ptg SCOTT KELBY 321Chapter 11Sharpening Techniques Continued The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Coming up with your own settings: If you want to experiment and come up with your own custom blend of sharpen- ing, I’ll give you some typical ranges for each adjustment so you can find your own sharpening “sweet spot.” Amount Typical ranges run anywhere f rom 50% to 150%. This isn’t a hard-and-fast rule—just a typical range for adjusting the Amount, where going below 50% won’t have enough effect, and going above 150% might get you into sharpen- ing trouble (depending on how you set the Radius and Threshold). You’re fairly safe staying under 150%. (In the example here, I reset my Radius and Threshold to 1 and 4, respectively.) Radius Most of the time, you’ll use just 1 pixel, but you can go as high as (get ready) 2 pixels. You saw one setting I gave you earlier for extreme situations, where you can take the Radius as high as 4 pixels. I once heard a tale of a man in Cincinnati who used 5, but I’m not sure I believe it. (Incidentally, Adobe allows you to raise the Radius amount to [get this] 250! If you ask me, anyone caught using 250 as their Radius setting should be incarcer- ated for a period not to exceed one year and a penalty not to exceed $2,500.) Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 322 Chapter 11 Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Threshold A pretty safe range for the Threshold setting is anywhere from 3 to around 20 (3 being the most intense, 20 being much more subtle. I know, shouldn’t 3 be more subtle and 20 be more intense? Don’t get me started). If you really need to increase the intensity of your sharpening, you can lower the Threshold to 0, but keep a good eye on what you’re doing (watch for noise appearing in your photo). The Final Image For the final sharpened image you see here, I used the Portrait sharpening settings I gave earlier, and then I just dragged the Amount slider to the right (increasing the amount of sharpening), until it looked right to me (I wound up at around 85%, so I didn’t have to drag too far). If you’re uncomfortable with creating your own custom Unsharp Mask settings, then start with this: pick a starting point (one of the set of settings I gave on the previous pages), and then just move the Amount slider and noth- ing else (so, don’t touch the Radius and Threshold sliders). Try that for a while, and it won’t be long before you’ll find a situation where you ask yourself, “I wonder if lowering the Threshold would help?” and by then, you’ll be perfectly comfortable with it. Before After Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 323Chapter 11Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Continued This sharpening technique is my most often-used technique, and it has replaced the Lab Sharpening technique I’ve used in the past, because it’s quicker and easier, and pretty much accomplishes the same thing, which is helping to avoid the color halos and color artifacts (spots and noise) that appear when you add a lot of sharpening to a photo. Because it helps avoid those halos and other color problems, it allows you to apply more sharpening than you normally could get away with. Luminosity Sharpening Step One: Open the RGB photo you want to sharpen, and apply an Unsharp Mask just like you normally would (for this particular photo, let’s apply these settings—Amount: 125, Radius: 1, Threshold: 3, which is my recipe for nice, punchy sharpening). Step Two: Immediately after you’ve applied the sharpening, go under the Edit menu and choose Fade Unsharp Mask (as shown below). TIP: Undo on a Slider I think of Fade’s Opacity slider (seen here) as “Undo on a slider,” because if you drag it down to 0, it undoes your sharpening. If you leave it at 100%, it’s the full sharpen- ing. If you lower the Opacity to 50%, you get half the sharpening applied, and so on. So, if I apply sharpening and I think it’s too much, rather than changing all the set- tings and trying again, I’ll just use the Fade Opacity slider to lower the amount a bit. I’ll also use Fade when I’ve applied some sharpening and it’s not enough. I just apply the Unsharp Mask filter again, then lower the Opacity to 50%. That way, I get 1½ sharpenings. SCOTT KELBY Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 324 Chapter 11 Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Three: So, at this point, you can ignore the Opacity slider altogether, because the only thing you’re going to do here is change the Fade dialog’s Mode pop-up menu from Normal to Luminosity (as shown here). Now your sharpening is applied to just the luminosity (detail) areas of your photo, and not the color areas, and by doing this it helps avoid color halos and other pitfalls of sharp- ening a color image. Step Four: Click the OK button, and now your sharpening is applied to just the lumi- nosity of the image (which is very much like the old Lab mode sharpening we used to do, where you convert your image to Lab color mode, then just sharpen the Lightness channel, and then convert back to RGB color). So, should you apply this brand of sharpen- ing to every digital camera photo you take? I would. In fact, I do, and since I perform this function quite often, I automated the process (as you’ll see in the next step). Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 325Chapter 11Sharpening Techniques Continued The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Five: Open a different RGB photo, and let’s do the whole Luminosity sharpening thing again, but this time, before you start the process, go under the Window menu and choose Actions to bring up the Actions panel (seen here). The Actions panel is a “steps recorder” that records any set of repetitive steps and lets you instantly play them back (apply them to another photo) by simply press- ing one button (you’ll totally dig this). In the Actions panel, click on the Create New Action icon at the bottom of the panel (it looks just like the Create a New Layer icon from the Layers panel, and it’s shown circled in red here). Step Six: Clicking that icon brings up the New Action dialog (shown here). The Name field is automatically highlighted, so go ahead and give this new action a name. (I named mine “Luminosity Sharpen.” I know—how original!) Then, from the Function Key pop-up menu, choose the number of the Function key (F-key) on your keyboard that you want to assign to the action (this is the key you’ll hit to make the action do its thing). I’ve assigned mine F11, but you can choose any open F-key that suits you (but every- body knows F11 is, in fact, the coolest of all F-keys—just ask anyone. On a Mac, you may need to turn off the OS key- board shortcut for F11 first). You’ll notice that the New Actions dialog has no OK button. Instead, there’s a Record button, because once you exit this dialog, Photo- shop starts recording your steps. So go ahead and click Record. SCOTT KELBY Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 326 Chapter 11 Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Seven: With Photoshop recording every move you make, do the Luminosity sharpening technique you learned on the previous pages (apply your favorite Unsharp Mask setting, then go under the Edit menu, choose Fade Unsharp Mask, and when the dialog appears, change the blend mode to Luminosity and click OK. Also, if you generally like a second helping of sharpening, you can run the filter again, but don’t forget to Fade to Luminosity right after you’re done). Now, in the Actions panel, click on the Stop icon at the bottom of the panel (it’s the square icon, first from the left, shown circled here in red). Step Eight: This stops the recording process. If you look in the Actions panel, you’ll see all your steps recorded in the order you did them. Also, if you expand the right-facing triangle beside each step (as shown here), you’ll see more detail, including individual settings, for the steps it recorded. You can see here that I used the Amount: 120%, Radius: 1, and Threshold: 3 Unsharp Mask settings. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg SCOTT KELBY 327Chapter 11Sharpening Techniques Continued The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Nine: Now, open a different RGB photo and let’s test your action to see that it works (it’s important to test it now before moving on to the next step). Press the F-key you assigned to your action (you chose F11, right? I knew it!). Photoshop immediately applies the sharpening to the Luminosity for you, and does it all faster than you could ever do it manu- ally, because it takes place behind the scenes with no dialogs popping up. Step 10: Now that you’ve tested your action, we’re going to put that baby to work. Of course, you could open more photos and then press F11 to have your action Luminosity sharpen them one at a time, but there’s a better way. Once you’ve written an action, you can apply that action to an entire folder full of photos—and Photoshop will totally automate the whole process for you (it will literally open every photo in the folder and apply your Luminosity sharpening, and then save and close every photo—all automatically. How cool is that?). This is called batch pro- cessing, and here’s how it works: Go under the File menu, under Automate, and choose Batch to bring up the Batch dialog (or you can choose Batch from the Tools icon menu’s Photoshop sub- menu within Mini Bridge—you have to select the photos you want to batch sharpen first). At the top of the dialog, within the Play section, choose your Luminosity Sharpen action from the Action pop-up menu (if it’s not already selected, as shown here). Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 328 Chapter 11 Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step 11: In the Source section of the Batch dialog, you tell Photoshop which folder of photos you want to Luminosity sharp- en. So, choose Folder from the Source pop-up menu (you can also choose Bridge to run this batch action on select- ed photos from Mini Bridge or Big Bridge, or you can import photos from another source, or choose to run it on images that are already open in Photoshop). Then, click on the Choose button. A standard Open dialog will appear (shown here) so you can navigate to your folder of photos you want to sharpen. Once you find that folder, click on it (as shown), then click the Choose (PC: OK) button. Step 12: In the Destination section of the Batch dialog, you tell Photoshop where you want to put these photos once the action has done its thing. If you choose Save and Close from the Destination pop-up menu (as shown here), Photoshop will save the images in the same folder they’re in. If you select Folder from the Destination pop-up menu, Photoshop will place your Luminosity-sharpened photos into a total- ly different folder. To do this, click on the Choose button in the Destination section, navigate to your target folder (or create a new one), and click Choose (PC: OK). Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 329Chapter 11Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step 13: If you do choose to move them to a new folder, you can automatically rename your photos in the process. In short, here’s how the file naming works: In the first field within the File Naming section, you type the basic name you want all the files to have. In the other fields, you can choose (from a pop-up menu) the automatic numbering scheme to use (adding a 1-digit number, 2-digit number, etc., and if you choose this, there’s a field near the bottom where you can choose which number to start with). You can also choose to add the appropriate file extension (JPG, TIFF, etc.) in upper- or lowercase to the end of the new name. At the bottom of the dialog, there’s a row of checkboxes for choosing compatibility with other operating systems. I generally turn all of these on, because ya never know. When you’re finally done in the Batch dialog, click OK and Photo shop will automatically Luminosity sharpen, rename, and save all your photos in a new folder for you. Nice! Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 330 Chapter 11 Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step One: Start by choosing the Sharpen tool from the Toolbox (it’s found nested beneath the Blur tool, as seen here). Once you’ve got the tool, go up to the Options Bar and make sure the Protect Detail check- box (shown circled here in red) is turned on (this is the checkbox that makes all the difference, as it turns on the new CS5 advanced sharpening algorithm for this tool). Step Two: I usually duplicate the Background layer at this point (by pressing Command-J [PC: Ctrl-J]) and apply the sharpening to this duplicate layer. That way, if I think the sharpening looks too intense, I can just lower the amount of it by lowering the opacity of this layer. I also usually zoom in (by pressing Command-+ [plus sign; PC: Ctrl-+] on a detail area (like her belt), so I can really see the effects of the sharpening clearly (another benefit of applying the sharpening to a duplicate layer is that you can quickly see a before/ after of all the sharpening by showing/ hiding the layer). Back in Photoshop CS4, Adobe updated a few tools that really needed some serious updating (like the Dodge and Burn tools) by rewriting the underlying logic of each, and now not only are they usable (for perhaps the first time ever), but they’re actually great. In CS5, Adobe went back and fixed another tool—the Sharpen tool—taking it from its previous role as a “noise generator/pixel destroyer” to what Adobe Product Manager Bryan Hughes has called “… the most advanced sharpening in any of our products.” Here’s how it works: Using CS5’s Updated Sharpen Tool SCOTT KELBY Download from www.wowebook.com . help?” and by then, you’ll be perfectly comfortable with it. Before After Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 323Chapter 11Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Continued This. from www.wowebook.com ptg 328 Chapter 11 Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step 11: In the Source section of the Batch dialog, you tell Photoshop which. www.wowebook.com ptg 324 Chapter 11 Sharpening Techniques The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Three: So, at this point, you can ignore the Opacity slider altogether, because