Posted by Oscar Dewhurst on November 16, 2010 at 12:57 PM
Currently, I am confused over how best to apply sharpening shots in elements. Do you just do it in one step, or do you do it several times? Simon Litten gave me some good advice when he told me when sharpening it for 720px for the web, use USM at 100% radius of 0.2 and use it 5 times. However, I am not sure how to do it for full size shots.
As well as this, I find that shots in the elements 8 organizer look far "punchier" and have more contrast and saturation than when in the elements organizer. Does anyone know why this is?
Thanks for your help,
Oscar
Posted by Paul Rosser on November 16, 2010 at 2:58 PM
Hi Oscar, I use 3 passes of USM, 30%, Radius 1, Threshold 1, on a separate layer, then use the eraser tool on the BG etc. There are plenty of people more experienced than me though, but I hope this is of some help to you?
Regards,
Paul Rosser.
Oscar in CS3 for the web I generally use 4 passes of USM 30% amount 0.5% radius and 0 threshold also done in separate layer using eraser tool. For A4 prints I would normally increase the amount to somewhere between 50 and 75%. It is really is a matter of experimenting and obviously it is not exactly the same for every image. Ditto Paul's remarks there are more experienced people on the forum to advise you.
Posted by Mike Smith on November 17, 2010 at 1:45 AM
Oscar by full size shots do you mean the original file size?
If so there are 4 situations where we would use USM sharpening;
1 - Input sharpening especially where you use raw files converted to TIFF/Jpeg - not too sure about Nikon files but the standard advice by Canon for input sharpening was 300%,0.3 radius, 0 threshold, for my Olympus files I tend to use s slightly more aggressive 300%,0.5,0.
2 - resharpening after downsizing for web - per the advice above, I tend to use multiple passes of 100% or 50% at 0.5r. Phil Shaw then uses Edit/Fade Sharpen/ Mode/ Luminosity routine after each sharpening pass (which cuts out the old routine of converting to LAB colour mode and sharpening the luminosity channel only), but I frequently forget - one trick is to slightly over sharpen your image then delete 1 or 2 of the last sharpening passes to remove any obvious haloing / "crunchiness"
3 - sharpening for printing - my recommendation here is to buy Photokit sharpener (from pixel genius - ?) it is a product that takes the drudgery out of getting output/printing sharpening right
4 - Contrast sharpening - giving "zing" to images - 20%,50r,2T or thereabouts - ie a low amount of a very large radius - here is a tutorial on contrast sharepening from the Luminous-Landscape website
Good advice so far, I'm not too sure about Elements, but the way I look at sharpening is thus... it is a three stage process.
Input Sharpening, all digital files on conversion from RAW will need a certain amount of 'pre' sharpening to overcome the effects of the anti-alias filter that covers the sensor, this will vary depending on your camera... Fade to Luminosity is good as it gets rid of any change in colour etc that comes from the sharpening process...
The second stage is creative sharpening, usually in our images this is adding a little extra sharpening to the eye or similar... it is not a stage that is mandatory, should not be overdone and used only if it is really needed....
It is at this stage that I save a master TIFF.
The third stage is output sharpening, if you are sending your file out to printers etc this stage is probably best left to them..., if you are outputting to a destop printer,view your image at 25% (anything other than 25 - 50 - 75 - 100% then PS will not look right due to the way PS displays the image on screen) and get the sharpening looking right, many people advice to 'oversharpen' for print, I find that if it looks right at 25% it generally looks right printed.
Output to web, I used to use the multiple pass method, but now prefer to reduce the image to half the intended size, run the crude sharpen filter, fade to 80% and luminosity, reduce down to the intended size and run smart sharpen at a very low amount and radius (typically 25-35% and 0.2 radius) and again fade to 80% and Luminosity....
HTH
Phil
Posted by Mike Smith on November 17, 2010 at 4:30 AM
Forgot to add - Input sharpening is only really required if you shoot in RAW mode - if you shoot jpeg the camera parameters should automatically add sufficient sharpening when converting the file in camera from RAW to JPEG - there will be adjustable parameters for sharpening/noise reduction/saturation/contrast to generate the look of the final image you want.
You have to really understand what the USM sharpening process does - it applies a contrast "ramp" to any colour boundary edges by inserting contrasting white and black pixel edge. The %, R and T adjust the effects being applied. When you downsize an image you effectively lose this contrast edge so the image starts to look unsharp. Hence the need to add a USM sharpness pass after downsizing an image to give back the "contrast bite" we are used to seeing - when you over do the sharpening you get the halo effect on colour boundaries. The step method described by Phil above gives an initial large contrast ramp, the second downsize reduces the effect to something more natural to the eye
If you sharpen an image before uprezzing to get a large final print size you will exagerate considerable any USM applied before uprezzing and will tend to get obvious haloing in the image - hence agencies insist no sharpening should be applied to an image submitted, they want to control the level of USM being applied for uprezzing and downrezzing images
Regards difference in "punchier" images across software suites - There is a huge amount of "trickery" done these days, software packages that say they apply no noise reduction or USM, usually mean they only apply their minimum amount, for most camera manufactuirers, USM "0" usually means a small predefined amount liked by the manufacturer. for Oly the camera body jpeg parameter for no USM is actually -2 as 0 is the Oly predefined input sharpening amount from RAW to Jpeg. I suspect you are seeing something similar in the update software package - there has been a change in parameters being applied when opening an image to make the image look punchier.
Posted by Phil Shaw on November 17, 2010 at 6:34 AM
Sharpening for print is a subjective process and determining the optimum amount of sharpening requires an element of experience. It is quite different to sharpening for the web which can be performed fairly successfully using recipe-type approach of the type that I have posted here in the past.
Needless to say, others have already chipped-in with some good advice for sharpening prints. The Photokit product as recommended by Mike is a good one. It is based on the High Pass filter rather than USM or Smart Sharpen and, importantly, the amount of sharpening applied is somewhat dependent on the printing resolution. I use this but depending on the paper being used and its bleed characteristics, I will often add another round of Smart sharpening. You can start to see where the experience bit starts to come in.
Also, as Phil Hurst has recommended you should be looking at the image at one of the "cardinal" magnification points: 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%. This was certainly true up to and including PSCS4 but in CS5 the image is supposed to be rendered fully at all magnifications. However the "cardinal" magnification points are still convenient for gauging final sharpness and I generally use a magnification of 50 percent for this purpose.
Phil H also mentioned "over-sharpening" for print, but didn't really elaborate. The issue here is the bleed which occurs on the paper when you print. Photokit addresses this by having different sharpening settings for matte papers, semi-gloss/lustre papers and gloss papers, but you still have to exercise some subjective evaluation to the sharpening applied. For me, with the print at 50 percent, I increase the amount of sharpening until the in-focus detail starts to look "crunchy". This "crunchiness" is then dissipated by the bleed which occurs on the paper.
I'm not now a fan of doing multiple passes of sharpening at different stages in the workflow. Using input sharpening I find that unwanted halos sometimes develop later on in the processing when I'm trying to optimise mid-tone contrast and this occurs particularly when you have a dark in-focus element against a blue background i.e. dark feathers against a blue sky. As a result I tend to leave all sharpening until the end of the workflow and the image has been re-sized for output.
As I stated above, there isn't a general recipe that will work well in all instances. For general guidance though you can try these settings with the Smart Sharpen Filter as a starting point:
Amount = 120%
Radius = 0.4px
Remove = Lens Blur
More Accurate = off
The above settings will work fine for a low frequency image such as a portrait of a person.
For nature images you might want to increase the amount of sharpening to emphasise the detail so increase the amount in steps of 10 up to 180 0r 200% and the radius in steps of 0.2px up to 1px. Leave remove set to Lens Blur and More Accurate off. When you are satisfied with the sharpening effect select Edit>Fade change blend mode to Luminocity. Or if you are working on a duplicate layer (as you should be) you can change the blend mode of the sharpening layer to Luminocity. You can fine-tune the sharpening either in the Fade command dialogue box as suggested by Phil H, or with the opacity slider for the sharpening layer.
I think all of these things are possible with Elements. Not sure why the organiser makes presents the images differently from the main programme, though, unless there is some preference setting selected or you are looking at them in window with a particular function (web-view or something?).
Posted by John Robinson on November 17, 2010 at 8:47 AM
Wow ! Some stuff to take in there !!
Apart from using czm stacking on a single picture to use the high/low pass built in sharpening feature occasionally,, I usually only ever resize down to the forum size from the original or cropped jpeg and then click "sharpen" once.
Nothing like a simple life !
JohnR
Posted by Ian Haskell on November 17, 2010 at 5:43 PM
Be careful you don't over sharpen. There are a lot of photos that I have seen that have lost their mood and feel as a result. There seems to be to much emphasis on sharpening in my opinion. Like others above I think Photokit is good and there is a good book by Bruce Fraser (I think).
Ian
Posted by Oscar Dewhurst on November 18, 2010 at 11:10 AM
Thanks everyone!
I will have to try them all on one shot and see what I think.
Discussion
10 repliesAs well as this, I find that shots in the elements 8 organizer look far "punchier" and have more contrast and saturation than when in the elements organizer. Does anyone know why this is?
Thanks for your help,
Oscar
Regards,
Paul Rosser.
If so there are 4 situations where we would use USM sharpening;
1 - Input sharpening especially where you use raw files converted to TIFF/Jpeg - not too sure about Nikon files but the standard advice by Canon for input sharpening was 300%,0.3 radius, 0 threshold, for my Olympus files I tend to use s slightly more aggressive 300%,0.5,0.
2 - resharpening after downsizing for web - per the advice above, I tend to use multiple passes of 100% or 50% at 0.5r. Phil Shaw then uses Edit/Fade Sharpen/ Mode/ Luminosity routine after each sharpening pass (which cuts out the old routine of converting to LAB colour mode and sharpening the luminosity channel only), but I frequently forget - one trick is to slightly over sharpen your image then delete 1 or 2 of the last sharpening passes to remove any obvious haloing / "crunchiness"
3 - sharpening for printing - my recommendation here is to buy Photokit sharpener (from pixel genius - ?) it is a product that takes the drudgery out of getting output/printing sharpening right
4 - Contrast sharpening - giving "zing" to images - 20%,50r,2T or thereabouts - ie a low amount of a very large radius - here is a tutorial on contrast sharepening from the Luminous-Landscape website
Good advice so far, I'm not too sure about Elements, but the way I look at sharpening is thus... it is a three stage process.
Input Sharpening, all digital files on conversion from RAW will need a certain amount of 'pre' sharpening to overcome the effects of the anti-alias filter that covers the sensor, this will vary depending on your camera... Fade to Luminosity is good as it gets rid of any change in colour etc that comes from the sharpening process...
The second stage is creative sharpening, usually in our images this is adding a little extra sharpening to the eye or similar... it is not a stage that is mandatory, should not be overdone and used only if it is really needed....
It is at this stage that I save a master TIFF.
The third stage is output sharpening, if you are sending your file out to printers etc this stage is probably best left to them..., if you are outputting to a destop printer,view your image at 25% (anything other than 25 - 50 - 75 - 100% then PS will not look right due to the way PS displays the image on screen) and get the sharpening looking right, many people advice to 'oversharpen' for print, I find that if it looks right at 25% it generally looks right printed.
Output to web, I used to use the multiple pass method, but now prefer to reduce the image to half the intended size, run the crude sharpen filter, fade to 80% and luminosity, reduce down to the intended size and run smart sharpen at a very low amount and radius (typically 25-35% and 0.2 radius) and again fade to 80% and Luminosity....
HTH
Phil
You have to really understand what the USM sharpening process does - it applies a contrast "ramp" to any colour boundary edges by inserting contrasting white and black pixel edge. The %, R and T adjust the effects being applied. When you downsize an image you effectively lose this contrast edge so the image starts to look unsharp. Hence the need to add a USM sharpness pass after downsizing an image to give back the "contrast bite" we are used to seeing - when you over do the sharpening you get the halo effect on colour boundaries. The step method described by Phil above gives an initial large contrast ramp, the second downsize reduces the effect to something more natural to the eye
If you sharpen an image before uprezzing to get a large final print size you will exagerate considerable any USM applied before uprezzing and will tend to get obvious haloing in the image - hence agencies insist no sharpening should be applied to an image submitted, they want to control the level of USM being applied for uprezzing and downrezzing images
Regards difference in "punchier" images across software suites - There is a huge amount of "trickery" done these days, software packages that say they apply no noise reduction or USM, usually mean they only apply their minimum amount, for most camera manufactuirers, USM "0" usually means a small predefined amount liked by the manufacturer. for Oly the camera body jpeg parameter for no USM is actually -2 as 0 is the Oly predefined input sharpening amount from RAW to Jpeg. I suspect you are seeing something similar in the update software package - there has been a change in parameters being applied when opening an image to make the image look punchier.
Needless to say, others have already chipped-in with some good advice for sharpening prints. The Photokit product as recommended by Mike is a good one. It is based on the High Pass filter rather than USM or Smart Sharpen and, importantly, the amount of sharpening applied is somewhat dependent on the printing resolution. I use this but depending on the paper being used and its bleed characteristics, I will often add another round of Smart sharpening. You can start to see where the experience bit starts to come in.
Also, as Phil Hurst has recommended you should be looking at the image at one of the "cardinal" magnification points: 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%. This was certainly true up to and including PSCS4 but in CS5 the image is supposed to be rendered fully at all magnifications. However the "cardinal" magnification points are still convenient for gauging final sharpness and I generally use a magnification of 50 percent for this purpose.
Phil H also mentioned "over-sharpening" for print, but didn't really elaborate. The issue here is the bleed which occurs on the paper when you print. Photokit addresses this by having different sharpening settings for matte papers, semi-gloss/lustre papers and gloss papers, but you still have to exercise some subjective evaluation to the sharpening applied. For me, with the print at 50 percent, I increase the amount of sharpening until the in-focus detail starts to look "crunchy". This "crunchiness" is then dissipated by the bleed which occurs on the paper.
I'm not now a fan of doing multiple passes of sharpening at different stages in the workflow. Using input sharpening I find that unwanted halos sometimes develop later on in the processing when I'm trying to optimise mid-tone contrast and this occurs particularly when you have a dark in-focus element against a blue background i.e. dark feathers against a blue sky. As a result I tend to leave all sharpening until the end of the workflow and the image has been re-sized for output.
As I stated above, there isn't a general recipe that will work well in all instances. For general guidance though you can try these settings with the Smart Sharpen Filter as a starting point:
Amount = 120%
Radius = 0.4px
Remove = Lens Blur
More Accurate = off
The above settings will work fine for a low frequency image such as a portrait of a person.
For nature images you might want to increase the amount of sharpening to emphasise the detail so increase the amount in steps of 10 up to 180 0r 200% and the radius in steps of 0.2px up to 1px. Leave remove set to Lens Blur and More Accurate off. When you are satisfied with the sharpening effect select Edit>Fade change blend mode to Luminocity. Or if you are working on a duplicate layer (as you should be) you can change the blend mode of the sharpening layer to Luminocity. You can fine-tune the sharpening either in the Fade command dialogue box as suggested by Phil H, or with the opacity slider for the sharpening layer.
I think all of these things are possible with Elements. Not sure why the organiser makes presents the images differently from the main programme, though, unless there is some preference setting selected or you are looking at them in window with a particular function (web-view or something?).
I know I have lost the will to live
Apart from using czm stacking on a single picture to use the high/low pass built in sharpening feature occasionally,, I usually only ever resize down to the forum size from the original or cropped jpeg and then click "sharpen" once.
Nothing like a simple life !
JohnR
Ian
I will have to try them all on one shot and see what I think.
Thanks
Oscar