The Best Sharpening Tool

I am re-sizing some photos taken on my vacation earlier this month. I understand that I am reducing the resolution of the photo. But, I would like to get some ideas on methods,filters or programs that do a good job in adding sharpness to my images.

Thanks in advance

Dan,

By far the best, and by far the most uses is the sharpening filter in Photoshop, it is called "unsharpen mask" and does exactly the opposite, it sharpens stuff, and does it very very well.

All professionals use this tool all the time.

Mark

DanF said:

I am re-sizing some photos taken on my vacation earlier this month.
I understand that I am reducing the resolution of the photo. But,
I would like to get some ideas on methods,filters or programs that
do a good job in adding sharpness to my images.

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

It's actually "unsharp mask," which, while still sounding contrary to its actually effect, sounds a bit less so.

David

Mark said:

By far the best, and by far the most uses is the sharpening filter
in Photoshop, it is called "unsharpen mask" and does exactly the
opposite, it sharpens stuff, and does it very very well.

All professionals use this tool all the time.

Mark

DanF said:

I am re-sizing some photos taken on my vacation earlier this month.
I understand that I am reducing the resolution of the photo. But,
I would like to get some ideas on methods,filters or programs that
do a good job in adding sharpness to my images.

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Mark is right about using Unsharp Mask. There are some plugins, etc., like Nic Sharpener, but in my experience they are like a macro program, so the process can be duplicated in PhotoShop.

You can mask or select an area and apply sharpening. For instance, on portraits you will want to sharpen the eyes, but leave the face soft. I use the polygonal selection tool to isolate and eye and the lashes, and then apply saturation and sharpening. You can do the reverse, btw, and soften features by using a blur tool like Gaussian Blur.

If you go to my site http://ozarkcamper.org and from the menu bar click on Panoramas you get a page with a 360 panorama that runs on a java module. The photo is a jpeg that I just retouched. I used the majic wand to select the sky, then I selected inverse and sharpened the landscape using unsharp mask with the following settings.

Amount 27%
Radius 170 pixels
Threshold 0.0 levels

This will not work for every photo, but it may be instructive. You might want to begin with PS's default values and vary the setting one at a time to get an idea how each affects different parts of the photo. The advantage of the plugins is that they use an algorithm to decide what to do with hair, eyes, trees. sky, etc.

You might want to browse the Retouching Forum as the above settings were derived from a post I happened upon there.

ms

Mark said:

By far the best, and by far the most uses is the sharpening filter
in Photoshop, it is called "unsharpen mask" and does exactly the
opposite, it sharpens stuff, and does it very very well.

All professionals use this tool all the time.

Mark

DanF said:

I am re-sizing some photos taken on my vacation earlier this month.
I understand that I am reducing the resolution of the photo. But,
I would like to get some ideas on methods,filters or programs that
do a good job in adding sharpness to my images.

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I ´d strongly recommend Ultra Sharpener 3.0 Pro! It´s a batch plug-in for Photoshop and delivers excellent sharpening re´sults. It could be downloaded for free a while ago, now don´t find anymore in the web. If you want to have it, please let me know and I´ll post it to you. Greetings Johannes

Mike Siesel said:

You can mask or select an area and apply sharpening. For instance,
on portraits you will want to sharpen the eyes, but leave the face
soft. I use the polygonal selection tool to isolate and eye and the
lashes, and then apply saturation and sharpening. You can do the
reverse, btw, and soften features by using a blur tool like
Gaussian Blur.

If you go to my site http://ozarkcamper.org and from the menu bar
click on Panoramas you get a page with a 360 panorama that runs on
a java module. The photo is a jpeg that I just retouched. I used
the majic wand to select the sky, then I selected inverse and
sharpened the landscape using unsharp mask with the following
settings.

Amount 27%
Radius 170 pixels
Threshold 0.0 levels

This will not work for every photo, but it may be instructive. You
might want to begin with PS's default values and vary the setting
one at a time to get an idea how each affects different parts of
the photo. The advantage of the plugins is that they use an
algorithm to decide what to do with hair, eyes, trees. sky, etc.

You might want to browse the Retouching Forum as the above settings
were derived from a post I happened upon there.

ms

Mark said:

By far the best, and by far the most uses is the sharpening filter
in Photoshop, it is called "unsharpen mask" and does exactly the
opposite, it sharpens stuff, and does it very very well.

All professionals use this tool all the time.

Mark

DanF said:

I am re-sizing some photos taken on my vacation earlier this month.
I understand that I am reducing the resolution of the photo. But,
I would like to get some ideas on methods,filters or programs that
do a good job in adding sharpness to my images.

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

The Ultra Sharpener plug-in that Johannes mentioned has been updated and is now $20+5 shipping ordered as a CD. Here is the URL for it
http://www.ultrasharpen.com/

Its works quite well at selecting the areas of detail to sharpen while preserving the smothness of sky, as described by Mike Siesel.

It wasn't real clear what the original application was for. ALL digital images could benifit from sharpening, which means an increase in edge contrast. Qimage, a printing program, also has a different type of sharpening algotrithm which many pototgraphers like. If you are "ressing up" or increasing your file size 3x or larger you should consider Genuine Fractals as an approach to maintaining detail during interpolation.
Regards, Mike K

Johannes Menkebach said:

I ´d strongly recommend Ultra Sharpener 3.0 Pro! It´s a batch
plug-in for Photoshop and delivers excellent sharpening re´sults.
It could be downloaded for free a while ago, now don´t find anymore
in the web. If you want to have it, please let me know and I´ll
post it to you. Greetings Johannes

Click to expand...

I read a tip about unsharp masking in Photoshop a number of years ago, and have used it successfully ever since. I've did all the prepress work for a catalog company for several years, and now publish a wedding magazine, that I do all the scanning for as well. Before I learned this trick, I would often get halos, or white edges when I unsharp masked, now I rarely have this problem, and get good, sharp images pretty consistently. The trick is to not unsharp mask in RGB or CMYK, but to convert to LAB mode, then select only the Lightness channel to apply your unsharp mask. You can selectively sharpen areas of your image in this channel too, if you choose. My experience has been that I can get sharper images with fewer artifacts this way. I have tried some of the other tools that automate unsharp masking, but this is the method that works best to my eye. By the way, I find that the digital photos from by G1 need much less sharpening than scans, and I would guess that to be true of most other digital cameras as well.

DanF said:

I am re-sizing some photos taken on my vacation earlier this month.
I understand that I am reducing the resolution of the photo. But,
I would like to get some ideas on methods,filters or programs that
do a good job in adding sharpness to my images.

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

Dan said:

I read a tip about unsharp masking in Photoshop a number of years
ago, and have used it successfully ever since. I've did all the
prepress work for a catalog company for several years, and now
publish a wedding magazine, that I do all the scanning for as well.
Before I learned this trick, I would often get halos, or white
edges when I unsharp masked, now I rarely have this problem, and
get good, sharp images pretty consistently. The trick is to not
unsharp mask in RGB or CMYK, but to convert to LAB mode, then
select only the Lightness channel to apply your unsharp mask. You
can selectively sharpen areas of your image in this channel too, if
you choose. My experience has been that I can get sharper images
with fewer artifacts this way. I have tried some of the other
tools that automate unsharp masking, but this is the method that
works best to my eye. By the way, I find that the digital photos
from by G1 need much less sharpening than scans, and I would guess
that to be true of most other digital cameras as well.

Click to expand...

I ought to hire a proofreader to edit my stuff before I post. I really did make it through English 101, although it was thirty-some years ago. REALLY, my grammer is not as bad as it ooks.

DanF wrote:

While i am asking, are any tricks or tips on resizing my photos. I appreciate all your help.

DanF said:

DanF wrote:

While i am asking, are any tricks or tips on resizing my photos. I
appreciate all your help.

Click to expand...

Resizing down is always better than resizing up. (By the way, since you have brought up both the sharpening and resizing issues, unsharp masking should always be the last thing you to before you print - I always keep my raw, unmanipulated images backed up to CD, then you can start over from scratch if you need to go to a different size, etc.) Whether you are resizing up or down, bicubic sampling will give you your best results. Resizing up is tricky - remember that you are asking a software program to create data and detail that doesn't exist in your original image. While I rarely need to print anything large enough to need it, if you do have a need to resize images to significantly larger sizes, I've seen other people get very good results for a Photoshop plug-in called Geniune Fractals. I believe the company that makes this is Altamira, and they have two or three different versions of it, depending on whether you are going to prepress, or printing to inkjet, etc.

Thanks DAve

DavidG said:

David

Mark said:

By far the best, and by far the most uses is the sharpening filter
in Photoshop, it is called "unsharpen mask" and does exactly the
opposite, it sharpens stuff, and does it very very well.

All professionals use this tool all the time.

Mark

DanF said:

I am re-sizing some photos taken on my vacation earlier this month.
I understand that I am reducing the resolution of the photo. But,
I would like to get some ideas on methods,filters or programs that
do a good job in adding sharpness to my images.

Thanks in advance

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Dan said:

The trick is to not
unsharp mask in RGB or CMYK, but to convert to LAB mode, then
select only the Lightness channel to apply your unsharp mask

Click to expand...

On this, see:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/instant_photoshop.htm

Excellent article.

Lance

Lance said:

Dan said:

The trick is to not
unsharp mask in RGB or CMYK, but to convert to LAB mode, then
select only the Lightness channel to apply your unsharp mask

Click to expand...

On this, see:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/instant_photoshop.htm

Excellent article.

Lance

Click to expand...

I agree, that is a great article. Lots of good information presented in a clear, concise manner. The rest of the website is worth looking at, too. This guy knows what he's doing.