Another tip for Sharpness

[tc elliott]

Hi Everyone. Here is a tip I learned for sharpness that works very well for me and only has to be applied once to an image.
I use PS 6.0 just in case your wondering.
Since some people may not be completely familiar with the program I will lay out each step.

1. Open an image, duplicate it and close the original. (PC Image - duplicate)

2. Duplicate the background layer (PC Ctrl-J).

3. Change the blending mode for that layer to "Overlay". You can do this by right clicking on the duplicate layer down in the layer pallette. Then use the pop up menu and click on "Blending options". Then under "General Blending" scroll down to "Overlay and click OK. Your image will now look weird.

4. Keep the duplicate layer highlighted and go up to "Filters/Other/ Highpass"

5. The dialogue box will open and PS will usually assign a value of Radius 1.2 to 1.8 pixels. You can play with the slider but if you push it too far it will blow the threshold. Click OK.

6. Presto sharpness. Zoom in and turn the layer off and on using the eyeball and see the difference. It saves time over the USM and doesn't add any extra noise except in the sky sometimes which you can mask out if it is too bad.

You have to change the layer mode to Overlay or the trick won't work. Your image will just turn grey, and that's not good.

Every digital camera has a Low pass filter. This softens the data and compresses the file before it is written on the storage media by the processor( Photo Life Jan-04). Only makes sense that the high pass filter would restore the image data.

Have a good day everyone.
TC

[Tom Nolle]

This is indeed a good sharpening technique, in my view. You can also try some variations on it. One is to duplicate the new blended-highpass layer a couple of times to intensify the effect. Another is to do a couple of duplicate layers with highpass, with the lowest having a slightly larger radius (1.7 or 2) and the higher one a lower radius (.5 to 1).

Tom