Originally Posted by Anson and each run through with USM, turns out something like this...Blahh...Mmm? -perhaps my original is not sharp enough (out of camera) to begin with?

You're just not brave enough. I took your original and got this:



Sharpened with separate Lighten and Darken layers. 500/1/14, Lighten opacity 40%, Darken opacity 100%.

I created a Photoshop action that sets up the technique with the click of a button:

http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/973692~ff8ac063fa711cc391d78593512e476a/Tom's%20Magic%20LAB%20Sharpening.zip

These days, I do a lot less of the separate lighten/darken layer sharpening, though I do still do it sometimes. More often, I use split blend-if sliders in the blending options dialog to fade out the light halos from the blend. This works especially well with HIRALOAM sharpening. When I first got going with HIRALOAM sharpening, about a year ago, I was often called (often by Andy) on visible halos in the resulting images. Now I've found that I can easily avoid these without reducing the overall effectiveness of the technique by moving the light end of the luminosity slider toward the center until the halos vanish. Splitting the sliders makes the transitions smoother. Rarely there are also visible dark halos, and moving the dark slider inward does the same for these.

Originally Posted by rutt These days, I do a lot less of the separate lighten/darken layer sharpening, though I do still do it sometimes. More often, I use split blend-if sliders in the blending options dialog to fade out the light halos from the blend. This works especially well with HIRALOAM sharpening. When I first got going with HIRALOAM sharpening, about a year ago, I was often called (often by Andy) on visible halos in the resulting images. Now I've found that I can easily avoid these without reducing the overall effectiveness of the technique by moving the light end of the luminosity slider toward the center until the halos vanish. Splitting the sliders makes the transitions smoother. Rarely there are also visible dark halos, and moving the dark slider inward does the same for these.

Is there by any chance a "set-up" action available for this? Or is that something that needs to be done without an action on an image by image basis?

Thanks much for your tutorial here!

Originally Posted by Tom K. Is there by any chance a "set-up" action available for this? Or is that something that needs to be done without an action on an image by image basis?

Sharpen in a layer. Then bring up the layer blending options dialog and move the sliders. Maybe there aren't enough repetitive operations to make an action worthwhile?

What exactly does your action do? Take the image to RGB from LAB without sharpening, duplicate the sharpened layer and set the blending modes? More? Less? Different?

Originally Posted by rutt What exactly does your action do? Take the image to RGB from LAB without sharpening, duplicate the sharpened layer and set the blending modes? More? Less? Different?

The action I posted above just sets things up for sharpening and follows the instructions given in the tutorial that started this thread. The action does no sharpening at all until the user pulls the darken layer's opacity up and the the lighten's opacity layer up to desired amount.

For the life of me I can't get rid of those pesky halos using the "blend if" sliders without wrecking the sharpening i just did using the HIRALOAM sharpening method. Hmmmm.....

Originally Posted by Tom K. For the life of me I can't get rid of those pesky halos using the "blend if" sliders without wrecking the sharpening i just did using the HIRALOAM sharpening method. Hmmmm.....

Post before/afters, please.

Oh, and try leaving the USM amount on the high side. You can always lower the opacity of the layer after you move the blend-if sliders.

This doesn't work in every image, but I've found it works in at least 90% of mine. Sometimes I have to resort to a layer mask.

First, please allow me to thank Rutt, and everyone else for your comments in this thread. This is better than any tutorial I've found about sharpening, and better than any books I "currently" own. (I'll go buy that book Rutt suggested today.) So thank you everyone.

I'm always trying to learn more about my photoshop skills, and my next skill to improve is sharpening. I've always just sharpened by "eye". I look forward to learning more about this technique.

My question, is that everyone always talks about sharpening a separate layer. What about the sharpening tool in Adobe camera RAW? That's where I've always done my sharpening, after I've applied all the other little settings I want to an image. Should I "NOT" sharpen in Adobe camera RAW? Or did I miss something in the details of this thread that discussed this?

Thanks!

Mu understanding is that as of the latest Camera Raw, its sharpening consists of "Caputre Sharpening" only. A great discussion of its role in a sharpening pipeline (capture -> creative -> output) is by Jeff Schewe in

Real World Camera Raw with Adobe Photoshop CS3

Hey, thanks DanDill,

I was at Barnes & Noble just an hour ago looking for a book on RAW, and couldn't find any. Thanks for this recommendation.

First of all, you need to read this:

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/20357.html

Then perhaps look into Bruce's book on sharpening:

http://lightroom-news.com/2006/12/05...-bruce-fraser/

This bit about converting to Lab to sharpen is so 20th century (and time consuming, and a great way to toss away a lot of useful bits). Been around for years, until someone smart at Adobe decided to implement the Fade command and allow a luminosity bend. Does all the useful stuff the sharpening on the Lstar channel does with more control, faster and with no data loss due to a mode change to a HUGE color space.

As for LR, the newer versions provide only capture sharpening (discussed in the article by Bruce).

There's George's excellent Podcasts on sharpening in LR:

http://lightroom-news.com/2007/08/02...ning-controls/

And this:

http://lightroom-news.com/2007/04/04...ner-on-export/

@arodney

I haven't read any Dan Margulis books, so this is just from personal research and experience :

Your suggestion IS appropropriate for saving time working on images needing less correction to begin with. LAB's moves help most for images that benefit from the most correction.

And while there are many RGB techniques for enhancement, LAB is full of useful moves that should not simply be thrown out and never considered.

So if there are any LAB moves you want to use for image enhancement, you might as well take advantage of the benefits of sharpening in true luminosity while in that mode. Increasing contrast in LAB luminosity curves is another move worth considering vs. the RGB alternatives. And many LAB moves can be brought back to RGB without affecting data through image mode shifts by copying your result in LAB mode and going back through history to RBG mode and pasting.


As to your specific recommendation, note that RGB luminosity simply means grayscale. So any color noise artifacts present show up more in "RGB luminosity" than in LAB's true luminosity. LAB luminosity sharpening therefore will reduce the sharpening of color noise artifacts for some images.

Also, realize that where LAB can create light color in sharpening halos by calculating "impossible colors," RBG can create only white halos when sharpening the lightest colors. So LAB reduces the appearance of some halos in areas of the lightest colors for some images.

Fade to Luminosity in RBG also changes the visual effect slightly, so some professionals suggest over sharpening and then using 85% opacity in RGB Fade to Luminosity, which introduces a poorly controlled variable in the form of determining the original oversharpening amount.

Originally Posted by nightowlphotography First, please allow me to thank Rutt, and everyone else for your comments in this thread. This is better than any tutorial I've found about sharpening, and better than any books I "currently" own. (I'll go buy that book Rutt suggested today.) So thank you everyone. I'm always trying to learn more about my photoshop skills, and my next skill to improve is sharpening. I've always just sharpened by "eye". I look forward to learning more about this technique. My question, is that everyone always talks about sharpening a separate layer. What about the sharpening tool in Adobe camera RAW? That's where I've always done my sharpening, after I've applied all the other little settings I want to an image. Should I "NOT" sharpen in Adobe camera RAW? Or did I miss something in the details of this thread that discussed this? Thanks!

Sharpening in Adobe RAW was not recommended in versions prior to the present ARC 4.1 to 4.3 so sharpening had to be done in Photoshop.

In Adobe RAW 4.3 ( present version) capture sharpening works extrememly well - I use it routinely now. But you cannot do it on a layer, it is a global edit. If you want to sharpen only a selected portion of an image on a layer, then you need to do that in Photoshop.

Rutt's original post was posted several years ago - He used to shake things up a lot around here . Maybe he will return someday.

Welcome to dgrin, Controltheweb. Modest choice for a name

Interesting first post for a new member. I will look forward to hearing more from you. I suspect Andrew is will respond to your post with his views also. Civilized discourse is a very good thing

Hello,

I've read this very informative thread with great interest as proper sharpening has been a technique that I constantly strive to improve my skills on.

Thanks to all who have contributed to this thread.

I'm using PS CS3 and have been using USM sharpening from back in the CS days and am trying to utilize CS3's Smart Sharpening capabilities to perhaps achieve better output if possible.

Most of the information about Smart Sharpening on the web seems very generic and basic, and since the USM info in this thread is so very detailed and useful, I thought I'd see if anyone has similar expertise with CS3's (or CS2) Smart Sharpening.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to apply the information in this thread using Smart Sharpening instead of USM since the options in the dialog boxes are somewhat different? Or is USM still the preferred method of sharpening to most everyone here?

Also, does anyone who is using Smart Sharpening have any favorite preferences in the Amount & Radius settings, etc.?

My primary "genre" is Landscapes, so that's what I usually apply my sharpening to as opposed to portraits, people, etc. and I've found that an Amount of around 50-75%, Radius of 1 and Remove Lens Blur sharpens things up, but I can't really come up with what I think should be the "perfect" numbers. I'm looking for the elusive "Holy Grail" and thought someone here might have some suggestions, even though the "Holy Grail" will probably never be realistically obtainable, but if I can get closer than where I'm at now, then I'll be happy. (Photos that I'm sharpening are 3872x2592).

Thanks for your help.

CA,

Your interest in the utility of Smart Sharpening is shared. I submit that this would be better discussed in its own separate thread, than at the end of a thread began a couple years ago.

Why not repost this in its own thread with a title that shows the readers the thread will be devoted to Smart Sharpening specifically. Maybe we can stir up some interest in it then.

Interestingly, I have not seen any of several pros who use Smart Sharpening routinely. I do not either, partly because it is so computationally demanding, that my dual G5 seems to bog down with it, while with USM on a layer with a mask, things move right along.

Maybe with the newer computers, this will change.

Originally Posted by pathfinder CA, Interestingly, I have not seen any of several pros who use Smart Sharpening routinely.

Its because there's nothing particularly smart about it. Bruce Fraser examined it in great detail and didn't find anything useful to incorporate into PhotoKit Sharpener. And like all manual sharpening, you're supposed to guess at the correct values by viewing an image which just doesn't work, sharpening isn't WYSIWYG and probably never will be (not until we have high resolution displays). Your display is somewhere between 72-105ppi output device, your printer is far higher than that. In the old days, the advise was to sharpen so at 100%, the image looked "slightly crunchy" whatever that means. And today, with modern ink jets, you're not going to get anywhere close to viewing the image correctly at 100% (25% is maybe a bit closer). Anyway, its a big guessing game. If you have ONE output device and media, you could "bracket" sharpening and make a print, then at viewing distance, pick the one that works for you. Some masking is also necessary (you don't want to sharpen shadows, that's where all the noise lives).

Originally Posted by pathfinder CA, Your interest in the utility of Smart Sharpening is shared. I submit that this would be better discussed in its own separate thread, than at the end of a thread began a couple years ago. Why not repost this in its own thread with a title that shows the readers the thread will be devoted to Smart Sharpening specifically. Maybe we can stir up some interest in it then. Interestingly, I have not seen any of several pros who use Smart Sharpening routinely. I do not either, partly because it is so computationally demanding, that my dual G5 seems to bog down with it, while with USM on a layer with a mask, things move right along. Maybe with the newer computers, this will change.

Thanks, I've re-posted here: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=726715#post726715