stress generally. Another....... Have a look at this from Joe McNally, about holding a camera properly and steadly.

You could use a tripod or monopod or brace yourself up against a wall or something solid.

Once you get the images into the computer, assuming you will be doing this. What i'd generally do is this.

Import everything into Adobe Lightroom. I have my own default import settings which remove all sharpening, noise reduction, contrast and brightness. Basically, I reduce to the RAW and nothing but the RAW. I usually lift the exposure by about a stop and set the colour balance to what I want. Then export to Photoshop.

The first thing, usually, is to remove noise. This is done with Noiseware Pro. It will soften the image a little. The next thing, again I stress usually, is the first step of sharpening. Depending what the image is and my intended output. I use Pixel Genius' PhotoKit Sharpener Pro. IMO, this is the best in class sharpening plugin you can get. This is a three stage sharpening process called Input, Creative, and Output Sharpening. Other times, If I just want to batch process a lot of images, I might use the excellent Guy Gowan's technique which I have saved off in an action. Recently though, I have been favouring Highpass over everything else. This is a three stage thing too, the first two being highpass on different strenght levels and different blend modes. Then a selective Unsharpmask.

That's it in a nutshell. Some here might say that sharpening is over rated, and on certain images and situations I have to say I agree with them too. :pac:

PhinglasPhil

Thanks Oshead. You've provided much for me to work on.
I'm sure I fall foul of some of the errors as mentioned by Joe McN in the video. Concentration is the key.
Also, I much appreciate your advice on workflow. Thanks alot.

Thecageyone

I put my RAWs through a quick develop in Light room, slight adjust of clarity, contrast, exposure if needed etc ... I don't have any set way to do anything but you do get into the habit of moving the sliders pretty quick to certain levels, everyone does it differently that's whay we all have our own style.

I do a little sharpen in LR then export to Photoshop, sometimes [if I'm doing a mono I have a HSL de-saturate preset and I prefer to do most of the work in LR for those]

In PS I also do a couple of high pass/overlay/adjust opacity to suit/flatten, new layer, high pass, flatten etc ... depending on the image. Sometimes once is enough. On portraits I might add a layer and do a gaussian blur, delete blur around the eyes before overlaying and flattening.

If you youtube sharpening for portraits you'll find 'some' good clips [alot of crap ones that go are more for show, they fly through the steps way too fast and put **** techno music over the clip]

Heebie

My advice on sharpening:

1.> First and foremost don't sharpen anything until you're working with it at it's desired output resolution... and sharpen separately for each output resolution. (i.e... if it's going to both print and screen.. create NEW files from your working file that are at the output size & resolution like A4@300dpi and 800x600@72dpi for the screen.. THEN sharpen them.)

2.> Use it sparingly. Far too much stuff is being oversharpened & just looks hideous. Keep the strength of the sharpen down. Try using the largest radius you can if you are using a sharpening tool with such an option (and hopefully you are.) and use a high threshold. I always try to use an ODD number for a radius. (1.1, 1.3, 1.7, 1.9 etc..) I avoid whole number like 1,2,3.. and halves like 0.5, 1.5, 2.5. Threshold I generally use either 16 or 32, strength generally ranges from 125 to 200, depending on how it works. I always preview extensively before applying.

The defaults on the "smart" types of sharpening tools are generally WAYYYYY too harsh.

squareballoon

i don't sharpen images for print but use 'Heidi's resize and sharpen for web' action for all web images. I put the slider to 0 so it's not too crispy.

oshead

squareballoon wrote: »

i don't sharpen images for print but use 'Heidi's resize and sharpen for web' action for all web images. I put the slider to 0 so it's not too crispy.

That seems to be all the rage on the Ilovephotography forums. I've downloaded in the past and find it does a good enough job for small image sizes.

PhinglasPhil

Many thanks to you all for responding - your tips are gratefully appreciated.

Phil.

SetOverSet

There's a fairly in-depth article on using USM to sharpen your images here, OP - http://www.bythom.com/sharpening.htm.

Fenster

Use a tripod, attach a remote shutter release, experiment with aperture until your find your lenses "sweet spot". Learn your light. Get a feel for different exposure modes. Learn to stop up or stop down as needed.