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One of my
sharpening techniques by Phillip Tomkinson
Hi I will make the assumption that
you already have a calibrated monitor and calibrated workflow whether it be SRGB
or ARGB1998, I shoot with Nikon equipment so some of the steps may not be
relevant to Canon users.
All my equipment my monitor my
printer the colour space in which I work in within Photoshop is ARGB1998, I calibrated my monitor with a spider to D65
a gamma of 2.2 if you look on dp
preview at some of their test there is a greyscale at the bottom of the screen I
can clearly make out all 26 shades with white being white and black being black.
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Conclusion
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Preview
calibrate their monitors using Colour Vision OptiCal at the (fairly well
accepted) PC normal gamma 2.2, this means that on our monitors we can
make out the difference between all of the (computer generated)
grayscale blocks below. We recommend to make the most of this review you
should be able to see the difference (at least) between X,Y and Z and
ideally A,B and C.
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After downloading my images from the
card to my computer I have a quick scan through using Nikon view. I select a
image and then open it in Nikon capture 4.4 usually, but I also use Bibble pro
& NX, different raw converters give subtle differences on how they decode the
NEF, for the remainder of this article I will use Nikon capture 4.4 and Photoshop
7.01.
I must point out that at this stage
that all Camera settings originally are set to either off or their lowest
settings i.e. no sharpening no contrast no saturation.
As you can see below this is a image
(1) that I have opened in Nikon capture I have left some of the menus open so
that you can see the settings that I have applied to the NEF from this stage I
just take it straight into Photoshop 7. As a 16-bit Tiff but depending on what I
am doing with the image I may save it as a 8-bit tiff.
(1)
Image number 2 which is above is the
image from NC 4.4 opened in photo shop and a basic amount of sharpening applied
to the whole image (I must point out that this stage this is not a particularly
sharp image but was chosen for the purpose to show the biggest difference after
sharpening) my next step after sharpening is to go to select all and then copy
& paste which automatically creates a new layer in photo shop.
The new layer is automatically
selected as you can see on the right, which is highlighted in blue I then go to
the lasso tool and select the area I wish to sharpen I have the selected area
feathered between 35 and 50 then invert the selection.
I then go to the eraser tool and
erase the inverted selected area see below I have switched the primary layer of
for ease of viewing then still on this selected layer go to the filters menu and
select the highpass filter
(4)
Then apply this filter I have mine set
to about 4.4 but feel free to experiment, in the image below left you will see I
have selected a 2nd menu from the layers in this menu you need to select
overlay.
You now may reactivated the bottom
layer which will give you a image that looks like the one on the right below to
switch layers on and off in photo shop you click on the little eye icon that is
to the left of the menu of that particular layer. (I hope that make sense), now
the top layer which is highlighted in blue you can adjust the opacity and fill
amount to your liking you can also sharpen this layer thus giving it more edge
definition i.e. apparent sharpness.
On the background layer i.e. the
first layer number (7) you can see I have selected it by the blue band in the
menu this layer you can apply your noise reduction to whether it needs it or not
as this will give you your separation I have used noise reduction pro in this
instance image (8) but any will do.
(7)
(8)
Once this filter has been applied you
save the image as a copy, you have your original image that has not been
processed other than in Nikon capture in my case, and you have your processed
image with the same file name but with copy after it, saved to wherever you save
your processed images to, for convenience I did all the post processing work in
8-bit also Photoshop 7 only allows certain things to be done in 16-bit.
I hope you have found this of some use,
to get the best out of your equipment, your images, and your time it is always
worth spending a few days experimenting.
All the best,
Phillip Tomkinson
Image
before
sharpening
Image
after sharpening
