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Sharpening Your Images

Lesson 23 from: Adobe® Photoshop® Elements for Photographers

Lesa Snider

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Lesson Info

23. Sharpening Your Images

Lesson Info

Sharpening Your Images

So let's say we want to sharpen this image. Which layer do we pick? Sharpening filters. Onley run on single layers. So this is another situation in which you're you're you're going to want to create a stamped copy, so that gives you a layer that you can run your sharpening on, which also means you're sharpening non destructively so that if you go a little too far in your sharpening, you can lower the layer opacity of the layer you made for sharpening, thereby reducing the amount of sharpening in your image. So let's go ahead and do that stamped copy thing one more time. This time, let's do it with the slightly less complicated keyboard shortcut of just holding down the option key on a Mac or all on the PC and then clicking the layer panels fly out menu in choosing merge visible. But you do have to make sure to hold down that modifier key before you open this menu or won't work. It'll still merge visible layers, but you won't create the copy so press and hold the modifier key before you...

trot up here to this menu and choose merged visible. So now we've got a layer just for sharpening and I name it as such. So give it a double click. Name it, sharpening that way you know what's happening on that particular layer. Now let's talk about the different ways to sharpen. We've got a couple of different ways in elements, but I'm gonna show you my favorite way as well. So under the enhanced menu, we have two sharpening commands. One is uncharged mask. The other one is adjust sharpness. If you're familiar with photo shop at all this adjust sharpness is a little bit like the smart sharpen filter over in photo shop, which is nice if you've got an image that has a little bit of noise in it, or a little bit of blurriness Dio, whatever. Just a little bit of blurring is she might want to reach for that when they have slightly different control. So we'll take a look at both of them. So if we choose uncharted mask, this is has been the gold standard means of sharpening since I don't know. First, put a stop to it, something like that. So what we've got is a nice big preview area so you can click and drag around within that Previ area to perhaps position the important details. There, she can see what's happening with the sharpening. So basically, you set sharpening strength with the amount slider, let's say and this radius control you can use to tell a photo shop how wide you're willing to let the sharpening halo become. What is a sharpening halo? You might ask? Well, when you're sharpening, all you're really doing is looking for areas of high contrast, and you're telling the program Teoh or areas of high contrast or what? Where a light pixel meets a dark pixel. So in sharpening the program is lightning. The light pixels a little bit in darkening the dark pixels a little bit to make that area of contrast to emphasize it to accentuate it. If you go too far, what's gonna happen is you're gonna look like you're think you're introducing a gap between the areas of contrast. So that's what they what we call a sharpening halo, and I'll see if I could be really extreme on this image and see if will introduce a sharpening halo that you can actually see. We'll click OK and see what that does a little bit too far. I want to go overboard just enough so that you can clearly see what a sharpening halo looks like. We might have a few in here, so if we zoom in, not really seeing a whole lot, but a little bit. See that right there? A little bit of a sharpening halo. So what happens is that the light pixels get so light that they start increasing in with that area. It just looks like you've introduced a gap between your areas of high contrast. So that radius slider is what? How you can control how wide you're willing to let that sharpening halo become. Here we go. So we're back to square once, let's choose enhance in uncharted mask. And I rarely go over Oh five or six. With this particular tool or setting, Rather will go back to 100%. So you're really saying, hey, elements? Don't you dare lighten and darken the pixels around Those high contrast edges so much that you introduce a four pixel gap. That's really what we're saying here. So you want to keep that setting fairly low. Threshold lets you tell Photoshopped how much contrast, the edge has to be for it to consider it an edge. So this is how you control which areas of your image are being sharpened. So if you drag that slider all the way to the left or all the way to the right Rather you were introducing or we're gonna back up 3 to Lisa tard. This particular that control works the opposite manner, as you think it would if you drag it all the way to the left. And he said it. Zero photo shop or elements is gonna be sharpening all the edges in your image. So anywhere it's these high contrast. If you drag it to the right, then it's gonna be sharpening fewer and fewer areas of your image. So, as you can see as I drag it to the right, we're not really seeing sharpness. But if I drag it all the way to the left, then we start to see some sharpness in there so you can experiment with those settings. Or you can use Lisa's preferred method of Scharping Elements is all befuddled now. There we go. It's OK. It's almost over. If you don't want to remember any of those settings because they are a little bit confusing to use. And you'll you'll discover some magic numbers that work really well. I've got a slew of them in my Photoshopped book for for soft sharpening used this set of numbers for more sharpening. Use the set of numbers, but it's all very difficult to remember and we've got enough going on to remember. So let's take a look at another way to sharpen that. It's so easy you won't believe it. So we've prepared are layer for sharpening. Now we're gonna trot up to the filter menu and we're gonna come down to the other category and we're gonna choose high pass. In this dialog box, you can actually see every edge in your image that will be affected should you click. OK, the deal is don't ever go above about four or five with that slider. Ive only get one slider, which is determining the width of the Scharping halo, and this is a great place to see the sharpening Hailu. See that about right here? See that thing right there? That's a sharpening Hailu. You can see a little bit of it right there. There's no outer glow on that motorcycle tire. That's a sharpening halo. So that's what happens if you go a little bit too far. So this particular method of sharpening is fantastic because, as I said, you don't ever want to go over about four, four or five. I probably never go before. But for most images, somewhere around somewhere between one and 2.5 radius is gonna be perfect. So as I drag the slider to the lift, I get less and less and less sharpening. As I drag it to the right, I begin to see the edges that are going to be affected. So what you're really seeing here is like an edge mask of your photo. You can see exactly the edges that are gonna change should you choose to do that sharpening. And there is no other way in the program, either in elements or in the Big Brother Photoshopped. To do this in light room. You can do this by holding out a modifier key. I think it's option or ault and dragging the sharpening slider. You can see this exact same kind of edge preview so that you can really be precise about how much sharpening your doing. So if you've got a lot of fine detail in your image, you may not want to do as much sharpening. Or if you've got an image of something soft and fluffy, like babies or flowers or puppies, you may not want to apply very much Scharping. So if you're persnickety and you don't like to memorize a slew of numbers, there's no better way to sharpen than this right here because you can see exactly which parts of your image you're gonna be affected. And I can see exactly when I start to go too far. This about 1.6 would be more appropriate for this image because I'm watching this area right here, which is the first sharpening halo I'm seeing so I can see exactly when I start to introduce sharpening halos and you don't want to do that. So this is a fantastic method for sharpening. So let's ratchet that back down a little bit more. Let's say this is OK, so let's click. OK, looks great, doesn't now. Okay, now we need to get rid of that gray. How do we do that? With a quick flick of the blend mode menu. So we're going to click open that blend mode menu, and we're going to slide down to overlay. Overlay works fantastic for this, Another mode that works a soft light. You'd use overlay for normal sharpening. And if you want to back off the Scharping, this a little bit, you soft light and that's it. There's the before, and there's the after easiest way to sharpen ever. So let's take a look that on more images. So we're folder number 19 right here. We'll give the computer a minute to catch its breath, apparently, and open up these two images and we'll do exactly the same thing they were about to RK. Zoom in a little bit so we can see exactly how upset that cat is. I'm gonna throw away the layer that I made for you. So here's the original in chart version of this image. Now, if you've only got one layer going on in your layers panels go ahead. Duplicated by pressing Commander Control J. If you've got multiple layers, which you likely will, we're gonna go ahead and add another layer just so it looks like what you might actually encounter at home Here we go. So now we've got a multi layered document. Now let's create our layer just for sharpening. Either press and hold the option key on a Mac or Ault on the PC and click the fly out menu at the top right of the layers panel and choose. Merge, visible or shift option Command E shift all control E on the PC Either one. But again, if you go the mini route, you have to press that modifier key before you open them in your it will not work. Now it's double click that layer name and call it sharpening or sharpen something that is meaningful to you. Now let's trot out to the filter menu. Choose the other category high pass, scoot the dialog box out of the way. It will always land right where you want to see the image and then this. Remember to really not ever go about four with this thing. So as we drag the slider to the lift, we have practically no sharpening at all. But as we begin to drag it to the right, then we start seeing those edges illuminated so we can control exactly how much Scharping visually now see, we've got edge halos or sharpening halos started to introduce themselves in this area right here. Makes sense now what a sharpening halo is. Yes, so definitely wouldn't want to do that. So I would probably stop. Oh, somewhere down in the 1.3 ish range for this particular image. Click. OK, now we're gonna change the mode to either overlay for normal sharpening or soft light for really soft sharpening. You just won't be able to see the sharpening quite as much if you choose soft light rather than overlay. But they both work, so I'll zoom into 100%. Here's the before and the after fabulous way to sharpen your images. Here's another multi layer image. Oldest do it again. So option or Ault choose the fly out menu. Choose merged visible, double click it, name it sharpening, trot up to the filter menu, choose other high pass and then just experiment with that radius setting, being careful not to introduce sharpening halo so you can see them starting to appear right there and over here on the horizon as well. So you just ratchet it back. Fabulous visual visual way to sharpen. Click OK, change the blend mode, mini toe, either overlay or soft light. We'll zoom in a little bit more so we can see the texture. Have those oh so cute bales of hay clever farmer. And there's our before and there's our after. And of course you're going to save all of this as a native Photoshopped document file. Save as make sure to choose photo shot from the format poppet menu and that keeps your layers fully intact. Now what if that sharpening was a little bit too overdone? All you have to do is lower the opacity on the Scharping layer. What if I wanted? What? See, let's go back to the cat. Perhaps. What if I wanted more sharpening in certain areas and less sharpening in other areas? Yep. So I duplicate. If I wanted another round of sharpening that I was only gonna apply selectively. Then I might duplicate the sharpening layer. Add a layer mask high the sharpening, hide this second round of sharpening, and we can even call it sharp in round two. Click to activate the mask, inverted so that it's filled with black. My person Commander Control, I now grab the brush tool sets paint with white with a regular brush. Teoh for the love of Thor with a regular brush tip. Want to grab one of the soft edge brushes? Doesn't matter which one cause we've been controlling brush size all day long with our left and right bracket keys. So now if I want to reveal the extra sharpening just on the kiddies for on the face right here, then I could just paint with white in that area. And it looks like I'm painting on another round sharpening, doesn't it? As another great traits to do on just the irises of eyes? It's another trick that makes the iris color just really pop, but so you can even do selective sharpening with this. So again, all we did was create one layer for sharpening you can even think of. That is global sharpening sharpening that affects your whole image. Now we could duplicate that layer. Name it localized sharpening or selective sharpening and add a layer mask to it. Press commander control I to fill that layer mask with black press. Be to grab your brush tool. Make sure foreground color ship is set toe white. Why? Because black conceals white reveals and by filling that layer mask with black, we've concealed all of that second round of sharpening. Now we can go back onto the image and selectively control where we apply that second round. Nice. The end. Fantastic. It's a far easier way to sharpen. Believe you. Me? Yeah, really? I'm gonna make sure that was great, you know, And people like you're getting some you're getting, you know, people, like likened toe watch that directly as you do it, cause I know there's definitely people can over sharpened stuff. And when you do an sharp mask, you know, you have to kind of go back and forth, back and forth, but with the high pass, you can just adjust it on the fly and just kind of go by here. I without having to mess around. So that's really great. And you've got one number to memorize instead of three. In unsure mask. We had three different settings that we have to remember what they dio and remember what kind of magic numbers work for this kind of photo or that kind of photo. But with high pass, you just have to remember not to go over five, most often times you're gonna end up sharpening. You know, not even quite a to pixel radius. You're going to be down somewhere in the 1.51 point 61.7 range. But that's gonna very an image, my image basis, and then having easily the ability to just duplicate that layer for another round of sharpening that you only let that you only reveal in certain areas that you really want to accentuate areas of texture. So I did a photo shoot where a girl had a cowboy hat on. So I did a little bit of selective sharpening just on the hat to bring out that texture. And there were some that string that comes down that keeps it on your that strap. Thanks. Why revealed a little lecture? Scharping down there a little bit on the eyebrows a little bit on the lips. Little selective sharpening on the lips with this method right here almost looks like your model has a little bit more lip gloss on makes a little sparkly. Sometimes I reveal it just on the irises in the eyes, the areas that you really want to pop out of the photo. And then if you say Wow, that second round of sharpening is a bit much distraught capacity, and maybe you only wanna have, you know, 25% opacity for that second round of sharpening. So here's the before. You can't really see it at that low opacity, but maybe around 50 you can. There's the before there's the after of the second round that you only let be visible in certain spots.

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