Top Secret Photoshop

[Irma Tchakian]

Wantto hear a secret?

Your favorite newborn photographers are probably using this editing product to get the results seen here. The Secret Sauce is our own creation and can only be purchased from Hello Little Props!

NOTE: Instruction on how to use layer masks and basic photoshop skills are not included. Each action is applied by clicking play and using layer masks to indicate where you want to see your image adjusted.

Okay folks. Forget Lab color sharpening. Forget Luminosity sharpening. Forget the Unsharp Mask as "Smart" Sharpen. This here is the be-all and end-all of all sharpening techniques. Jaw-droppingly easy to do, and fundamentally better than any other technique I've used in the past.

It utilizes one of the most neglected filters in all of PShop: the High Pass filter. Bet you didn't even know what a "High Pass" filter was, did ya?

Well, I'm here to school you proper.

As with all sharpening techniques, this should be the absolute last trick you throw at your photo, unless you plan on adding a vignette. A vignette trumps sharpening in the hierarchy of post-process steps.

You ready? Prepare to go "Wow, Glen Hentz is the SMARTEST MAN ALIVE!!!"

Step 1: Duplicate your final image.

Step 2: Go to Filter>Other>High Pass

Step 3: Set this to between 3.0 and 6.0 depending on how little or how much sharpening you want to apply.

Step 4: Set the blend mode of your High Pass layer to Overlay, and PRESTO, instant sharpening. No halos. No grain. No nonsense sharpening. And the beauty of this is, if you feel you could do with just a bit more sharpening, simply duplicate the high pass layer as many times as you want until you get the look you're happy with.

You heard it here first, folks. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip your waitress.

3:44PM, 18 October 2006 PDT(permalink)

Very cool technique - It's working better than the luminosity sharpening techniques.

One suggestion - I created another layer, then holding down alt, click on the flyout button, choose the "merge visible" option. Then run the high pass sharpening and then overlay. This makes the sharpening non destructive.

ages ago(permalink)

A good technique. I use 'smart sharpen' most the time however. Another use of the high pass filter is to use a radius of about 175 with a soft light layer. This adds edge contrast, but does not exactly sharpen it. I often use the high pass filter for that, usualy with opacity turned down a little.

ages ago(permalink)

You have to watch how much you apply this, and how strong. It will produce halos in large amounts in many of the overlay blending modes. Like other sharpening algorithms, it increases local contrast, but some blendings of this will eliminate detail in shadow and highlight areas.

All of Adobe's sharpening and "sharpening" algorithms are pretty piss-poor, invest in a different aftermarket sharpening algorithm.

ages ago(permalink)

Thats pretty cool, Id never tried that just use it for increasing/defining highlights.

Just so peps know if you set the blending modes to things like hard light, soft light then it will bring out the highlights in your photo. Experiment with the overaly modes as you can get some interesting results.

ages ago(permalink)

This is a wonderful technigue....and you can create an "ACTION" to make it all the easier. I find that the 3.0 pixel selection is actually a bit too sharp myself for people portraits, so I might try it a bit lower.

Also....if you feel your image is too sharp after the process, before flattening the image.....you can play with the opacity to make it less sharp.....as you can multiply the top layer to make it even sharper.

ages ago(permalink)

Yeah, aren't filters cool? I find myself using high pass more and more. It is really the only thing to rescue slightly out-of-focus areas. Like Lu, I prefer "hard light" or "vivid light" modes. Sometimes when I really need sharpening, I use "multiply." This darkens the image and requires a "levels" adjustment afterwards but boy does it snap things up!

Regarding masks, you may have to go a step further, especially if you use multiply. Dupe the original layer twice. High pass the topmost layer, set the desired overlay mode (and adjust levels if needed). Then merge the two top layers so that you have a sharpened layer above an untouched original layer. Add a mask to the sharpened layer and paint in/out the sharpening where you need it.

Originally posted ages ago. (permalink)

MerlinsMan edited this topic ages ago.

you actually don't have to sharpen the entire image as well. For instance...I had some candid shots of people playing sports that I shot with a zoom lens. I really just wanted to sharpen the faces so I drew a circle around the face and feathered it a lot.....then copied and pasted just that area as a top layer and did this effect. it worked well.

I have to disagree that this effect doesn't leave a grain, though. It appears to leave a grain just as much as sharpening with unsharp mask.

ages ago(permalink)

While shooting fall leaves, I encountered a situation where it is better to apply the high pass filter in LAB mode. Click the thumbnail to get a blow-by-blow description:

ages ago(permalink)

I think being very subtle is the key...for example, I only apply a radius of .08 to 1.6 to the high pass layer on original images taken with my Canon EOS 5D. When I reduce the size of those images to about 800 pixels wide, I am using a radius of only .4. I also learned it is very important to view the image at 100% and make sure that you do not see any halos around the edges of the details in your images.

Secondly, it is also recommended to view your image at 100% after you apply the overlay, hard light, vivid light, et. al. blending mode and reduce the opacity of the top layer to a level where the detail is sufficient and the background noise isn't peeking through too terribly.

Based on my experience It is better to perform this task more than once (twice or three times if necessary) to the same image than it is to over do it once.

ages ago(permalink)

Balaji Dutt, I was wondering if you could elaborate on your non-descructive method above. I don't know what a flyout button is and I don't know what layers you are suggesting we merge. Any help would be much appreciated.

ages ago(permalink)

That means you probably are setting the radius too high and/or not reducing the opacity enough.

My workflow includes running my noise reduction in one of the very first steps (make sure your photo is at 100% when doing so). The high pass sharpening effect should be applied last...and the radius must be only so high that you can barely see the outline of your photo's edges and so there aren't any halos around the edges when looking at the high pass layer at 100%. And even after you have applied the overlay blending to the high pass layer, you will want to reduce the opacity. Less is always better. And 'tis better to apply the high pass overlay sharpening method more than once or twice than it is to have the radius too high and/or the opacity too high.

ages ago(permalink)

Looks ok on screen but chances are it'll print like crap in cmyk. If you look around the daisy image you'll see a black line around the white petals. Since that will be 4 color black you're asking for registration trouble on press.

ages ago(permalink)

Great tip!

Ryan, Copy the main layer to a background copy, and do the high pass on the background--make sure you select it to make it active.

Once done with the filter choose the main copy and on the layers tab, choose overlay from the list box at the top of that dialog. you may have to dispay the layer dialog to see these entries

hope this helps PS i had to figure this tip out as well, but the results were worth it.

ages ago(permalink)

PS.. there's a way to see the effects of high pass dynamically--same steps just a different order

1. Duplicate your final image by creating a background layer.

2. Select the main layer

3. Set the blend mode to Overlay

4. Select the Background layer and choose Filter>Other>High Pass

5. Set the radius to whatever and make sure the Preview is on and you will see the sharpen changes to the image while moving the radius slider around

hope this helps...

ages ago(permalink)

I use this method especially with scanned negatives it has a nicer effect on the grain. To increase the rate of sharpening I sometimes apply some levels to the high pass layer.

ages ago(permalink)

I have a better method which i saw on another thread (no, im not the smartest man alive!):

image open, duplicate the layer as you always should, now press Ctrl + A to select all of the image (on the duplicate layer of course).

Now hit Ctrl + C to copy the selection to the clipboard (memory)

Next to the Layers palette tab you will see the Channels palette tab.

Open the channels palette and at the bottom, click on the third icon from the left, 'Create New Channel'.

This will create a new channel and will be automatically called Alpha 1.

You will also notice you have a complete black layer !!

That new black layer/channel is active, so hit Ctrl + V to paste the copy of the image you made in the first step and you should now see a greyscale of your image.

Now we are going to find the edges in the image by using......Find Edges !!!

Go to Filter > Stylize > Find Edges

This will do what it does with no user input, no way to alter it as with most filters, but it will find the edges and create a sort of pencil drawing.

To fine tune this before we sharpen anything, open the Levels palette (Ctrl + L), and move the shadows slider (the one on the left) of the Input levels until it reaches the edge of the Histogram, or the 'foot of the mountains'.

Drag the midtone slider (the middle one) to the left, until it is almost overlapping the Shadows marker.

This will cause the edges in the 'Drawing' to become more defined.

To help any of the background that may have been included in the Find edges filter, move the white point slider (the right hand one) over to the left until the background looks mainly white.

Don't go too far so that it 'removes' any of the edges.

**Remember.....trial and error/practise makes perfect etc, etc.**

To avoid the possibility that the transition between what will get sharpened and what won't will show up in the final image, we are going to blur the edges to smooth them a bit.

Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a radius of between 1and 5 pixels. I suggest you keep nearer to one pixel for now, until you get used to the technique, as with all sharpening effects, the input and result is image resolution dependant.

Now go to Select > Load selection.

Assuming you haven't added further Alpha channels, you will see that the document is the open one and the channel is Alpha 1.

Check Invert, because we want to select the black edges and not the white area that would normally be selected with a mask and click OK.

Now you have the 'marching ants' selecting the black edges !

Click the composite RGB channel (the top one) then click back to the Layers palette.

To see how sharpening will affect the image, zoom in to 200/300 percent (depending on how big your image is), and to further see more clearly what is happening, hit Ctrl + H to hide the marching ants.

Now use the sharpening method of your choice.

I tend to stick with Unsharp Mask when using this technique.

This method has selected the edges in your image, so that only the edges will be sharpened.

Not only that though...it also allows you to sharpen a lot more than you may normally do without causing any dodgy side effects.

The beauty of this method is that you can ilsolate only the parts that need sharpening without affecting the rest of the picture.

GlenHentz, you are definately not the smartest human alive as this method was taken from another thread that ive seen.

Thanks for telling people but please stop taking credit where its not due.

Originally posted ages ago. (permalink)

freejay3 edited this topic ages ago.

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