Alex Nail
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 p.1 #19 · UPDATED: advanced web sharpening for landscape photographers | |
mark70x70 wrote:
1. I would not use Smart Sharpen but would use PS USM. Among other things Smart Sharpen tries to do, is to protect the image from receiving to much sharpening intensity in areas that don't really need it, or downright should not receive it, specifically the shadow and highlight areas (who wants to turn pixels to pure 255 white? or who wants to exaggerate chrominance noise in the darkest areas of an image?). It simply does not offer the degree of control I, and some others may need. I find sharpening constrained to very specific tonal ranges (levels) using the Layer Style Blending Options "Blend If" sliders a much more precise tool to accomplish this. Images can always use progressively more sharpening in the mid tones than the highlights or shadow areas and this is one way to accomplish it powerfully.
2. At the intermediate stage (sized down to say 1000-1300 or so pix) the key is that we are really trying to introduce an ultra fine sharpening effect. I'd go to 0.2 radius and much more "amount" with USM depending on the image and the lens used. Some times multiple swipes of USM this way works. Each image is completely different. If you want a more generic action then I might try 500 Amount at 0.2 Radius, maybe twice (do testing to see the difference and find the right amount). Keep "threshold" to 0.
BTW... PS "Sharpen" (Located on the Filter>Sharpen sub-menu) is, for all intense purposes, identical to USM at 130 amount, Radius 0.4, and threshold 0. So even sharpening at 0.3 radius would increase the "fine-ness" of the intermediate effect over a simple swipe of the "Sharpen" filter.
3. Sharpen on a layer in RGB Luminosity Mode (or even better the L Channel in LAB color space) so as to not effect color saturation or create those unwanted hue shifts. Luminosity mode does this very well but Sharpening the L Channel in LAB mode does it best.
4.Using an "Edge Mask" to a varied opacity can allow one to protect non edge areas from Sharpening very little, to a lot, depending on preference. This can be added into the sharpening arsanal at either the intermediate stage (the 1000-13000 px) or at an enlargement stage when making enlargements (which is a different issue). Bruce Fraser's "Real World Image Sharpening" book is a must for those serious enough to get into sharpening masks. Sometimes it is nice just to have a sharpening mask, to see if it brings any benefit to the image. Sometimes it wont, but other times, at some opacity, it does. One can do the intermediate sharpening both with, and without a mask and then process them both the same way to completion at the desired finished size. Once this is accomplished, then slap the one on top of the other and see the differences the mask made using varied % of opacity.
5. A touch of very careful and controlled, minimal Capture Sharpening (in ACR) at the Raw stage has now been proven to give one a touch more detail quality than not doing it (especially those engrossed in maximizing their fine art print quality). Because of time restraints I can't go into how this should be done for beginners, but for the more advanced folks all that is needed is (in Adobe Camera Raw - newer versions) to view the image at 100% and using the four sliders just undo a little of the unnatural softening that always occurs when a steady stream of photons gets converted into little squares we call pixels. The trick to this is to be careful not to do any pixel damage to the image. Under-do rather than over-do! Tip:
at 100% hold down the Alt (PC) button when sliding each individual slider, to see a preview of what is going on and what is going to get sharpened or protected.
General settings for most landscape images might fall in this area: Amount: 20-35 depending if it was shot with a cheap or top end lens (cheap lens more around 30-35, and a top end lens with mirror lock up maybe around 20-25) Radius: 0.5-0.8 depending on the size of the details in the image, Detail: 100-80 again depending on the detail, Masking: 8-20 depending on the areas you want to protect. If it is a sky, then you can mask out the whole thing with no sharpening applied to it at this stage. I mask this non sharpened sky into my sharpened land in PS.
Lastly, I will agree with Alex here and other folks that PS Bicubic is probably the preferred way to down size. PS Bicubic Sharper adds to much unregulated/haphazard and non ideal sharpening to the images, and I find the Bicubic Smoother algorithm makes images to soft for downsizing. Save that one for up rezzing where it can not be beat! 
Hope it helps. 
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Thnks Mark, that was an interesting read and I think, when I rewrite the actions I may well employ some of your suggestions. However, I think many of your suggestions are unnecessarily complex. You say that the point of the intermediate stage is to apply fine sharpening. Have you actually tried different sharpening settings or are you talking theoretically? I have tried different sharpening, but the oversharpened intermediate stage is crucial to the sharpness of the final size. I was unable to find a noticeably better technique. As far as editing the process for each image goes...The bottom layer has fairly minimal sharpening, the top layer has lots, masking can be used to control that very well. I have yet to come across an image where this method does not give me EXACTLY what I want. The one caveat is that there are very slight tonal and colour shifts which it seems can be corrected (or mitigated) using your previous suggestions.
Thanks for taking the time.
Alex
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