Ok, I am new to PS in a way, so I did a lot of reading and tried and took notes on everything. Here is what I have from my 'Sharpening' section:
Sharpen
- Sharpen, Sharpen More, Sharpen Edges: all these do is enter numbers into the Unsharp Mask dialog. In other words, they are really just presets.
Unsharp Mask
- Increases contrast where two colors (shades of gray) touch in an image.
- Amount: determines how much contrast will be added to the edges of objects and how obvious the sharpening will be.
- Radius: determines how much space will be used for the contrast boost that the amount setting creates.
- Threshold: determines how different two touching colors have to be for sharpening to kick in. With Threshold set at 0, everything will be sharpened. As you increase this setting, only the areas drastically different will be sharpened.
o Too low: unwanted artifacts like noise and film grain will be exaggerated and relatively smooth areas might start to show texture.
o Too high and sharpening will apply to very few areas in the image.
Filter>Sharpen>USM, zoom 100%
- Amount = 500
- Radius = 1
- Threshold = 0
- Fine detail or smooth areas may have overly exaggerated detail
o Increase threshold until those areas smooth out (usually a number in the single digits)
o Experiment with Radius until the image looks sharp but not glowing (usually in the range of .5 to 2)
o Images with fine detail look best with a lower setting. Images that contain less detail look best with a higher setting.
o Adjust the Amount until the image looks naturally sharp and not artificial (usually .5 to 200 depending on the Radius setting)
- Amount too high – obvious bright halos; very fine detail becomes ‘contrasty.’
- Amount 90 – 250 / Radius .5 – 1.5
- Amount 10 – 30 / Radius 5 – 20
Smart Sharpen
- Amount and Radius work just like USM. Exactly the same if pop-up is set to Gaussian Blur.
- Lens Blur: less pronounced halos so a higher Amount and Radius settings are possible.
- More Accurate: causes sharpening to be done in two passes like applying USM twice.
- No ‘threshold’ so cannot limit sharpening to areas of more pronounced detail.
Advanced Mode
- Can control the strength of sharpening applied to shadows and highlights.
- Fade Amount determines strength of the effect.
- Tonal Width determines brightness range affected.
- Radius determines how sharpening will blend into surrounding areas.
Sharpen Luminosity
- If bright colored halos appear after sharpening, immediately after sharpening:
o Edit>Fade and set to Luminosity. This forces the applied sharpening to affect only brightness and prevents it from shifting or intensifying colors.
- If the image doesn̢۪t look good after sharpening, view the channels separately in the Channels palette and sharpen only those that help the image.
Control Highlight and Shadow Separately
- With dark backgrounds, halos show up easily. PS adds a dark halo on one side and a bright halo on the other side of the edges it sharpens. To minimize the bright halo while keeping the dark halo:
o Make two duplicate layers
o Set the blending mode on one to lighten and on the other to darken
o Sharpen the layers separately
I hope some/any of this helps. Sorry for the formatting, it was cut and pasted from an outline created in Word. So the '-' should be indented once and the 'o' should be indented twice.
Message edited by author 2008-08-11 20:16:43. |
