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Thread: Excellent sharpening actions (for free!)

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    BPN Member Morkel Erasmus's Avatar
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    Default Excellent sharpening actions (for free!)

    A friend of mine, a very talented South African landscape photographer by the name of Philip Perold (who is also a programming and Photoshop guru), has developed some excellent and helpful actions for sharpening your images for web presentation. He kindly gave me permission to share the link here. I think you will find this VERY helpful.

    His sharpening technique is based on Marc Adamus' theories on sharpening, with some personal tweaks based on experimentation.

    He has developed 2 very distinct actions:

    1. The first one is aimed at landscape photography and sharpens all the fine detail you find in a landscape image. This works very well and I find I use this most of the time for sizing and sharpening my landscape images for web use. You need to play with the opacity of the resulting "sharpened" layers yourself until you are satisfied.

    2. The second one is aimed at wildlife and avian photography. Here his algorithms are programmed to only sharpen the fine details of the image that is most in focus (almost like the sharpening mask in Lightroom). Again, it creates a "sharp" layer which you need to adjust in terms of opacity until you get the result you desire. I have my own sharpening workflow for wildlife/avian images, but I do find Philip's action highly helpful in photos where the background and environment surrounding your subject is very busy and creating a selection of the subject will take a long time.


    Take note there are certain image sizes pre-programmed into these actions, which aren't too hard to reverse-engineer to get to the desired size you want. For BPN purposes, the 1024px/1000px (for horizontal) and 760px (for vertical) settings should work just fine.

    Feel free to download the actions and load them into your PS workflow. They should work for CS4 and CS5 and some of the newer PS Elements packages.

    Also - please browse through Philip's site and galleries, he's got some great images...

    WEBSITE: www.philipperold.com
    ACTIONS: www.philipperold.com/links
    Morkel Erasmus

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    Thanks for posting these, Morkel!!

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    Thanks Morkel. I am playing about with these now.

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    BPN Member Morkel Erasmus's Avatar
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    Only a pleasure, Carl and Jamie!
    Morkel Erasmus

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    Forum Participant BenBotha's Avatar
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    My problem is not the sharpening process or the steps used, but that the photo appears very much less sharp when posted on the website.
    Ben

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  10. #6
    BPN Member Morkel Erasmus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BenBotha View Post
    My problem is not the sharpening process or the steps used, but that the photo appears very much less sharp when posted on the website.
    Ben
    Ben I have also noticed this, but not in every instance where I post an image. If it looks soft upon uploading, I just run one more slight sharpening round and then re-upload.
    Morkel Erasmus

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