Sharpening In Photoshop

Hi, one really nice sharpening method is to use a separate High-Pass filter layer which adds the sharpening to the picture in a none permanent ans can thus be varied as needs later.

Basics in PS:

1) Duplicate layer to be sharpened (set opacity to ca. 70% -80% = gives options to both weaken and sstrengthen later) all further changes will be to this duplicate - if things go wrong throw duplicate away and start again

2) double click on duplicate layer to access layer blending options

"Blend if: Grey"

"this layer" alt-click white triangle to split ointo two half triangles at 220 and 240

"underlying layer" alt-click black triangle to split and place half triangles at 10 and 20

3) at 100% magnification (to allow accurate visual response) use unsharp mask to add sharpening as seems appropriate to this layer you can even "over do it slightly" but I like to keep radius as small as possible and watch the highlight edges for a white halos - I don't mind the grainy noise of the xpro1 so usually for me threshold 0 and radius 0.6-1.2 don't worry too much at this stage about none edges . . .

4) change method blend from "normal" to "overlay"

5) Filter/other/highpass with radius ca. 1.2 - 2.4 this sets the sensitivity of the "off edge" sharpening (1.8 is good start)

6) adjust opacity of duplicate layer to weaken or strengthen the edge sharpening affect dynamically.

- if you don't like the level of sharpening repeat with a new duplicate layer.

- All ofd this can be incorporated into a automated single photoshop action

- the original picture has not been changed so if you need to change scale of reproduction = new sharpening scheme, it doesn't matter.

Cheers, Mark