Let's Talk Sharpening for Avian

[Jim Fenton]

Currently, I process my Nikon files in Capture NX and change the RAW sharpening to NONE and then apply 55,5,4 up to ISO 400 and then the 5 steps up to as high as 8 as the ISO increases.

In CS#, once resized and everything else is done, I've been using either smart sharpen or at times, the Lone Star Digital plugin with a Quick Mask for selective area sharpening.

I used to use Photo kit sharpener but I've fallen out of love with it the past few months.

What do you folks use?

[David Fletcher]

Hi Jim. My files go into ACR for conversion. Minimal sharpening at conversion. Then old fashioned USM, usually at 300%, 0.3 -0.6 and 4, usually subject only, masking bg. For web posting, no sharpening till image is resized, then various settings such as 100, 0.3 & 4 with three or four sweeps. Again, masking out bg and contracting by 1px. Dave

[Alfred Forns]

HI Jim,

What happen with Photo Kit ?

Have you tried sharpening in LAB b&W channel !!!!

[Fabs Forns]

I like to process in ACR.
Wish I could use Capture NX, but my Mac refuses to recognize the last update, so I can't use it for D3 nor D300 :(

I love PhotKit and sometime do a capture sharpening if the bg is not too busy.
Use the convenient sharpening or blurring brushes for selective work.

After resizing for web, depending of my background, I have 3 routes.

Busy background, duplicate the layer, go Smart sharpen, from 85 to 99, 0.2 to 04 and erase the effect where i don't want it.
Usually I don't have to repeat.
If the background is OK, use Photokit Output for web, and I'm fine. If it looks too crispy, I reduce the opacity.
If the bird is in a uniform sky, I magic wand select the sky, inverse the selection, contract by one pixel, then sharpen. No halo possibility there.

I do not like over sharpened high contrast images, so I will always err on the soft side rather than the frozen look.

Good thread, btw, thanks for getting it started.

[Jim Fenton]

Hi Al.....

Not sure with Photokit.

It appeared to my eyes that after CS (beginning with CS2), the output became much coarser and didn't give me the great look it used to. I've even noted it in my printing output.

Course....it could be my eyes as well :)

[Jim Fenton]

See...I learned something important starting this thread.....I didn't know that you could contract by one pixel :)

[Fabs Forns]

See...I learned something important starting this thread.....I didn't know that you could contract by one pixel :)

Old technique I learned form the late Sandy Mossberg.
Still valid!

glad you liked it :)

[Nancy A Elwood]

I use 1 px setting with high pass in NX selectively as my last step, using a new step. I find just that bit around the eyes or the main subject works great.

[Jim Fenton]

Nice to see you here!



I use 1 px setting with high pass in NX selectively as my last step, using a new step. I find just that bit around the eyes or the main subject works great.

[Nancy A Elwood]

Nice to see you here!

Thanks:). Seems a great place to learn more.

[Robert Amoruso]

Fabiola did a good workflow description and this is basically what I do. For a low-res 92 ppi JPG for posting with the BIF in sky image, I will always select the sky, do an inverse selection, contract the selection 1 px and using the new "Refine Edge" effect in PSCS3, soften it 1px.

For high res 360 ppi, I will contract 10 to 20 px, sharpen and redo with more contraction if I get halos.

[Ted Scalzo]

What a great thread. I am learning so much in this new site. I am amazed at how many people are on already. Can you reduce by 1 pix in CS2? How is that done?

[Fabs Forns]

What a great thread. I am learning so much in this new site. I am amazed at how many people are on already. Can you reduce by 1 pix in CS2? How is that done?

Select>Modify>Contract, then fill the box :)

Glad you fill at home, Ted!

[Maxis Gamez]

I use Smart Sharpening. For web display I set it at 500, 0.2 and do it once or twice if need it.

[Arthur Morris]

I am bleary eyed and may be missing something but do understand that except for small amounts of selectgive sharpening YOU SHOULD NEVER SHARPEN YOUR OTIMIZED MASTER FILE until it is duplicated and sized for a given usage... We see lots of folks sharpening their master files who can't figure out why their J-PEGs (of various sizes) look like crap...

lal, artie

[Maxis Gamez]

I am bleary eyed and may be missing something but do understand that except for small amounts of selectgive sharpening YOU SHOULD NEVER SHARPEN YOUR OTIMIZED MASTER FILE until it is duplicated and sized for a given usage... We see lots of folks sharpening their master files who can't figure out why their J-PEGs (of various sizes) look like crap...

lal, artie

I don't touch my master files at all. I grab one, do all the processing and leave the master alone!

[Emil Martinec]

I used to use the PK Sharpener scripts, but started getting better results using Smart Sharpen for both capture sharpening and final stage sharpening for web output. Smart sharpen is really good at suppressing halos if you use the advanced settings (using the highlight tab, turn up the fade amount and the tonal width to control hard edges, with the radius set to 2 or 3); it is also more accurate than plain old USM, as it is more than simple edge contrast enhancement (from what I have heard, the advanced setting uses a form of image deconvolution, which is a mathematical method of trying to reverse engineer the in-focus source from the OOF image).

I have also been experimenting with the sharpening tab in ACR with some success; seems to recover a tad more detail than Smart Sharpen for capture sharpening.

In either case, I do sharpening on a duplicated layer. For Smart Sharpen, I duplicate the BG layer, sharpen that and then mask off the parts I don't want sharpened such as the BG. For ACR sharpening, I open the image as a Smart Object with sharpening set to zero, then duplicate the Smart Object (as a new smart object), double click the duped object; this puts you back in ACR, where you can adjust the sharpen tab for your subject, click OK, and you are back in CS3 where you can mask off the parts you don't want sharpened. Beware though that if you don't duplicate the base layer as a new smart object then whatever modifications you do to the duped layer propagate to the base layer (for instance this happens if you dupe using ctl-J keyboard shortcut; instead you should dupe by right-clicking the layers palette and choosing "New smart object via copy").

For web output sharpening, I have found nothing that beats Smart Sharpen, again using the advanced tabs to control halos by fading the highlight and shadow effects of the filter.

[David Fletcher]

I am bleary eyed and may be missing something but do understand that except for small amounts of selectgive sharpening YOU SHOULD NEVER SHARPEN YOUR OTIMIZED MASTER FILE until it is duplicated and sized for a given usage... We see lots of folks sharpening their master files who can't figure out why their J-PEGs (of various sizes) look like crap...

lal, artie


LOL. Ditto Artie and Maxis. (assumed it was taken for granted that master is left unsharpened). Dave

[Nancy A Elwood]

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=655

This other thread that got started by one of my pics might interest some folks. It is on another way of sharpening that I just learned about.

[DLindey]

Please help me understand the concept of NOT sharpening the Master. My workflow generally follows as such if I am post processing exclusively in Nikon Capture NX:
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Open RAW NEF in Capture NX
Adjust in camera settings if necessary.
Apply D-Lighting
Color balance/correct using LCH
Apply Capture Sharpening (50/5/4) as a general rule of thumb.
Crop the image to suit.
Save as a NEF with an a appended to the original file name to save edit steps applied to image.
Depending on what the image is being output to I resize the image appropriately.
Finally I will apply “output” sharpening using the USM (5/15/4 is being projected 1024x768 for example).
The image is finally save in the output format i.e. jpg or .tiff.<o:p></o:p>
Is it being suggested that the original sharpening in Capture NX not be done? Please bear with what may be a silly question as I am in a steep learning curve phase with digital prost processing.
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Thanks
<o:p></o:p>
Dave Lindey
Niagara-Canada

[DLindey]

Please help me understand the concept of NOT sharpening the Master. My workflow generally follows as such if I am post processing exclusively in Nikon Capture NX:
ffice:office" /><O:p></O:p>

Open RAW NEF in Capture NX
Adjust in camera settings if necessary.
Apply D-Lighting
Color balance/correct using LCH
Apply Capture Sharpening (50/5/4) as a general rule of thumb.
Crop the image to suit.
Save as a NEF with an a appended to the original file name to save edit steps applied to image.
Depending on what the image is being output to I resize the image appropriately.
Finally I will apply “output” sharpening using the USM (5/15/4 is being projected 1024x768 for example).
The image is finally save in the output format i.e. jpg or .tiff.<O:p></O:p>
Is it being suggested that the original sharpening in Capture NX not be done? Please bear with what may be a silly question as I am in a steep learning curve phase with digital prost processing.
<O:p></O:p>
Thanks
<O:p></O:p>
Dave Lindey
Niagara-Canada

[c.w. moynihan]

I am bleary eyed and may be missing something but do understand that except for small amounts of selectgive sharpening YOU SHOULD NEVER SHARPEN YOUR OTIMIZED MASTER FILE until it is duplicated and sized for a given usage... We see lots of folks sharpening their master files who can't figure out why their J-PEGs (of various sizes) look like crap...

lal, artie


That's what I do. I save my processed master as tiff including layers, processed to the point where I have quicked masked the area for selection I want to sharpen. Then at a later time, when I need to resize and sharpen for web output or sharpen for print output, it takes little time with no unexpected results or need to re-process.

[Harold Stiver]

Old technique I learned form the late Sandy Mossberg.
Still valid!

glad you liked it :)

Another technique Sandy used to share on his website is one I often use on a subject with a clear background.(For websize images)

Same selection technique as Fabs mentioned, then

USM (100, 0.2, 0) done from 1-7 times. Set it up as an action. Oversharpened? Just erase one or more steps.

A quick and easy method that is often all that is needed. Thanks Sandy!

[JH Tugs]

Another method - not sure if this is considered "proper", but it works - is to use high-pass filter.

In photoshop:

- Take your image as BG layer
- Duplicate the BG layer
- Change the new layer mode to Overlay (it'll look silly for the moment, but bear with it)
- With the new layer selected, go to FIlter -> Other -> High-Pass
- Pixel value of between 1-5 is usually enough (depends somewhat on the size of the image). Click OK.
- Use opacity of the new layer to dial the effect in and out. I also find it useful to toggle the new layer's visibility on and off as I work to make sure I remember what I was working from and how it looks now...
- You can also play with changing the layer mode for the new layer to one of the other settings in the Overlay group (soft light, hard light, etc.) - see how it alters the effect of your high-pass layer.

It's not for all images, but it can be pretty effective at times.

[Peter Hawrylyshyn]

there's a good summary on sharpening at:
http://www.steve-perks.com/gfx/tpfsharpening/

what's really useful is the downloadable action that does Lab Mode Edge sharpening which is similar to technique in Bruce Fraser's book on sharpening - -you can often use it to minimize unwanted sharpening of the BG without resorting to masking

[Mike Lentz]

Great reading guys! Since I use CS3 and pull all my images in through ACR, I will give Emils description a shot first and see how it goes. :)