Digital Darkroom Assignment #18

[cletus]

Assignment: Advanced Sharpening

Rutt has written us an advanced sharpening tutorial to go along with the his basic tutorial. As with the basic tutorial, we're going to do a digital darkroom assignment to go along with it.

Take a look at rutt's tutorial (http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=9739) and try to apply the techniques discussed to some of your images. As always, be sure to share the before & after images with the rest of us here in the assignement thread.

Once again I'd like to thank Rutt for taking the time to write up these tutorials. They are a great resource for us to have around!

[cletus]

Here's my first attempt at sharpening with light/dark halo control:

Original (click for larger size):
http://ab0wa.smugmug.com/photos/21245097-M.jpg (http://ab0wa.smugmug.com/photos/21245097-O.jpg)

Sharpened (click for larger size):
http://ab0wa.smugmug.com/photos/21245099-M.jpg (http://ab0wa.smugmug.com/photos/21245099-O.jpg)

Recipe:
Amount - 500%
Radius - 1.6 pixels
Threshold - 22 levels

Darken Layer Opacity - 51%
Lighten Layer Opacity - 33 %

[rutt]

Eric, that looks great. See how much more you can sharpen when you can tone down the dark halos?

[ginger_55]

Eric, that looks great. See how much more you can sharpen when you can tone down the dark halos?
Rutt, would you please post an example of too sharpened crummy dark halos. I think I saw some last night. But I have alot of trouble, I don't "see" them. It shouldn't be too hard to work up a shot quickly, sharpen it, and leave massive amts of dark halos.............pointed out as such.

g

[rutt]

Eric, that looks great. See how much more you can sharpen when you can tone down the dark halos?

I said exactly the opposite of what I meant. See how much more you can sharpen the dark halos when you can tone down the light halos. That's what I meant to say.

[cletus]

I said exactly the opposite of what I meant. See how much more you can sharpen the dark halos when you can tone down the light halos. That's what I meant to say.
Ok, now I'll agree with you :D

[rutt]

Here, Ginger, is a reall life example form only yesterday. I started off with this:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/21231829-L.jpg

and sharpened to this:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/21231894-L.jpg

After I took a good look at it I decieded that I overdid it because of the visible dark halos around the highlights, in particular on the back fender. If those are visible at this size, they'd look awful in a print. So I redid with a lower radius and lower dark halo amount:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/21233342-L.jpg


Here is another example where I got caught. I recently posted this:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/20843088-L.jpg

The feedback was that the sky was too light and looked OE. So I redid. There were a lot of changes, but amoung them was more aggressive sharpening with wider darker dark halos. I got this and posted it:

http://rutt.smugmug.com/photos/20862599-L.jpg

Now the criticism was that I'd lost detail in the roots along the river bank. The real reason for this is that the dark halos are too wide and dark and are running into one another and obscuring detail.

So, yes, you can overdo the dark halos. When you first learn the trick of independent lighten and darken halos, it's pretty heady. You can push those dark halos sooo much further than the light halos and it looks so good. But everything has it's limits.

Ginger, have I answered your question?

[lynnma]

Here, Ginger, is a reall life example form only yesterday. I started off with this:



and sharpened to this:



After I took a good look at it I decieded that I overdid it because of the visible dark halos around the highlights, in particular on the back fender. If those are visible at this size, they'd look awful in a print. So I redid with a lower radius and lower dark halo amount:



Now the criticism was that I'd lost detail in the roots along the river bank. The real reason for this is that the dark halos are too wide and dark and are running into one another and obscuring detail.

So, yes, you can overdo the dark halos. When you first learn the trick of independent lighten and darken halos, it's pretty heady. You can push those dark halos sooo much further than the light halos and it looks so good. But everything has it's limits.

Ginger, have I answered your question?

Here is another example where I got caught. I recently posted this:



The feedback was that the sky was too light and looked OE. So I redid. There were a lot of changes, but amoung them was more aggressive sharpening with wider darker dark halos. I got this and posted it:

Rutt... I know I'm pretty old but I'm staring at this screen so much my eyes are watering and I can't for the life of me understand what you are meaning by the halo's.. if I can't see them.. I dread to think what my shots REALLY look like... please elaborate?:dunno

[rutt]

Rutt... I know I'm pretty old but I'm staring at this screen so much my eyes are watering and I can't for the life of me understand what you are meaning by the halo's.. if I can't see them.. I dread to think what my shots REALLY look like... please elaborate?:dunno

Have you read the first sharpening tutorial? I explain halos in some detail there. Your question makes me think you have not done your homework. Unless you do, this isn't going to make much sense to you. If you have done your homework and still don't understand, put up your hand again and I'll happily give a detailed answer.

[spockling]

Here's my attempt at this technique.
Here's the original straight out of ACR.
http://lonepine.smugmug.com/photos/21325593-L.jpg

This one had the following;
Convert from ACR being careful not to clip any channels
Copy the green channel using overlay at 30% opacity
Lab curves on L channel only
Finally sharpen using the dark and light halos. (I love this method now)

http://lonepine.smugmug.com/photos/21325588-L.jpg

[rutt]

Steve, that looks great! It really shows what good applied color theory can do. Can you share a before/after of just the last (sparpening) step? Or better yet, a step-by-step that shows what each move did for the image.

A+

[ginger_55]

Yes, Rutt, you kinda answered my question.

Lynn, it helps to do one as far as seeing halos, I can see the white easily.
But I saw dark ones the other night, glaring dark halos, said to myself, "OH, yeah, those are they".

That is why I said kinda.

Another thing, when I do the light and dark, I have been using the navigator to blow a part of the image huge, to help me see the halos. Do you, or others do that.

Also, I love the light and dark method, except for when I am doing a lot of photos, then I only do it on photos I expect to be "show" photos, or photos for sale, or Challenge winners and KPOTD. (Appropriate emoticon)

Do you all do it, the second method, on everything. By two AM, when I am just doing stuff to get it done, I even find a happy medium in method number one and use it on everything. Saves alot of time, and it only failed me once.

Of course the light and dark might make things a gazillion times better, but sometimes ............... well who cares. LOL

g (Gotta upload the Osprey photos, many takes of the same thing, even used the monopod the whole time. But I wanted to get a few in focus. I didn't even go for the birds in flight much. Decided birds landing would be my emphasis. Got both, I think.)

No, I am not going to aggressively sharpen 400 photos. I am not even going to work up most of them. Fifty should be enough for the set. The rest will have to go, my internal and external hard drives are getting full.

I have cable, 2.0 usb ports and an old sandisk uploader, is there a faster way, or is it the file size?

ta ta, again......

[spockling]

Steve, that looks great! It really shows what good applied color theory can do. Can you share a before/after of just the last (sparpening) step? Or better yet, a step-by-step that shows what each move did for the image.

A+

Thanks Rutt!
I'll try my best but I don't have any screen capture software so I'll try to explain the best I can.
Here's the original staright out of ACR.
http://lonepine.smugmug.com/photos/21436001-L.jpg

First I used the shadow/highlight at settings of 20/40/30 and 10/50/30 respectively to get this.
http://lonepine.smugmug.com/photos/21435985-L.jpg

Next I copied the green channel with all it's detail into the original with a 30% overlay.
http://lonepine.smugmug.com/photos/21435988-L.jpg

Then I did a LAB curve on the L channel to bring back some contrast and moved the B channel points in by 5 points each to bring out some of the blue of the jersey. Didn't touch the A channel.
http://lonepine.smugmug.com/photos/21435992-L.jpg

Lastly was the sharpening. I made an action to do most of the work for me. It takes me into Lab, 16 bit, Actual size and brings up the USM on the L channel at the settings of 500, 5.0, 0. Once I adjust the amount and radius to my liking, it makes the darken and lighten channels for me. I then just have to adjust the sliders watching for the halos. Actual settings for the sliders were Darken-51% and lighten 32%. A copy of my action is here if anyone would like it. http://members.shaw.ca/betlin/Halos.atn
http://lonepine.smugmug.com/photos/21435997-L.jpg