Photoshop unsharp mask

Who can tell me what the best settings of photoshop unsharp mask is based on your experiences?

Set the radius to 0.3 to 0.5, set the threshold to 1 and move the amount untill the picture looks sharp while not exhibiting "halos" around the thinner elements. This can easly be seen by the entire picture beginning to get lighter. You must play with the amount since it it different for different cameras, shots, etc.

JM Zhao said:

Who can tell me what the best settings of photoshop unsharp mask is
based on your experiences?

Click to expand...

--
Barry in Frederick, Md.

Right? Otherwise this would be off-topic.

This is a tough one to answer though, as it depends on so many variables.

I keep the sharpness setting in my 1D to a minimum. Where you have your in-camera sharpness setting makes a difference. I'd recommend the lowest setting.

How you're printing your photos makes a difference too, what printer, etc.

The image itself makes a big difference. Skin tones? Landscape? High contrast? Low contrast?

But here's my normal starting point. Depending on the photo it may be more or less (for printing portraits from Epson 2200)...

Amount: 80%-100%
Radius: 1% of dpi setting (if printing at 200 dpi, then 2%; 300 dpi, 3%, etc.)
Threshold: 4 (For some printers this is way too high)

That's my starting point, but it varies from image to image.

JM Zhao said:

Who can tell me what the best settings of photoshop unsharp mask is
based on your experiences?

Click to expand...

Just goes to show that different people like different settings. If it works, fine. A threshold of 1 wouldn't give very smooth skin tones, but if the radius is only .3, then they probably wouldn't be bad. But you must have to really jack up the amount to get much sharpening.

Barry Anderson said:

JM Zhao said:

Who can tell me what the best settings of photoshop unsharp mask is
based on your experiences?

Click to expand...

--
Barry in Frederick, Md.

Click to expand...

Agree with Barry for most 10D images. Sometimes, it things are a bit soft it may help to do an intial step with a radius of 0.7 or as large as 1.0 at 33-50% followed by the 0.3 step. Many things in Photoshop are better done in smaller steps than one big step. I also fade each sharpening step to luminous to avoid amplifying color noise. I print with an Epson 2200 which does a good job of noise reduction so I tend to use small threshold values. Other printers probably vary on this. You have to do some experimentation to see what pleases your eye. Leon

Barry Anderson said:

JM Zhao said:

Who can tell me what the best settings of photoshop unsharp mask is
based on your experiences?

Click to expand...

--
Barry in Frederick, Md.

Click to expand...

Yes, it also depends a lot on the camera. The numbers I mentioned are for the 10D but I would state a totally different procedure for the Oly E20 including a noise reduction sequence. Leon

Newk said:

Just goes to show that different people like different settings. If
it works, fine. A threshold of 1 wouldn't give very smooth skin
tones, but if the radius is only .3, then they probably wouldn't be
bad. But you must have to really jack up the amount to get much
sharpening.

Click to expand...

Thanks to you all for your excellent advices. I am using 10D and epson 1280 printer.
I am curious about the role of these three parameters in USM -

amount, radius and threshold. To put them together, there are millions of combinations. having understand the role of each one, I may get better result with less attemps. Also, I am wondering the photos used for computer display may need different USM as compared to those used for printing, right? - I haven't tried yet.

JMZ

Unsharp masking comes from offset printing, which I shall not get into. (I'm a printer from waaaaay back, and my trying to explain it would only muddy your understanding of it.)

But sharpening is done in Photoshop by it detecting the different density values (contrast) and making a higher contrast outline from one value to the next.

This is the "theshold". When you specify a low threshold you're telling Photoshop to make that outline between densities that have little difference between them. A high threshold tells it to only make the outline if there's a marked difference in the densities. That's why with skin tones you usually want a fairly high threshold, so the skin tones remain smooth and don't get blotchy. With a typical landscape you would probably want a lower threshold.

If you were sending a portrait image out for printing on an offset press you'd probably want a threshold of 20-40, but inkjet printers are a different breed and I like to keep it in the neighborhood of 4.

(Okay, I don't even sharpen the skin tones at all, in most cases, as I have two layers. The front layer is for the skin and anything else I want soft; the next layer is the eyes, lips, teeth, jewelry, nails, and maybe some hair. That's what I sharpen to 4. The front layer is softened with gaussian blur, the parts I want to show as sharpened are erased, and finally it's opacity is reduced to where I want it -- usually 40-50%.)

Radius is simple. It's the width in pixels that you want the sharpening outline (from one threshold to the next). So if you're printing an image that's 300 ppi and you select a radius of 3, your sharpening outline would be 1/100 inch. If that image is 200 ppi, a radius of 2 would give the same amount of sharpening.

The "amount", of course, is just a simple way to increase or decrease the other two values you've entered.

That's the way I understand it and the best I can explain it without writing a book. If someone else can do better or understands it differently, hop right in and say it better.

Good luck.

JM Zhao said:

Thanks to you all for your excellent advices. I am using 10D and
epson 1280 printer.
I am curious about the role of these three parameters in USM -
amount, radius and threshold. To put them together, there are
millions of combinations. having understand the role of each one, I
may get better result with less attemps. Also, I am wondering the
photos used for computer display may need different USM as compared
to those used for printing, right? - I haven't tried yet.

JMZ

Click to expand...

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate your detailed explanation.

JMZ

Newk said:

But sharpening is done in Photoshop by it detecting the different
density values (contrast) and making a higher contrast outline from
one value to the next.

This is the "theshold". When you specify a low threshold you're
telling Photoshop to make that outline between densities that have
little difference between them. A high threshold tells it to only
make the outline if there's a marked difference in the densities.
That's why with skin tones you usually want a fairly high
threshold, so the skin tones remain smooth and don't get blotchy.
With a typical landscape you would probably want a lower threshold.

If you were sending a portrait image out for printing on an offset
press you'd probably want a threshold of 20-40, but inkjet printers
are a different breed and I like to keep it in the neighborhood of
4.

(Okay, I don't even sharpen the skin tones at all, in most cases,
as I have two layers. The front layer is for the skin and anything
else I want soft; the next layer is the eyes, lips, teeth, jewelry,
nails, and maybe some hair. That's what I sharpen to 4. The front
layer is softened with gaussian blur, the parts I want to show as
sharpened are erased, and finally it's opacity is reduced to where
I want it -- usually 40-50%.)

Radius is simple. It's the width in pixels that you want the
sharpening outline (from one threshold to the next). So if you're
printing an image that's 300 ppi and you select a radius of 3, your
sharpening outline would be 1/100 inch. If that image is 200 ppi, a
radius of 2 would give the same amount of sharpening.

The "amount", of course, is just a simple way to increase or
decrease the other two values you've entered.

That's the way I understand it and the best I can explain it
without writing a book. If someone else can do better or
understands it differently, hop right in and say it better.

Good luck.

JM Zhao said:

Thanks to you all for your excellent advices. I am using 10D and
epson 1280 printer.
I am curious about the role of these three parameters in USM -
amount, radius and threshold. To put them together, there are
millions of combinations. having understand the role of each one, I
may get better result with less attemps. Also, I am wondering the
photos used for computer display may need different USM as compared
to those used for printing, right? - I haven't tried yet.

JMZ

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

It's best not to use USM all over the image. You sharpen the noise as well as the detail. There's a trick using the find edges filter to generate a selection mask that will apply the USM only where there should be sharpening.

Luminous Landscape has a tutorial on it. He goes through a few extra steps, but it has the basics: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/smart_sharp.shtml

I can do it in a lot fewer steps, but I'm pretty familiar with Photoshop.

Dave,

Thank you for posting that link! Tested it on an image I was hasseling with yesterday and it shows a marked improvement over just using USM!

Dave I said:

It's best not to use USM all over the image. You sharpen the noise
as well as the detail. There's a trick using the find edges filter
to generate a selection mask that will apply the USM only where
there should be sharpening.

Luminous Landscape has a tutorial on it. He goes through a few
extra steps, but it has the basics:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/smart_sharp.shtml

I can do it in a lot fewer steps, but I'm pretty familiar with
Photoshop.

Click to expand...

The only thing I don't understand is when using a radius setting smaller than 1.0. What does it mean? How can a radius less than 1 pixel have any effect?

I always use 0.6 for sharpening and around 60 for 'polishing'.

--
Tommy

JM Zhao said:

Who can tell me what the best settings of photoshop unsharp mask is
based on your experiences?

Click to expand...

Jim

There is an alternative to USM that you could try and see what results you get.

Create a new layer.
Select the High Pass Filter [Filter> Other> High Pass]
Set the pixel radius to 10

You can then change the layer style and opacity of the layer until you like the results.

Color Burn will give you a boost in color while Soft Light will give just a touch of sharpening.

--
Louis

There is a good article on sharpening with USM at this web site. It explains what the various settings do:
C:\Documents and Settings\Leo Reinhard\My Documents\Sharpening.htm

Hope this helps

JM Zhao said:

Who can tell me what the best settings of photoshop unsharp mask is
based on your experiences?

Click to expand...

--
Leo R

If you're posting questions like this, you really need to go to your local bookstore and browse through the Photoshop books there. 99.9% of photoshop books cover the USM filter thoroughly. You will be amazed how much your post-processing improves after reading a good book about Photoshop.

The other posts well covered the sharpening aspect of USM. I might add that I cracked the code as to how it actually works. Assume values of 35%, 2 pixels, 3. A reference is done that is the gaussian blur on the original image with radius of 2. Then, at each pixel and for each color coordinate, the difference is taken between the original image value and the reference. This is multiplied by the percentage/100 and added to the original image value. If the difference is less than the threshold, nothing is done.

The other use of USM is as a local contrast enhancement including suppressing haze. Take a image and apply USM with values 13%,80 pixels, 0 threshold. You should get a crisper image and see a general increase in contrast. Leon

Thanks, Dave. This works far better than Just USM.

JMZ

Dave I said:

It's best not to use USM all over the image. You sharpen the noise
as well as the detail. There's a trick using the find edges filter
to generate a selection mask that will apply the USM only where
there should be sharpening.

Luminous Landscape has a tutorial on it. He goes through a few
extra steps, but it has the basics:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/smart_sharp.shtml

I can do it in a lot fewer steps, but I'm pretty familiar with
Photoshop.

Click to expand...

SKIN!! I do landscapes!!

Newk said:

Barry Anderson said:

JM Zhao said:

Who can tell me what the best settings of photoshop unsharp mask is
based on your experiences?

Click to expand...

--
Barry in Frederick, Md.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

--
Barry in Frederick, Md.