Sharpening for the Web

I have finally gotten curious about doing something special for Web sharpening and I see links all over this site to a description of Marc Adamus Web sharpening technique. This appears to be broken through this site and I was not able to find it anywhere else so if anyone would mind posting that and perhaps any other Web sharpening gems they have picked up over the years.........

At one point I had a link to a site that had 4 methods comparing each with an image of a toucan head and ey I belive. If anyone knows that one and can point me there I would be much obliged...I think that one uses Marcs for one of the methods compared

Bob,

On this page at CANP Regional Group you will find two tips for web sharpening.

The first was provided by Harley Goldman. It is Marc's technique, along with a note from Harley.

The second one uses USM on copy of the background layer, with the layer mode set to 'luminosity'.

I hope this helps.

--P

There are a couple of articles in the archives here at NPN.

Here you go Bob:

Sharpening for the Web—Marc Adamus
- Take full res image and reduce size to between 1000 and 1300 pixels. As much as 1300 for detailed forest scenes and such, 1000 for rock and more simple images. Apply "Sharpen" filter (easy enough right?) twice or even three times at 1300-1600 pixels.
- This will create a very oversharpened, noisy, mid-size image.
- Futher reduce image size to your web preference, such as 600 or 700 pixels.
- When reduced, this "tricks" Photoshop into applying an ultra-fine USM that you simply cannot acheive through other methods and all with maybe a 5-10% increase in file size vs. traditional methods such as regular USM or PK sharpener - which is rarely a problem.
- Play around with this technique and make it work for you. Every image is different. Sometimes I'll apply a sharpen filter 3 times at 1500 pixels and then reduce for an even finer sharpness, but other times it has too much of an adverse effect on color and resaturation is necessary. Sometimes I'll just lasso an area and apply the filter more heavily in one section before reducing size. Just experiment!
- Last, keep in mind not to sharpen skies too much as this will unecessarily increase file size. Do local touch-ups with 'sharp brush' to improve textures/definition in sky and water!

Marc's technique worked for me for a long time, and then slowly I modified it, so I'll list mine as well. I'm not saying mine's better, just different, and this gives you a couple more choices (Marc does say "just experiment!" in his post afterall... );

For my 5D Mark II images, I do this now:
- In Camera Raw that comes with CS5, I use the Sharpening and Noise Reduction now, it finally good, REALLY good. I just push the Amount Slider to about 50-60, which takes care of half of my Input Sharpening. Then I push the Noise Reduction top slider to about 25 or so. Set the view at 100% and you'll see it do magic. I don't even use Noise Ninja any longer.
-Once open in Photoshop, I apply USM at 120/1.0/0. That's the second half of my Input Sharpening. This may need to change for a different size sensor, but for the 21mp it works well.
-Then do all the editing you are going to do
-Last, I open Image Size and with Resample on, I change resolution in the bottom box to 96. There's no special thing about that, it just knocks the size down to a bit bigger than the 720 vertical pixel-image I'm aiming for.
-Next, Smart Sharpen: Radius at .5, and amount ranges from 60-100. You want to make it look just a bit crunchy.
-Last, Save for Web and make the Vertical pixels 720 or 640. I have it stuck in my head that these work best. I'm probably nuts.

You should have a sharp image at that point on a website. I used that exact technique for this image.

Just today I downloaded Nik's Sharpener as a trial and did their Input and Output sharpening for Screen, and then did this technique to the same file, and the side-by-side was nearly exact. So, I'm saving myself $140 and going for it manually, lol.

Like Marc says, experiment!

Thanks folks and Paul D.......SWEET SHOT!!!!!

Tony Kuyper has an excellent sharpening action available through his website. There's a small charge but you get all of his other GREAT actions as well. I wouldn't even think about post processing images these days without Tony's actions.

http://goodlight.us/writing/tutorials.html

Thanks for bringing this up Bill. Tony's sharpening action is excellent! In fact, Tony's complete action package is a bargain for what you get for the small donation. I use his actions extensively, and highly recommend them!

If you do get the actions, be sure to work along with Tony's associated tutorials (in PDF format). They provide a great deal of background and step by step procedures that will make using the actions much easier.

--P

Hey Bob!

If you use Photoshop CS2 or higher I have a "ready-to-go" script that downsizes and sharpens your images in one click. It incorporates some of the aspects of Marc's technique but takes care of some other issues as well.

You can download it here - a PDF with the documentation is included ...

http://www.andreasresch.at/upload/WebSharpener.zip

Take care,
Andreas

Thanks everyone for all the tips...appreciate all you folks.