Color Grading and Surface Blur Sharpening in PS

[Edward Arthur]

Ran across these two tutorials and found them eye-opening so thought I'd share. The presenter is a master of subtlety and the results can be stunning. The examples are of portraits/people but the principles can be applied to many subjects. I played around with these techniques on a few of my animal images and they made a huge improvement. Definitely worth a look.

Sharpening with surface blur:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBxyzpp0sLI

Color grading:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH2zj1sTUak

[Diane Miller]

There are so many ways to skin a cat in PS. Would love to see some of your before and afters. Things like this can make a big difference in an image.

[Edward Arthur]

Skinning cats: yes certain images require certain solutions, as I'm learning while reviewing past photos of mine.

I'm still working with the techniques and will be happy to post an example or two when I think I've got something presentable. For now I'll let the tutorials speak for themselves. You know from other posts that I'm admittedly color-challenged (at least), so that's the biggest learning curve for me these days. :)

[Dan Brown]

Interesting sharpening method. No mention was made of "sharpening for output"? I guess one would have to experiment with the settings.

[Edward Arthur]

Interesting sharpening method. No mention was made of "sharpening for output"? I guess one would have to experiment with the settings.

True, output sharpening isn't addressed in the videos. What I've been doing in my experiments is bring the raw file into LR, do some standard tweaks/crops, export it to PS for resizing and applying these techniques, then send it back to LR for output sharpening and export. Preserves all the EXIF as well, which PS likes to trim down in save-for-web output.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Ed by using this method as described in the video you amplify noise a lot in smooth areas plus you have color shifts , so you have to mask all smooth areas and rework the unwanted colors . The sharpness achieved with the settings in the video is very coarse compared to USM or smart sharpen , so what is the benefit of this ?
The surface blur filter is also very slow if you do not have a very fast machine , if you work with a 16 bit image and you have some layers in the layer stack , you will be surprised how it does take to run the filter .

So what´s new about color grading ? How the guy works in that video is wanging the curves around , judging by eye the colors , not a good idea from my POV , but your call .

Cheers Andreas

[Don Lacy]

Interesting techniques for portraiture work not sure how they fit into what we do on here. Also the would not use the sharpening technique do to the issues Andreas has pointed out.

[Edward Arthur]

so what is the benefit of this ?

For one, because he earns a living with it. So I pay attention. :)

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Ed , sorry i am german based so i actually do not understand your reply , can you please reply not that much cryptic , just for me. Thanks

Cheers Andreas

[Edward Arthur]

Andreas,

Er verdient sein Geld mit dieser Technik. Ich respektiere das.

Herzliche grüße!

[Diane Miller]

But does he, really? And in what venues? Commercial photography is a very "anders" (different) thing, and is based a lot on self-promotion and bizarre image looks.

You can find about 10,000 "techniques" for everything in PS on the internet, mostly in videos, and many of them are outdated or useless. Not commenting on these two, as I haven't tried them, but from my experience, they don't rate highly. "Buyer" beware.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Thanks Ed for that very nice translation , much appreciated .

Cheers Andreas