Photoshop CS3 Sharpening Images

Photoshop CS3 Sharpening Images

with Deke McClelland

 


Real focus happens inside the camera's lens element. The sharpening features in Photoshop CS3 exaggerate the contrast along edges in a photograph to transform a well-focused image into an outstanding image. In Photoshop CS3 Sharpening Images, Deke McClelland teaches a host of sharpening and noise reduction techniques, including using filters such as Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen, High Pass, and Reduce Noise. The training teaches the essentials of sharpening, including what it does, why it's important, and how the filters function. Plus, the training covers Deke's recommended best practices, including the four distinct varieties of sharpening, which can be used independently or in combination with each other. Photoshop CS3 Sharpening Images is about how to transform images from looking good to looking their absolute best. Exercise files accompany the course.
Topics include:
  • Understanding the effects of sharpening
  • In-depth examinations of Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen, Emboss, and High Pass
  • Smoothing an image with the Surface Blur, Despeckle, and Reduce Noise features
  • Working with smart objects and smart filters
  • Creating edge masks and non-edge masks
  • Sharpening for digital-image capture using Camera Raw
  • Gauging and exploiting luminance frequency
  • Exploring creative applications of sharpening
  • Sharpening a multilayer composition
  • Sharpening eyes, hair, and out-of-focus backgrounds
  • Reducing noise in a high-frequency image
  • Determining ideal settings for commercial and inkjet output
  • Sharpening very large-format images
  • Sharpening an image for the web or screen output

show more

author
Deke McClelland
subject
Photography, Sharpening
software
Photoshop CS3
level
Intermediate
duration
10h 33m
released
Feb 15, 2008

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1. How Sharpening Works
Why every image needs sharpening
00:00 Hello and welcome to Photoshop CS3 Sharpening Images.
00:04 My 115 movie series devoted to the topics of image enhancement, noise reduction, detail modification and sharpening workflow.
00:13 If you are hoping to master Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen, High Pass, Reduce Noise and a host of other filters, this series will do just that.
00:21 But that's just the beginning.
00:22 In the next few hours, I'll show you how to approach sharpening one exacting step at a time.
00:28 This series is about making each and every image you produce look its absolute best.
00:32 Simply put this is, unless I am very much mistaken, the most comprehensive treaties
00:37 on post-photography focus adjustment ever produced.
00:41 I kNow I say things like that, but it's true.
00:44 It isn't just so much as this is my sharpening tour deforce, it is my sharpening tour deforce, but why should you care?
00:51 What lies before you is an in-depth examination of exactly what sharpening does, why you need it, how the filters work, my recommended best practices
01:01 and the four distinct varieties of sharpening available to you.
01:05 Each of which can be used independently or in combination with each other.
01:09 Consider this place, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a top secret alternative headquarters for lynda.com.
01:16 Where you are, it maybe summer or fall, but where I am right now it's January, one of the coldest months in the northern hemisphere.
01:24 It's drab, everything is dead, and although it's nice enough today, it's generally bitter cold.
01:30 When you see a flock of birds, you know what direction south is.
01:34 But Photoshop is a miracle worker; it can take this city dip it in the dream, separate the dull stuff and produce a perfect scene.
01:42 Oh, yeah, Photoshop can. Close-up or far away, drab and grey, or bright and sunny, every image needs sharpening to bring out the detail
01:52 that otherwise gets lost in the translation from the real world to your camera, to your computer, to the printer.
01:59 Sharpening is key to great looking imagery.
02:02 Now this first Chapter is all about how sharpening and it's companion, noise reduction, work.
02:07 The effects they produce, whats going on in the background, how you make use of them and accurately gauge results.
02:14 Even if you think you know everything about sharpening and you are just slumming, figuring out what the other guy knows.
02:20 I think you'll find these first nine movies to be as precision-guided as information smart bombs to the brain.
02:27 We are talking sharp, as in sharply-organized, sharply-produced, and you'll feel sharper when you are done.
02:33 It's not nearly as painful as it sounds.
02:36 Enjoy!
02:36
02:37
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Understanding the effects of sharpening
00:00 Before I show how sharpening works, I want to give you a sense of what it is.
00:04 So for those of you in the unlikely event that you've never witnessed sharpening inside Photoshop before, you will now witness sharpening.
00:12 For those of you who have seen sharpening, which I assume is the vast majority of you,
00:17 you'll get a sense of why sharpening is there, why we need it, even with a sharply-focused image like this one. This image by the way,
00:26 is called stunning 12x8.jpeg, its found inside of the 01howitworks folder
00:31 which itself is found inside the exercise files folder that's available to those of you who are premium members.
00:37 It's available for download at the lynda.com Online Training Library.
00:41 You also have access to this folder if you have the DVD.
00:44 This image comes to us from photographer Alexandra Alexis of iStockphoto.com, one of my favorites, and we'll see,
00:51 if I go ahead and zoom this image in a little bit, you'll see that it is impeccably focused and bear in mind, that the purpose
00:58 of the sharpening filters is to provide the illusion of focus.
01:02 So why in the world will we apply sharpening filters to an image that's already in great focus. And by great focus,
01:08 I mean that the portions of the image that are supposed to be in focus are in focus,
01:13 and those portions that aren't supposed to be in focus aren't in focus.
01:16 Notice for example in the case of this model, that her left eye- it's on out right-hand side, but her left eye- is in sharp focus whereas her right eye
01:26 on left-hand side here is slightly out of focus because its beyond the depth of field and of course the background is very out of focus.
01:34 Meanwhile, elements like her nostrils and her lips are in sharp focus as well.
01:39 Now I should mention that there is really nothing we can do about any of this, I can't change the depth of field for example,
01:45 I can stimulate soft focus in Photoshop, but I cant take something that's out of focus like this background back here for example,
01:52 and somehow make it miraculously in focus because Photoshop is incapable of generating detail where there is no detail inside the image.
02:00 Now I can fix soft focus slightly out of focus items, just a little bit of softness that's either a function of the camera lens or its a function
02:09 of the scanning element, that kind of thing, but just like focus problems I can fix.
02:13 Really however, the purpose of the sharpening filters is to preserve the natI've focus of the image by anticipating
02:20 and reversing even the softening effects of capturing the image, re-sampling it, for example,
02:26 changing the number of pixels inside the image using the Image Size Command or printing the image.
02:31 So lets say for example, in our case we're going to print this image and in printing the image, it's going to get slightly out of focus,
02:37 it's going to change in terms of its physical size, it's going to get smaller on the page because we're going to print it at a high resolution,
02:43 and during that translation, either to halftoned dots or to little inkjet marks,
02:50 we're going to end up with a softer image.
02:52 So we're going to anticipate that by sharpening it, and I am going to sharpen this image just to keep things simple,
02:58 I am going to go up to the Filter menu, I am going to choose Sharpen and I am going to choose this guy, Sharpen More.
03:03 Normally, I would work with something more sophisticated like Smart Sharpen or Unsharp Mask, but well see those tools later.
03:09 Right now I am just going to apply the Sharpen More command, and you might be able to see how the image got slightly sharper there.
03:16 Now our movies get re-sampled down a little bit so you might not see a difference.
03:20 Lets go ahead and zoom in to the 200% zoom size so you can really see the difference here.
03:25 I am looking at the sharply-focused eye.
03:27 This is the before version of the eye and this is the after version of the eye, and you can see that the eye has become tactile almost.
03:36 You sometimes hear this kind of over-sharpening effect called brittle or crunchy, and this is definitely a very crunchy image by this point,
03:44 and it might appear over-sharpened but its actually well-sharpened for output. And Photoshop is able to create the sharpening effect
03:53 by increasing the contrast of the edges, and well see how that works in the next exercise, but just bear then in mind that's whats going on,
04:00 its totally an I'llusion, its not actually doing any real sharpening, but it will bring out information that you might not have noticed before.
04:08 For example, this is the before version of the nose, this is the after version of the nose which calls attention
04:13 to all these tiny fine little hairs and the hairs inside the nose as well.
04:18 So not always good details inside the image. We're also bringing out the wrinkles in the lips, this is the before version of the lips,
04:25 this is the after version right here, and we have some hairs along the bottom of the lip that we're seeing,
04:31 we're also calling attention to the hairs along the side of her face, but, you'll notice that the out-of-focus area such as this background here,
04:39 and to a certain extent this eye are changed dramatically.
04:43 So this is the before version of the eye in the background, this is the after version, and the only thing that we are bringing
04:49 out in the background at this point, I'll go ahead and zoom in here a little bit.
04:53 The only thing that we're bringing out in the background is the noise, and noise. By noise I mean random variations
04:59 in pixels, information that wasnt really part of the scene.
05:03 So this is before, the before version of the background, this is the after version, you can see how the after version is more noisy.
05:11 So that's something that sharpening brings out as well.
05:14 Alright, so there you have it, that's what sharpening looks like, just to give you a sense of what's up, right off the bat here I am going
05:21 to show you how sharpening works starting in the next exercise.
05:25
05:26
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Understanding the mechanics of sharpening
00:00If you have the access to the sample files that are part of the series, I would like you to go ahead and open this diagram right here,
00:06it is called Sharp Shapes.PSD and it is found inside of the O1howitworks folder.
00:13That is available inside of that exercise files folder.
00:16Now this is a multi-layered illustration that is going to help us understand the mechanics of sharpening inside of Photoshop.
00:23I am going to go ahead and zoom in a little bit here.
00:25Now notice what we have is this serpentine, dark sort of line going through the image, and sprinkled inside of the line are some white circles
00:35at regular intervals and then the entire image is subjected to something of a texture pattern.
00:41Now so far, I have not sharpened this image at all and images that have not been sharpened are sometimes know as unsharp
00:48or unsharpened, you will sometime hear them called that.
00:51And what I am going to do, because this is a multi-layered file with all sorts of layered states saved inside of it,
00:57I am going to go ahead and open up my Layer Comps palette and I would like you to do that as well.
01:01Layer Comps, as you may kNow allow you to save layered states inside of a file.
01:06If you are not familiar with the palate you can go up to the Window menu and choose the Layers Comps command.
01:11Now currently I have Layers Comps set to Standard, this is the standard view of the image, the unsharpened version of the image,
01:19compare that to the Sharpened view. I will go ahead and click in front of the word Sharpened, on that little sort of page icon right there,
01:27in order to invoke the Sharpened Layer Comp. I going to go ahead and zoom in even closer on this image,
01:33so that we can see it very close and personal at this point.
01:37So this is the Standard version of the image, this is the Sharpened version of the image.
01:42Notice what is going on. Photoshop is going through the image and increasing the contrast of the image right where it perceives edges.
01:52So right at point of the edge it increases the contrast and it does this by tracing along the dark side of an edge, it traces a dark halo.
02:02This little tiny sort of blackish line here that is tracing outside the circle is a dark halo and then on the inside,
02:09on the bright side of this edge of this circle, we have a light halo.
02:15In this rapid transition from dark halo to light halo, is read by our eyes when we're zoomed out from the image.
02:21It is read by our eyes as a sharp transition inside of the image.
02:25Similarly, we have got dark halo along the dark edge of the big line, of the big dark serpentine line and we have a light halo along the light edge
02:35of the line as well and then we have these halos all over inside the texture. They're are lot more difficult to make out
02:41but there are halos inside of the texture and that is whats responsible for bringing out that textures well.
02:47So sharpening does bring out texture, it brings out noise, it brings out film grain and so on.
02:52It brigs out bad details along with the good details inside the image.
02:56Sharpening inside of Photoshop enhances contrast along edges inside of an image. Compare that to just general high-contrast effect.
03:06So I were to click on the High Contrast Layer Comp inside the Layer Comps palette, you would see a high contrast version of the image.
03:13So this is the Standard view, this is the High cContrast view but this generalized high contrast effect does not lead to more sharpness,
03:21it has to be elevated contrast along the edges in order to be read as heightened sharpness.
03:28AlSo I would like you to also compare sharpness. I am going to go ahead and zoom in even farther on the circle here.
03:33I would like you to compare Sharpness to Jagged transitions.
03:38So sharpness taken too far can result in jagged transition, but it is ultimately a different effect.
03:44Jagged edges by themselves do not impart a sense of sharpness they just impart jagged transitions.
03:51So as you can see, here is the standard view of the image, it does have a little bit more softness
03:55but it is really smoothness as apposed to jagged transitions here.
04:00But notice how this sharpened transitions come out very differently.
04:05So that is a first look at how sharpness works.
04:08We have heightened contrast along the perceived edges inside of the image.
04:13In the next exercise I am going to show you how sharpness works with gradual transitions.
04:19
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Understanding sharpening and gradual transitions
00:00 In this exercise I am going to show you what happens to those dark and light halos when we are tracing an image that contains gradual transitions.
00:09 I am still working inside the Sharp Shapes.PSD file that's found inside the 01howitworks folder.
00:15 I've got my Layer Comps palette open and I am going to switch- right now we are looking at the Standard Layer Comp-
00:20 I am going to switch down to the Gradients Layer Comp, this one right here.
00:24 So this is an alternate view of the image.
00:26 It still contains the texture pattern but instead of having a dark serpentine line set against a light background, we've got a gradient, a dark
00:34 to light gradient serpentine line set against a light to dark gradient background.
00:40 So we've got some opposite gradients going on right here.
00:43 That will allow us to see what happens to those halos as I was saying, when we have gradual transitions. And you can see that.
00:49 Let's go ahead and zoom in on this image so we can really take it in close and personal once again, so it translates to the video,
00:56 and I am going to switch over here to Sharp grads, this guy right here, this Layer Comp. And notice that we Now toward the top of the image, notice
01:05 that I am looking at the top region of the image where the serpentine line is dark and the background is light, and we have a pretty familiar pattern
01:13 of halos here. We have dark halos around the outside of the circles for example and light halos around the inside of those circles.
01:20 As I pan down, the farther that I pan down and the closer that we get to this region where the gradients are pretty similar
01:27 to each other, where we just have a bunch of midtones going on.
01:30 Notice that the edges, those halos, drop out. So the halos actually get thinner and thinner and decline here almost like calligraphic brush strokes,
01:40 this one is happening here, its almost like lading up off the pressure of a stylus, for example.
01:45 So that the dark edge is just disappearing, the dark halo is just disappearing.
01:49 And then it switches places. Then we start seeing a light halo emerging as the gradient serpentine line becomes lighter than its background.
01:59 So what was formally a dark halo transitions to a light halo and what was formally, in this case up here, a light halo
02:06 on the outside transitions very slowly to a dark halo down toward the bottom and so they gradually and automatically switch places.
02:15 So Photoshop is intelligent enough not only to the detect the edges inside the image and increase the contrast of those edges,
02:21 but also to trace the light halos, always on the light side of the edge and the dark halo along the dark side of the edge, and the lightness
02:31 or darkness of those halos is commensurate with the degree of contrast.
02:36 So down here toward the bottom of the image where we have the highest degree of contrast between the white serpentine line
02:41 and the dark background, we have very nearly a white halo on the inside and that black halo on the outside, and those halos become less
02:49 and less defined as the natural contrast between the edges grows less defined as well,
02:54 so that you can see that those halos just start becoming not only more tapering but they also start growing darker,
03:01 the light halo grows darker and the dark halo grows lighter as well.
03:07 So there we have it to look at sharpened edges inside of a gradually transitioning image.
03:13 In the next exercise, I am going to show you the effects of combining sharpening with noise reduction inside Photoshop.
03:20
03:21
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Understanding sharpening and noise reduction
00:00In this exercise we are going to take a look at combining sharpening with noise removal.
00:04Inside the Photoshop I am looking at this Sharp Shapes.PSD file, that's found inside of the 01howitworks folder.
00:12The same file that we've been working with for the previous two exercises.
00:16I have the Layer Comps palette set to the Standard Layer Comp, which contains the texture, notice that. I'll go ahead and zoom-in on this image
00:22and you can see that texture pattern in the background.
00:25Imagine that this texture is something that we don't want to sharpen, we want to defeat the texture, and this texture could be something
00:33like noise captured by a digital camera, it could be noise captured by scanner, it could be dust and scratches, it could be film grain associated
00:42of course with film transparencies or color negatives, something along those lines, and we want to get rid
00:48of that noise before we begin sharpening, and that's the right order to work incidentally. You want to apply Noise Removal first
00:54and then apply your Sharpening, and so I've got ahead and done that inside of this diagram here.
01:00If you go down the Layer Comps palette, you'll see that there is a Layer Comp called Noise Removal.
01:04Go ahead and click on it in order to remove some of the noise from the image.
01:08Now notice that I am saying SOME of the noise/texture in this case, because you are not going to get rid of all of it.
01:14If you're trying to get rid of all of the noise inside of an image or all of the film grain
01:18or all of the texture then you're going to get rid of your good detail as well.
01:22In our case, we are pretty fortunate here; I've managed to get rid of most
01:25of the texture while preserving the good details, the serpentine line and the circles and so on.
01:32So this is the Standard view with the texture, this is the Noise Removal view right here.
01:37Now notice, if we apply Sharpening on top of Noise Removal that we get a much cleaner result.
01:43So we have these nice-sharpened edges without bringing out the texture. This is a big difference here, compare that to sharpening with the texture.
01:51So if we'd sharpened without applying any Noise Removal we bring out a ton of texture inside the image.
01:57If we apply Noise Removal first and then apply our Sharpening we get very clean results.
02:03I've also got a Layer Comp that shows the same thing where the Gradient view of the image is concerned. I'll go ahead and zoom back out here
02:10for a moment. You may recall, here's our gradient view from the previous exercise. Here's the gradient version of the image subjected
02:18to noise removal upfront, and its made only a small difference, you may not even notice it at that zoom level,
02:24so I'll go ahead and zoom back in, so that we can see the difference.
02:27It's just a little bit. Here's the gradients version of the image with texture, here's the gradient version of the image without texture.
02:34So there wasn't that much texture going on.
02:36Once again though, it makes a big difference when we apply Sharpening. So this is the sharpened version of the texture defeated image,
02:44of the noise removal image, and this is the sharpened version right here of the noise image, or the image with texture.
02:52So you can see that the sharpened version has brought out a ton of texture.
02:55If we hadn't taken the time to get rid of the texture in the first place, we're going to bring that texture out with Sharpening,
03:01whereas if we take the time to apply some noise removal,
03:05even just a little bit, we're going to get much cleaner results as we are seeing here. And again, you should bear in mind, this isn't perfect.
03:12If I zoom in on this low-contrast area, you can see that we have some pretty wonky edges in this Sharp Grad NR Layer Comp right here,
03:22and that's because Photoshop is going in there and actually finding some weird edges where the gradient is concerned,
03:28where the combination of gradient and noise removal texture is concerned.
03:34So we still do have some weird transitions.
03:36It is an imperfect process, but if you're trying to get rid of the texture, it's heck of a lot better than this version right here.
03:43So remember that apply your Noise Removal first and then apply your Sharpening when you are trying to fix your beautiful photographs.
03:50In the next exercise, we're going to see how you can control the degree of Sharpening that you apply
03:55to an image, using the amount and Radius values. Stay tuned.
04:00
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Understanding amount and radius
00:00In this exercise we are going to see how you can adjust the degree of Sharpening that's applied
00:05to the image using a couple of different numerical values.
00:09Now there are a variety of different filters that are available to you where sharpening is concerned, there is Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen,
00:15High Pass, Emboss, even Gaussian Blur as it turns out.
00:20Now every one of these filters works differently, but most of them sharing in common ad Amount value
00:25and all of them sharing common something analogous to a Radius value.
00:30So we're going to see how those amount and Radius values work.
00:33Well take a look at the specific filters and the application of those filters in a later Chapter.
00:38For now notice that I am still working inside of the Sharp Shapes.PSD image, found inside the 01howitworks folder.
00:45I've got my Standard Layer Comp active, I am going to go ahead hide the Layer Comps palette and I am going to bring out my Layers palette.
00:51I am going to expand my palette so I can see the Layers palette down here.
00:55If you are looking at your Layers palette too, you should see a series of four Smart Objects comp #1, comp #2,
01:00comp #3 and comp #4, as well as this group called the ingredients.
01:05We are most interested in these comps here, these Smart Objects to which I have applied editable Smart Filters.
01:11Now if you're not sure whats going on with Smart Objects and Smart Filters or you have limited experience with them, don't worry.
01:16I am going to show you how they work in detail in the later Chapter, but for now I want you to notice that comp #1 is the sharpened version
01:24of the standard image, whereas, I'll turn it off and turn on comp #2, which is the sharpened version of the gradient image with texture, notice that.
01:32Then comp #3 is a smooth version and sharpened as well of the standard image, and then finally,
01:39we've got comp #4, which is a smooth and sharpened version of the gradient image.
01:44The ones that we are going to work on, we are going to be playing around with comps #1 and #2 here.
01:48So go ahead and turn comp #1 on, and I am going to switch to the full screen mode so that I have a little more room to work.
01:54I am going to twirl open the comp #1 item here by clicking this down pointing arrowhead over here in the right-hand side
02:01of the Layers palette and that reveals my Smart Sharpen filter.
02:05So I have sharpened this image using Smart Sharpen,. To adjust its settings go ahead and double-click on Smart Sharpen
02:11and you'll see right away the Amount and Radius values.
02:14So several other options going on inside this dialog box. For now all we are concerned about is Amount and Radius, and here's how they work.
02:22Amount controls the amount of sharpening you apply. It's pretty easy to understand, pretty easy to get a sense of whats going on. All you do,
02:28if you need more sharpening, you increase the Amount value and that gives you more of a tactile, more of a crunchy fact. And if that's too tactile
02:37or crunchy, as it obviously is here, then lets go ahead and take the Amount value down in order to create a more subtle effect.
02:44For Now I am going to leave the Amount value set to 250% so we can focus on the slightly more difficult to understand option, which is Radius.
02:53It also happens to be the more important option where sharpening is concerned.
02:57Radius defines the size of the halos. Lets go ahead and zoom in on this preview, this in dialog box preview right here, move it down a little bit.
03:05You can see of course that we have a dark halo tracing the dark side of the circle and a light halo tracing the light side of the circle.
03:13The size of that halo is defined by the Radius value.
03:16So right now we have one pixel on the outside and one pixel on the inside.
03:21Now it's called Radius because Photoshop actually goes through and scrubs around every single pixel,
03:27so it's scrubbing in these tiny little circles all over the place and the size of those circles is defined by the Radius value.
03:33But where we are concerned, it ultimately defines the size of the halos.
03:37So I am going to increase this Radius value, lets say to 12 pixels and you'll see
03:41that our halos grow in size to 12 pixels, they're all soft halos.
03:46So notice that the halos are dissipating, or dispersing really, over the course of these 12 pixels.
03:52Now Photoshop tends to use a Gaussian distribution curve for this softness,
03:58and that means that the halos are actually a little bigger than the Radius value.
04:01So these halos are more like 14 pixels in size.
04:04But it doesn't really matter that much exactly how big they are.
04:07We are more interested in the visual effect.
04:10Now in this case I'll go ahead and move my dialog box so we can see this for a moment.
04:14Its not really a sharpening effect at this point; we are getting more of a high-contrast edge effect,
04:20so we are definitely sharpening the heck out of this texture in the background.
04:25But where the big objects are concerned, they don't tend to look so much sharp, just rounded, almost contoured, shaded if you will.
04:33So basically how things work is this way, if you want a true sharpening effect and you want to combine a high Amount value
04:39with a low Radius value and you can go as low as 0.3 pixels.
04:45You can go even lower than that; it's just that the effect really drops off in the 0.1 and 0.2 range.
04:50You really don't see anything until you have this guy cranked up to about 0.3.
04:55But it does make a difference. Notice there. I'll go ahead and zoom in even farther so we can see this at work.
04:59I'll go ahead and click and hold on the in dialog box preview. This is what the effect looks like before, unsharpened,
05:06and this is what the image looks like after this Amount value of 250% and the Radius value of 0.3 pixels is applied.
05:14So we do have a slightly sharp effect applied at this point.
05:18You can also combine a very low Amount value.
05:21Lets go to just like 25% with a very high Radius value, lets say 12 pixels, and that's going to give you more of a heightened contrast effect.
05:31Allbeit, the contrast is going to be applied to the edges but it's not going to look so much sharp as contrast-y.
05:36So I'll go ahead and click OK in order to accept those values, once again they are 25% and 12 pixels, I'll click OK,
05:43and just to give you a sense of what kind of difference this makes, lets go ahead and zoom in just little bit here
05:48and I'll turn off this Smart Sharpen filter by clicking on its eyeball.
05:51This is the unsharpened version of the image; this is the sharpened version of the image.
05:55So slight modification there.
05:58Now lets take a look at combining Amount and Radius with the gradient version of the image.
06:03I am going to turn off the comp #1 Smart Object and turn on the comp #2 Smart Object so that we can see the gradient version of here.
06:11I'll go ahead and open it up as well, expand it so that we can see the Smart Sharpen item.
06:15Lets go ahead and zoom out just a little bit so that we can take in more of the image at a time, and I'll double-click on the Smart Sharpen.
06:22Lets not worry so much about the Amount value.
06:24You notice that it's cranked through the roof right Now it's 500%.
06:27Lets just go ahead and raise that Radius value once again to 12 pixels and click OK order to accept that. And now you can see if we scroll
06:34to the top we have a very, very dark black, thick halo at the top on the inside edge of the serpentine line.
06:42Up there toward the top of the image, we have a white halo on the outside of course, and notice that they are growing slimmer and slimmer
06:49as we work our way down to where we are almost losing the Radius entirely at this point.
06:55Of course, right there we have very little in a way of any halo occurring at all because we have very little in a way of a difference
07:02between the line and its background, and of course the light halo is also dissipating over time and then they switch places
07:10and they flair out once again toward the bottom area of the image.
07:14So that's how it's working. And you might think of the Radius as being a blur because that's what it really is, it's a blurred halo that's been drawn
07:22around the image and that's the way Sharpening works inside a Photoshop.
07:26Photoshop uses blur, specifically Gaussian Blur in most cases, in order to create the effect of sharpening, as strange as that sounds.
07:35So now that's the overview of how Sharpening works inside of Photoshop.
07:40In the next exercises we're going to see how you can gauge the sharpness of an image on screen.
07:45I'll start things off by showing you how you can measure your monitor's resolution.
07:50
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Measuring your screen resolution
00:00Over the course of next few exercises we are going to be discussing how to gauge the sharpness
00:05of an image on a computer monitor, which can be a tricky thing.
00:08For example, consider this. Imagine that you are going to be printing an image, which is not an uncommon scenario,
00:14so you are going to printing the image through an inkjet printer or a laser printer or sending it to a commercial print house for offset reproduction.
00:22Presumably, you are going to be printing the image at a high resolution, something like 267 or 300
00:27or 360 pixels per inch, those just being a few common print resolutions.
00:32All of them are heck of a lot higher than the resolution of your monitor.
00:36Now the reason that makes a difference is because you are going to be effectively shrinking your image when you print it
00:43and that means you are going to be reducing the thickness of your halos and so the halos are going to possibly disappear
00:49and the image is not going to look to sharp when you print it, at all.
00:52For example lets consider this guy right here, which is this by now familiar Sharp Shapes.pst files found inside the O1HowitWorks folder
01:02and I am currently looking at the Standard version of image.
01:04Well compare to the Sharpened version of the image by selecting this layer comp, inside the Layer Comps palette.
01:10I am seeing the image at the 200% zoom ratio, the sharpness is altogether visible on screen. Too much sharpness going on.
01:17However, if I zoom out a little bit to the 100% zoom ratio, the image doesn't look quite so over sharpened.
01:23It's still over sharpened over on this screen; in the video it may look actually pretty darn right
01:27because our videos get resampled down a little bit. But for what it's worth,
01:31here's the difference between the sharpened version and the standard version of the image,
01:36so a more subtle change, not altogether subtle, but more subtle.
01:41Now lets zoom out to the 50% zoom ratio right here and compare the standard version of the image to the sharpened version.
01:48Now on my screen I can see the difference.
01:49In the video possibly you'll see just the slightest difference on earth, and then if I zoom out to the 25% zoom ratio,
01:57this is the difference between Sharpened and Standard.
02:00I dare say in the video you are not going to see any difference whatsoever, and that's what happens,
02:05an image that looks sharp on the computer monitor at the 100% view size, does not end up looking sharp when it's shrunken down for print.
02:14So what you have to do, before you can actually gauge the sharpness of the image, you need to be able to compare the resolution of your output
02:20to the resolution of your monitor and I am going to show you how to do that right now. And of course
02:24that depends on knowing what the resolution of your monitor is.
02:28So I want to show how to measure your screen resolution.
02:31Now contrary to the popular belief, it is not 72 pixel per inch.
02:35That's an absolute myth, as it turns to be based on very, very old information.
02:40Lets go ahead and switch to this slide right here.
02:42The name of this image if you care to open it up, it is available to you.
02:46Its called Screen Resolution.tiff found inside that same O1HowitWorks folder.
02:51I am going to go and Shift+Tab away my palettes and notice
02:54that its telling us the screen resolution measures anywhere from a quarter to one-half the print resolution.
03:00Now this is assuming that you are printing somewhere between 267 - 360 pixels per inch.
03:06So here's the deal, the days of the 72 pixels per inch, PPI Screens are long gone, they are so long gone, people, they are dead, gone dead.
03:14That's back in the days of 1984, that's based on old Macintosh computers.
03:19The original Macs, your Mac 128k, your Plus, your Classic, your SE, those guys, those little box computers that we kNow love and hate,
03:27they used to be 72 pixels per inch, but that was the end of that.
03:31They never were 72 pixels per inch again.
03:34However a lot of applications out there still presume that's a screen resolution iTunes. For example, if you are dragging
03:41and dropping an album cover from Photoshop into iTunes it has to be 72 pixels per inch in order
03:46to look right, and that is based on that old screen resolution.
03:50So its a little bit of a convenience, but its a total myth.
03:53So its what I would call a convenient myth, is basically what it comes down to.
03:57But it has no bearing on today's monitors.
03:59Assuming default settings, modern monitors have resolutions of approximately 96 - 120 pixels per inch,
04:06now that is approximately. They can be lower res or higher res than that and certainly you can change the resolution of your monitor if you want to.
04:14But let us take an example here.
04:16This is a diagram of MacBook Pro Screen, a 17-inch MacBook Pro.
04:20It has a native resolution of 1680X1050 pixels.
04:25So even though, its a 17-inch screen that's a diagonal measurement, that's how all monitor vendors
04:30and computer vendors, that's how they measure the screens.
04:33Presumably it's because the vendor would what are we supposed to measure, are we supposed to measure the width or the height. You kNow
04:38we spilt the difference when we pick the diagonal measurement.
04:41In fact that makes the monitor sound bigger because that's the biggest distance you can possibly measure on the screen.
04:46What I want you to do is take a measuring tape or ruler out and actually measure your screen. And in the case
04:54of this screen, it is 14.4 inches wide and it is 9 inches tall.
04:58Now you want to measure the image-able area, that is the portion of the monitor that can actually display an image on screen.
05:05There is always a little bit of blackness at on the outer edges of monitor, don't measure that.
05:10So this has a resolution of 1680, which is the width in pixels, divided by the width of the screen, 14.4 inches.
05:18So 1680 pixels divided by 14.4 inches gets you 116.7 actually, but I am rounding it up to 117 pixels per inch.
05:28I want you to also to do the same measurement for your height.
05:32So you would take 9 inches divided by 1050 pixels in this case and you get the exact same value 116.7.
05:39Now when you're measuring an LCD screen, you are probably going to get the same measurement in both directions.
05:44When you are measuring a CRT screen, which is a tube, a big monitor with a tube, then its very possible
05:52that your height and width measurements are going to be different.
05:54So the resolutions, that is to say, are going to be different for the height and width.
05:57If that's the case, I want you to select the smallest of the two resolutions and write it down.
06:03So I actually want you to do that right now.
06:05I will tell you what to do with that information in a couple of exercises.
06:09Do the measurement, write the information down, then join me in the next exercise
06:13when we will look at the wacky world of zoom ratios inside Photoshop.
06:19
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Using reliable zoom ratios
00:00Now based on the previous exercise, those of you who watched it, you might figure that given that your screen resolution is somewhere
00:07in the neighborhood of one quarter to one half of the output resolution, the resolution at which you're going to print an image,
00:14then you could just zoom out in order to gauge how your halos are going to look,
00:19in order to gauge the sharpness of the image. And that's true to an extent.
00:23But you have to be careful when zooming an image, and I am going to give you a sense of why you have
00:28to be careful with the help of this whacky image right here.
00:32I know it's a little bit unpleasant to look at and I wouldnt stare it your image because its going to burn your retina,
00:37but what we have is a series of parallel lines, hence the name of the image, it's Parallel lines.PSD.
00:42It's found inside the 01 How It Works folder, and its a series of parallel lines that are formed by a combination
00:49of four pixel wide black lines followed by two pixel wide white lines, and they're alternating of course.
00:56Now currently I am looking at the image at the 400% zoom ratio.
00:59What were going to do though is were going to go ahead and crop the movie so that we can see these lines nice and tight.
01:07Alright. Now I'll just narrate where we are in terms of zoom ratios.
01:10Now anything above a 100% is perfectly fine.
01:14Its not going to throw you off, as long as its in the even multiple of 100%.
01:18So 100%, 200%, 300%, etc. are going to work just fine for you.
01:22You're going to have an accurate view of the image, albeit you'll have a really big mass of pixels.
01:28Its when you start going below 100% the things get problematic.
01:31So here we are at 300%, the lines are still very uniform as you can see.
01:36Here is 200%.
01:38Everything looks hunky-dory at this point right here.
01:40I am going to go ahead and scroll the image over a little bit, but the pixels look just fine, the lines look fine, that is to say.
01:47Heres the 100% view, things are still holding up very nicely,
01:50meaning that the widths of all the black lines is uniform and the width of all the white lines is uniform.
01:56OK. Now I am going to press, I am pressing by the way, Control + minus or Command + minus on the Macintosh side in order to zoom out.
02:03If I press Command + minus again, or Control + minus here on the PC, here is the 66.7% zoom ratio.
02:10It's a terrible zoom ratio, and the reason is because it drops pixels.
02:15Photoshop just goes ahead and abandons pixels as it's rendering the screen.
02:19So instead of trying to resolve the entire image to this new zoom ratio, it just goes ahead and drops out pixels that it can't use.
02:27As a result, in the case of this particular image, we have a gigantic distortion midway
02:33through the image over here on the right hand side of the image.
02:35It suddenly looks totally wrong.
02:37We just have this weird disconnect between the right side and left side here.
02:42that's not really part of the image, but it's showing up. The way it's going to resolve itself when you're looking at a continuous tone photograph,
02:49as you're going to see sharp, sometimes jagged transitions where sharp jagged transitions do not exist.
02:56So if anything the image is going to look sharper than it actually at 66.7%.
03:02Alright. If I press Control + minus or Command + minus again to zoom out to the 50% zoom ratio, everything is one again hunky-dory,
03:10and the reason is that Photoshop is now performing an interpolation, what's knows as the bicubic interpolation,
03:17meaning that its averaging the pixels in the real image in order to create this 50% view.
03:23Now 66.7 isnt the only bad one, everything between 50% and 100% is bad.
03:30So everything from 50.1% to 99.9% has problems and you should not believe it.
03:37So you can believe 100%, you can believe 50%, you can't believe anything in between.
03:42Now lets press Control + minus or Command + minus.
03:44Again, this is 33%.
03:46Can you believe it? I don't think so. Something has gone terribly wrong with the right half of the image, it's turned solid black.
03:53Meanwhile, Photoshop is doing a decent job over here on the left hand side of the image.
03:58Again, were going to see jag a transitions and sharp edges where none exist inside the actual photograph.
04:05Now zoom out another stop here, another increment to 25%, its another good bicubic interpolation view of the image.
04:13You cant trust anything between 25% and 50%, though you can trust those two.
04:19So we got 100, that's good, we got 50 that's good, we got 25, that's good and anything in between those guys, is bad.
04:27Heres the next zoom out.
04:29This is 16.7%, also bad, and then zoom out again to 12.5%, that's good, and then we start getting so small that is not very helpful.
04:39So every other, if you're pressing Control + minus to zoom out or Command + minus on the Mac to zoom out or Control + plus
04:45or Command + plus to zoom in, then every other increment is good.
04:50So starting at 12.5%, I'll press Control + plus or Command + plus to zoom in, we've got bad, we've got good, we've got bad, we've good, we've got bad,
05:00as witnessed over here on the right hand side of the image, we have good at 100%.
05:05So just something to bear in mind, some of the zoom ratios, 12.5%, 25%, 50%, and 100%, are good,
05:11and then even multiples of 100%, 200%, 300%, and 400%, those are good as well.
05:17But anything in between 12.5, 25, 50, and 100, consider those absolutely 100% unreliable where gauging, sharpening in Photoshop is concerned.
05:29
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Calculating the actual print size
00:00So now that we know about the reliable zoom ratios and we know what the resolution of our screen is,
00:06what do we do with that information? Well, I am going to show you how to use that information in order to gauge the sharpness of an image
00:12and proper sharpening settings to apply, the best Amount and Radius values for example. And we will see that inside of this image,
00:19Stunning 12x8.JPG found inside the 01HowitWorks folder.
00:23You may recall that, this is that wonderful image from photographer Alexander Alexis that already looks sharp enough;
00:30we just want to make sure that it weathers the storm for commercial output and that it looks nice and sharp on the page.
00:36So what I am going to do first, I am going to investigate what my print resolution is. I am going to go up to the Image menu and I am going
00:43to choose the Image Size Command or I can press Ctrl+Alt+I or Command+ Option+I on the Mac and we can see that if set this image to print
00:50at 12" wide x 8" tall and I have enough pixels in order for the resolution to be 267 pixels per inch, which is one of the standard print resolutions.
01:02There are no magic numbers where print resolutions are concerned, but 267 is based on twice 133 LPI Halftone Screen, that's where this comes from.
01:13It is not really necessary that you know that.
01:15It is just that 267 and 300 and 360 are some common print resolutions out there, but you can print at anything from about 220 PPI up
01:25and get some very sharp imagery out of most printers.
01:30So meanwhile let's say I am working on a 17 inch MacBook Pro. It is fairly hilarious that I am doing that given
01:36that I am running Windows Vista, but still it is a minor problem.
01:40I am working on a 17" MacBook Pro and it has a resolution of a 117 pixels/inch. So what we would do is, we will whip on our calculators right,
01:50you must have one sitting around some place, and you would divide 267, so take the number 267, and divide it by 117
01:58and you will get the number 2.28. That is going to be our multiplier.
02:02So 2.28. Just scribble that down, if you have already figured out what the resolutions of your screen is,
02:08it may be something entirely different. Why then, divide 267 by it.
02:12so maybe your screen resolution is 102 pixels/inch, you divide 167 by 102, do the math, write down the multiplier number on a sheet of paper.
02:21Then go ahead and cancel out. We do not want to change the resolution of this image, this is what we want to do instead. Go up to the Image menu
02:27and choose Duplicate, and I want you to call this Actual print size
02:33because this guy is really going to represent the printed size of the image.
02:36Go ahead and click on the OK button, then I want you to go up to the Image Size command, so this is a separate version of the image,
02:44go up to the Image Size command here and I want you to make sure that Resample Image is turned on.
02:49Make sure that Bicubic is selected (best for smooth gradients), make sure that Constraint Proportions is turned on.
02:55Scale Styles doesn't matter, but you might as well turn on all of your check boxes.
02:59Then I want you to change the Resolution value, in my case to 117. Now you might change it to something else, like I said
03:06if your screen resolution is 102, change it to that.
03:09So go ahead and change the Resolution value to the resolution of your monitor and then click OK. And then I want you to zoom the image
03:17into the 100% zoom ratio. So press Ctrl + plus, or Command + plus on the Mac, until you see a 100% up here inside of the title bar.
03:25This is the size at which your image will actually print.
03:29Now let us go back to the other image, the Stunning 12x8.JPG file. Go ahead and select it, and I want you to go to the View menu and I want you
03:37to choose this command right there, Print Size, and it will zoom the image out to what Photoshop thinks is the size at which the image is really going
03:45to print. But notice how these two images here, they fairly differ from each other.
03:50Your actual print size, which is the real deal my friends, is different from Photoshop's version because Photoshop, in this case, is wrong.
03:59Why is Photoshop wrong? Because Photoshop is assuming the resolution of your screen is 72 pixels/inch. Now you could set Photoshop straight,
04:07by going to the Units and Rulers section of the Preferences dialog box and changing the Screen Resolution value. I could change that to 117 pixels/inch
04:15and then Photoshop would get the size right. The problem is that's not going to be a good zoom ratio for you.
04:20So it's going to be of no use where sharpening is concerned. The upshot is where gauging sharpening is concerned,
04:26this Print Size command here is of no use to you whatsoever. Having interpolated the image, we now have an accurate picture of the image.
04:35I want you to go back to it, the actual print size version, and we're going to use this version of the image to gauge the best Amount and Radius values,
04:43and we're going to use those values to sharpen the big version of the image, the Stunning 12x8.jpg file,
04:50and we're going to do that in the very next exercise.
04:55
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Gauging the ideal sharpening settings
00:00 In this exercise we are going to gauge the ideal Amount and Radius values by which to go ahead and sharpen our image for output at 267 pixels per inch.
00:13 I have opened two images; one that I created in the previous exercise. It is called actualprintsize.JPG.
00:19 If you weren't with me in that exercise., you can go ahead and open that image from the 01HowItWorks folder.
00:24 I also have opened the Stunning 12x8.JPG file.
00:29 We saw in the previous exercise how the command Print Size under the View menu is a crock. This is the actual print size that we calculated
00:38 by down sampling the image, using the Image Size command we downsampled the image to the screen resolution,
00:44 which I am saying is 117 pixels per inch, that is what we are imagining for now.
00:49 So Now let's go ahead and gauge using this actualprintsize.JPG file, we can now gauge accurately what Amount and Radius values we want to use.
00:59 So what I would like you to do, even though we havent talked about this command in detail yet,
01:03 go up to the Filter menu, choose the Sharpen command and then choose Smart Sharpen and this got it right there
01:09 and that brings up the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
01:12 Now I am going to go ahead and zoom up the preview inside the dialog box to 200%, so that we can see it up close and personal
01:19 and so that it weathers the storm to video here, so that you can see what I am doing.
01:23 I am going to take this Radius value down to 0.7 pixels let's say, and I think the Radius value looks really great.
01:32 I think this Radius value looks nice and sharp and I will also take the Amount value from 250 down to a 150%.
01:40 So this is the before version of the image and this is the after version of the image, a nice little bit of sharpening applied.
01:48 Now it may seem like we are going a little bit overboard like we are over-sharpening the image.
01:53 Bear in mind that when you print an image, it goes through a little bit of a softening process,
01:58 so you do have to bump up that sharpening Amount value.
02:02 So you want a Radius value that looks good on screen, but then you want to take the Amount value
02:06 up about 50% higher that you might normally want to do it.
02:09 So if a 100% looks good, which it typically does, then you would want to go ahead and take it to 150 is it what I am saying.
02:17 0.7 looks pretty good to me.
02:18 You can vary it anywhere from about 0.4 or 0.5 up to about 0.9, any value
02:25 in that area would look pretty good, but I want you to write these values down.
02:28 So 150% and 0.7 and then click OK.
02:33 Now you may recall our multiplier from the previous exercise we took 267 pixels per inch, which is the resolution at which we want
02:41 to output the image, and we divided it by 117 pixels per inch, which is the resolution of our monitor, lets say our imagine monitor,
02:50 which is 17 inch MacBook Pro screen and we came up with a multiplier of 2.28.
02:56 We would now take that multiplier and multiply it, not times the Amount value, we will leave the Amount value alone, it will say 150%,
03:03 but we will multiply the Radius value because we need the halos to thicken up in order to weather the reduction,
03:09 in order to look good when we reduce the image in print.
03:13 So now lets switch over to this image right here, Stunning 12x8.JPG, which is the actual print version of the image,
03:20 I will go ahead and zoom in to the 100% zoom ratio, so that we can see the image nice and big on screen.
03:25 I will press the F key to switch to the full screen mode for a moment here and I will focus in on the eyes.
03:31 Of course for those of you who are photographers already know this,
03:34 but when you are sharpening portrait photographs, you want to keep an eye on those eyes.
03:38 The eyes are the most important things because that's the portion of the image that has to remain in focus.
03:44 We might as well check out things like the nostril and the eyebrows as well and a little bit of the hair that will help us out.
03:49 Now I am going to go up to the Filter menu, actually what I am going to do is I am going to press Ctrl+Alt+F or Command+Option+F on the Mac in order
03:56 to repeat the last filter that I applied and I am going to do the math.
04:01 The Amount value is set on 150%, that's great, we want to leave it alone.
04:05 We are going to take that 0.7 Radius value, get out to your calculator once again, multiply it times the multiplier.
04:12 So 0.7 times 2.28 in our case and of course that's based on the math that you have done for your own monitor.
04:20 If your screen has a different resolution, you would use a different multiplier, you may recall that from the previous exercise.
04:25 So in my case though, assuming 2.28, we have 0.7 times 2.28 and it us gives us approximately 1.6 as a Radius value, 1.6 pixels and then we'll go ahead
04:37 and click OK, in order to accept that value, and this is the sharpened version of the image.
04:44 Now if I go ahead and zoom in just another click here to 200% so that you can see the things nicely in the video.
04:50 This is the before version of the image, which looked just fine, which is really actually pretty much sharp enough, and then this is the after version
04:58 of the image, which is over-sharpened, I would say. It's a little bit too tactile, a little bit too brittle
05:04 but actually it's going to look really good when we print the image.
05:08 Just to give you a sense I will go ahead and zoom the image out, not to the 66.7% zoom ratio because that is going to give you bad transitions,
05:17 but rather you want to take it out to the 50% zoom ratio in order to gauge that sharpness.
05:22 This is the before version, this is the after version.
05:26 Now on your video you are probably not seeing much of a difference whatsoever.
05:30 However, if you are working along with me on your screen you are going to see a slight difference and its going to be just enough
05:36 to make the image pop on the page and it's going to weather that storm, it's going to look absolutely great,
05:41 it's not going to look overly soft, the way it would normally.
05:43 It's going to look nice and snappy, which is what you want.
05:46 So what this is all about, this entire project has been about trying to preserve the sharpness that you see on screen when you go to print.
05:55 Alright. That's it for this Chapter. In the next Chapter we are going to be talking about when you sharpen. Do you sharpen at the beginning
06:02 of the process, do you sharpen in the middle some place, do you sharpen at the end? And the answer to all of those questions as it turns out is yes.
06:09 Join me in the next Chapter and find out why.
06:13
06:13
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2. When to Sharpen
Everyone knows you sharpen last (and everyone is wrong)
00:00 According to conventional wisdom, you sharpen an image once and only once, at the end
00:04 after an image is completely finished, right before or possibly after, the conversion from RGB to CMYK.
00:12 After all each pass of the Sharpening filter is destructive and sharpening an image multiple times,
00:18 which amounts to sharpening on top of sharpening, is madness.
00:22 But as is so often in the case, the unconventional approach is not only a bit more exciting, it also happens
00:28 to be better. Much better. Much, much better.
00:32 Sharpening at the end implies that you are merely sharpening for the printer, but there are other reasons to sharpen,
00:38 to compensate for the capture process, for de-mosaicing, for anti-aliasing, for interpolation
00:44 and if you are truly skilled, you'll sharpen the highlight areas and direct your viewer's attention.
00:49 Simply put, you sharpen for source, for detail, for effect and for output, all in separate nondestructive passes.
00:58 So if you were to ask me, should I sharpen at the beginning or in the middle or at the end? My answer would be, 'Yes, here's how it works'.
01:07
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Understanding the conventional sharpening workflow
00:00So I was saying in live action introduction, I believe in a flexible sharpening workflow.
00:05I believe you can sharpen at different phases in the development of an image and you want to keep your sharpening non-destructive if possible.
00:13But before we go down that, before we see the more flexible sharpening approach, I want to explain the conventional approach that suggests
00:20that you should sharpen once and only once at the end of the cycle and that sharpening is usually applied as a flat effect.
00:27So I'll walk through the conventional workflow inside of this exercise. I'll demonstrate it in the next exercise and then look a sense
00:35of what's wrong with it after that and some better approaches as well.
00:38So I am working inside of a slide called 'Conventional Workflow' that's found inside of the 02WhentoSharpen folder and we are going
00:47to examine the basically the four big broad steps here.
00:52The first step, I'll reveal it, is to edit the image, to apply whatever edits you are going to apply to an image.
01:00So perform any and all edits in the image's native colors space, which is most likely RGB.
01:06So you are probably going to be starting with a red, green, blue image as opposed CMYK
01:10but you never know. Everybody's workflow is a little different in that regard.
01:13Assuming best practices, your composition will contain non-destructive edits applied as independent layers.
01:19So of course you want to keep your modifications as non-destructive as possible, use adjustment layers, use Smart Objects, that sort of thing.
01:27Next, you would flatten the image before you go to print it.
01:31Now this assumes that you've already saved all layers, alpha channels, paths,
01:36Layer Comps, everything else in the PSD format, the native Photoshop document format.
01:41I suggest you turn off Maximize File Compatibility.
01:45There is this check box that comes up as you'll see in the next exercise, and what that does is that embeds a flat version
01:51of the image inside the larger file, which can increase the size of the document by a third or a half. It's a big waste of space,
01:58especially if you are not going to be doing anything with that file aside from just saving your modification.
02:04You are not going to be directly importing that file into Premiere or InDesign or one of the other Adobe products.
02:10So just go ahead and turn it off in order to minimize the file size, it's not going to hurt anything,
02:14you can was always turn it on it later and then go ahead choose Layer, Flatten Image.
02:18So this again first thing you do before you flatten the image, as you go ahead and save it in the PSD file format or update the file
02:26by using the Save command, then you choose Layer, Flatten Image. Then you turn right around, after you have flattened that image,
02:33after you have no layers left, you turn right around and go ahead and choose the Save As command and save the flat image as a separate TIFF file.
02:40That way you don't overwrite any of the stuff you did in the layered composition.
02:44The next step is to resample the image. So this assumes by the way that we are going to print, that we are going to printing the image.
02:50So you want to resample it, you'd use the Image Size command under the Image menu, with the Resample Image check box turned
02:57on to adjust the dimensions and resolution of the printed image.
03:01So you are trying to basically specify that you want to print the image at 8x10, for example, at 300 pixels per inch, something long those lines.
03:11Now I suggest you downsample, which is to say you reduce the size of the image only.
03:16There is no benefit to upsampling for print.
03:18There is no sense in adding pixels and I will show you what I mean in the next exercise, but if you want downsample, that's fine.
03:25If you are thinking of upsampling, don't. Just go ahead and turn off the Resample Image check box and then enter your new dimensions.
03:32If it turns out to be a low resolution image, fine, you didn't have the pixels to work
03:36within the first place, don't make them up, it doesn't do you any good.
03:39Then finally the next step would be to sharpen and convert the image.
03:44So right at the end, after you have done all this other work,
03:47and again this is the conventional sharpening workflow, this is not the workflow I necessarily recommend.
03:51It does work to a limited extent, but it's not the best approach.
03:55Now you would apply the desired amount of sharpening to counteract the softness introduced by re-sampling.
04:01When you downsample an image, you typically soften the image a little bit.
04:04There are ways around that inside the Image Size dialog box. I don't recommend them though.
04:07I just would stick with bicubic interpolation and then apply your own sharpening after the fact
04:13and you also want apply that sharpening to anticipate the print resolution.
04:16You need to anticipate the fact that the image is going to become smaller when it's goes to print.
04:20If the image is bound for commercial reproduction that is, process color output, then you convert it to CMYK. That's the only time you convert it
04:29to CMYK by the way. You do not convert to see CMYK if you having Inkjet printer or a laser printer or any other local device,
04:36only if you are handling it off to a commercial print house and of course you are specifically outputting the process colors, cyan, magenta,
04:43yellow and black. And even then some print houses will allow you to submits RGB images and they'll take care of conversion of CMYK.
04:51But when in doubt you'd want to convert it to CMYK or talk to your print house.
04:55So that's the conventional approach.
04:57I am going to demonstrate the conventional approach, have no fear, in the very next exercise.
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Flattening and saving to TIFF
00:00So let's take a tour through the conventional sharpening workflow. I am working with something of an unconventional image as it turns out,
00:08which is begging for an unconventional approach, but I have to tell you something,
00:12I would argue that any image out there, any composition, is an unconventional composition.
00:18They all require different approaches, which is why I think the one-size-fit-all approach,
00:23the conventional approach, really doesn't work all that well.
00:26But anyway, let's try it out here.
00:27I am working with this holiday card and it's called Holiday Card 2007.PSD found inside the 02_when_to_sharpen folder.
00:37This is holiday card that I sent out, I made up and I sent out to celebrate my children and how they might one day become presidents, don't you know.
00:45So here it is.
00:46It's a series of layers that are going on inside of the Layers palette.
00:50So let's say I decide I want to print it at 4x7, which is what I want to do,
00:54and I am going to print it 2-up and I am going to take it to an inkjet printer.
00:57So I am not going to run a CMYK conversion on it but I am going to do all of that other conventional stuff.
01:02Let's see how it works.
01:03Well, the first thing, after I've gone about compiling all my layers and everything else,
01:07I would make sure that I've saved all of my changes.
01:11Now let's say, I haven't saved this image once for some reason because I want to show you that Maximize Compatibility thing.
01:17I'll go up to the File menu; I'll choose the Save As command in order to demonstrate sort of a first save here.
01:22I am in the 02_when_to_sharpen folder. You won't see this file that I am about to create.
01:28So I'll just call it 'First time save' or something along those lines, .PSD.
01:33I definitely want to save my Alpha Channels but of course, make sure those checkboxes are on and also make sure,
01:39by the way, that you don't see a little yellow warning.
01:42That tells you that something is turned off.
01:45So make sure you have all of the checkboxes that you need turned on. You don't want As a Copy turned on, but you do want Alpha Channels, Layers,
01:52Annotations, and Spot Colors if you got them. Your ICC Profile, definitely. You probably want to work with the Lower Case Extension.
02:00Then you click Save. Make sure that you are saving to the native PSD format right there.
02:05Click Save and then depending on your Preference settings, but most likely, you'll get this Photoshop Format Options warning right there.
02:13If you worked through some of my other series inside the lynda.com Online Training Library and you don't get this warning, don't worry about it.
02:19It just means that I've told you to turn it off in the past because this Maximize Compatibility checkbox, I don't like it at all.
02:26I want you to turn it off. It just blows up the size of the file and again, unless you are going to be exporting this file for use
02:33in another application, for example InDesign. Or Photoshop Lightroom cannot see layers, so if you're using Lightroom
02:40you need to have it turned on. But if you're not using Lightroom or InDesign or Premiere or one of those other programs,
02:46there's no reason to have it turned on. If you are just using the layered composition inside Photoshop,
02:52and the Bridge- the Bridge can see layers- save yourself some hardrive space and expense, of course,
02:57because if you are gobbling up hard drives, you'll need to buy more.
03:00Then click OK in order to save that image to disk.
03:04So now we've saved the changes. Now let's go about flattening the file.
03:09Now I could try to print the file as it is, with all of its layers intact and at it's present size
03:15and the whole thing, but I would be wasting a lot of time.
03:17I would make Photoshop have to flatten image on the fly. I would make the printer have to deal with too many pixels essentially
03:25as it's downsampling and you might as well do it manually and save all of your hardware a lot of work.
03:31And normally you have your hardware do work but in this case, let's go ahead and save some time and some complexity by going
03:37up to the Layer menu and choosing the Flatten Image command.
03:40Now the thing is this will flatten the image. I will go ahead and choose the command and you see that it does flatten away all of the layers.
03:46Now be very careful! Don't be going up to the File menu and choosing the Save command because you'll ruin all of those layers.
03:52You are not going to get rid of any channels or paths that you have.
03:56So if you go to the Channels palette, you'll still see that in the case of this image, I've got some alpha channels set up and alpha channels,
04:01you have to delete one at a time in order to get rid of them,
04:04which is why I came up with this other thing here, I'll go ahead and undo that modification there.
04:10Let's switch back to the Layers palette. I press Control-Z or Command-Z on Mac in in order to undo the flattening.
04:15I've got this JavaScript and I'll go up to the File menu. I am going to choose Scripts and I am going to choose this guy right there, Megaflatten.
04:21Now you are probably not going to see Megaflatten in your Script menu unless you actually work through my Photoshop CS2- it's an older title-
04:29but it is Photoshop CS2 Actions and Automation, which is part of the lynda.com Online Training Library.
04:35It includes a bunch of scripts that are actually really super helpful and one of them is Megaflatten.
04:40So even if you don't want to watch the series, you can just go over there if you are a premium member and you can download the files
04:46and you can install all of the scripts according to my instructions.
04:50This one, if you choose Megaflatten, it not only flattens out the layers- notice that it tells you what it's going to do-
04:55it's going to create a duplicate image with no layers, Layer Comps, channels, paths or guides.
05:00So there is a lot of advantages here; it get rids of all of the stuff that you don't need but it also creates a duplicate image which is great.
05:06Click Yes. There is no reason to click No. It's not going to hurt you at all.
05:09You create a duplicate image so now there is no way that you can accidentally save over the original,
05:14which I have to say, is a brilliant thing. Thank you very much.
05:18So it should do you some good if you are going to work this way.
05:21Then go up to the File menu, choose Save As- very important step here to save your image of course.
05:26Choose Save As and now we are going to go and save this image to the TIFF file format
05:30because that's the closest thing to a lossless format that we have for flat images.
05:35So go ahead and choose TIFF and I might as well call this something like, I'll change the name
05:41to Holiday 2007.TIFF. As a Copy should be off. These guys should be on.
05:48Click Save. You'll get this dialog box right here.
05:51Make sure Image Compression is set to LZW.
05:54That's actually a really good thing. It applies lossless compression so it doesn't hurt the image. And then leave the Pixel Order alone,
06:01it should be Interleaved and then Byte Order is totally up to you. It does not matter.
06:05If you are working on a PC and you set it to Macintosh, or you working on a Mac and you set it to PC,
06:0999% of programs out there are going to support the file no matter what.
06:12Then go ahead and click OK and you've now gone ahead and saved a flat version of that file.
06:19So the next step is to resample the image to define the dimensions and resolution at which you want to print this photograph here.
06:27Because that's a little intricate and it involves the downsample versus upsample thing that I was telling you about,
06:33I am going to show you how to perform this step in the next exercise.
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Downsampling (and why you shouldn't upsample)
00:00Alright, so here we are in the midst of the conventional sharpening workflow.
00:05The next step is to resample the image for print.
00:08So I now in the case of this image right here and by the way,
00:11I am working in a catch up document called Flattened holiday.TIFF that's found inside the 02_when_to_sharpen folder.
00:17If you are still working in your version of the document, that's fine, just keep working along.
00:22I just provide this so that people can catch up if they want to and you may recall that this the 2007,
00:27so last year version of my family holiday card right here.
00:32I now need to sample it down so that it becomes four inches wide by seven inches tall. That's what I am going for.
00:39So I'll go up to the Image menu, and I'll choose the Image Size command or I can press Ctrl+Alt+I or Command+Option+I
00:45on the Mac in order to bring up the Image Size dialog box.
00:49Now the first thing that I want to do is I want to turn on the Resample Image checkbox.
00:53So make sure that's turned on.
00:54Also make sure that Constrain Proportions is turned on.
00:57We don't care about Scale Styles because we are working with a flattened version of the image so we don't have any layer styles
01:04but might as well leave it turned on too since it's a best practice.
01:08Now I want to change all of these values: Width, Height and Resolution.
01:12So I am hard-pressed to know whether I am downsampling or upsampling.
01:16I was telling you that downsampling is good, contrary to what you might think.
01:19Downsampling is good because getting rid of pixels froces Photoshop to smooth away noise inside the image, to smooth away rough transitions. That ends
01:29up creating a cleaner version of the image whereas upsampling just adds unnecessary pixels.
01:35That adds pixels that don't do you any good; they are just weird transitional averaging pixels because Photoshop doesn't know any better;
01:41it can't invent detail out of whole cloth and as a result you get more complexity but you don't get more information.
01:47So anyway, how do I know that I am going the right route? Well, go ahead and enter your values for starter.
01:52I know this one is to be four inches wide, seven inches tall and I also know that I want to print at a resolution of 360 pixels per inch.
01:59Now that's pretty high. The reason I am going a little high is because I've got text inside of my document.
02:05So any time you have high-contrast art work, whether it's graphic art of text, you want to go on the high side of your Resolution value.
02:14So I could even go higher than this if I want to but I'll stick with 360.
02:18Now how do I know that I've downsampled or upsampled? I might have upsampled, never know.
02:22Well, you go up here to your Pixel Dimensions and you note the values.
02:26If the first value is lower than the second value, which it is in our case, then you are downsampling and that's a good thing.
02:32So it's 10.4 megabytes, that's what it's going to be. It was, before I brought the dialog box up,
02:37it was 18.5 megabytes, which is bigger, so I am downsampling.
02:42What if you look at it and you notice you are upsampling?
02:44For example, let's say I really want to print this at 12 inches wide and 21 inches tall, sort of almost a poster.
02:50I still want to go with the resolution of 360 pixels per inch, that's my preference anyway.
02:55Then I look at the Pixel Dimensions and I see gosh, it's going to be 93.4 megabytes.
03:00Now that's really big, it used to be 18.5 megabytes, I'd say that it's upsample.
03:06Now you might think, wow!
03:07Almost 100 megabytes. That's going to be a great file, a super high resolution file.
03:13Not really- you are just adding a bunch of pixels.
03:15They are not doing you any good; they are meaningless pixels, so you are just adding complexity.
03:19If you see this happen, turned off the Resample Image checkbox so that you are not re-sampling,
03:25you are not changing the actual number of pixels inside the image.
03:28Then enter your desired Width and Height values and it's going to tell you 'Hey, your resolution is only going
03:34to be 160 pixels per inch, buddy, that's the best I can do for you.'
03:38That's OK. That it is preferable to print low-resolution art work than to add a bunch of pixels that don't do you any good whatsoever.
03:47I have problems getting that across to people; a lot of people don't believe me.
03:50Do the work yourself. You are going to find out that those new pixels that you would create,
03:53if you raise that Resolution value are meaningless; they are just junk pixels.
03:58That's not what we want to do; we want to go ahead and take this value down.
04:00I am going to go and turn the Resample Image checkbox back on, I'll take the Width value down to four inches, the Height value down to seven inches.
04:07I am going to raise the Resolution about to 360 pixels per inch and then I am going to click on OK in order to downsample the image and there it is.
04:17Now there was one option that I skipped there.
04:19I am going to undo that modification and bring that dialog box back up by pressing Ctrl+Alt+I
04:24or Command+Option+I on the a Mac. Let's enter those values again.
04:274, tab down here to 360, so we've got 4, 7, 360, we know we are downsampling.
04:33What about our interpolation options? Should you be working with Bicubic, you definitely don't want Bilinear
04:40or Nearest Neighbor, those guys are bad for our purposes here.
04:43But do you want Bicubic, which is best for smooth gradients supposedly?
04:47Do you want to Bicubic Smoother, which is best for enlargement- but I am telling you, you never want to do that.
04:52You don't want to adjust enlarge for a print; you sometimes want to enlarge in order to make layers match each other but that's all.
04:57What do you want Bicubic Sharper, which is best for reduction, which is what we are going to do here.
05:02So naturally if you reading this and you believe Adobe, you would think I want Bicubic Sharper.
05:06Of course, I want to sharpen the image anyway because I need to account for the downsampling, which introduce the softness, so this is the way to go.
05:13No, it's not the way to go.
05:14You want to work with best for smooth gradients.
05:16This is nuts, this is just utter and complete hogwash by the way.
05:20Bicubic Smoother is great if you have a very noisy image, and you want to get rid of the noise.
05:24Bicubic Sharper is great if you don't have any noise inside the image whatsoever and you don't anticipate applying any more sharpening
05:31to the image, which we are going to do, and actually sharpening the image manually is better way to work.
05:36So let's just go away with what is the best option and what's the default option as well, it has nothing do with gradients, which is Bicubic.
05:43So those are the settings that I want you to apply, now go ahead and click on the OK button in order to resample the image once again
05:51and this is dramatically reduced version of the image actually.
05:55It's quite a bit smaller; it is now ready to print.
05:58The only thing that's left to do, given the conventional sharpening workflow, the only thing that's left to do is
06:03to apply some sharpening settings and we are going to do that in the next exercise.
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Understanding last-step sharpening
00:00The final stage of the conventional sharpening workflow is to actually apply sharpening to the image and then convert it to CMYK if necessary.
00:09I am working with the re-sampled version of that flattened holiday.TIFF file that I opened in the previous exercise and then took
00:15down to four inches wide, by seven inches tall, by 360 pixels per inch.
00:21In order to gauge the perfect sharpening settings, we are going to resample the image down to our screen resolution,
00:27which my screen resolution is 117 pixels per inch, that's what I am pretending,
00:31based on the information that I gave you in the previous Chapter.
00:35So here's what we are going to do.
00:36I am going to press Ctrl+Alt+I, or Command+Option+I on the Mac, to bring up the Image Size dialog box
00:42and you can see how this image is currently sized to 4x7x360 per my instructions in the previous exercise.
00:50I have Resample Image turned on, I have Constrain Proportions turned on. I am going to change that Resolution value to 117 to fit the resolution
00:59of a 17 inch MacBook Pro, which is the kind of computer that I actually have sitting next to me. That's why I am using
01:05that even though I am working with, of course, Windows Vista here.
01:08Then I'll click OK in order to make that modification.
01:12I'll go ahead and zoom the image into the 100% view size right here.
01:15Actually, I'll take it up to 200% so that we can see it in video quite nicely.
01:20Shift-Tab away my palette so I have a little more width to work with on screen.
01:23Now I am going to go up to the Filter menu and by the way, it's not necessary that every time you sharpen an image that you try to gauge it
01:31for your screen resolution. It's just good to know that you have that option available to you.
01:36As you work more and more with sharpening, as you become more and more familiar with it,
01:40you'll be able to come up with settings that work for you on a regular basis.
01:43But for now as we are learning how this tools work, it's a good habit to get into it and again, if you know your screen's resolution,
01:49you know it to be 102 pixels per inch, for example, then go ahead and enter that into the Image Size dialog box.
01:55Now I am going to go up to the Filter menu, I am going to choose Sharpen and I am going to choose Smart Sharpen since we have experience
02:01with that command, and I am going to come up with some settings that I think work really well for this image.
02:07Where the screen is concerned, I would say something along the lines of the value of 90% work pretty nicely for this image and maybe a radius of 0.6
02:15and that ends up giving us something that looks nice and sharp on screen.
02:21So this is before, keep your eye out here on Sammy on the far left side of the screen.
02:26This is the before version of Sammy, the unsharpened version.
02:28This is the after version of Sammy.
02:30So it's just a little bit sharper, he is not over-sharpened; it's something of a subtle effect.
02:35I'll go ahead and zoom, I'm inside the dialog box.
02:38Let's move it, zoom it on Max inside the dialog box.
02:40This is the before version of Max, when I click and hold, this is the after version of Max.
02:45Now I was telling you that when you are sharpening for print, you want to go about 50% higher than the Amount value that looks good to you.
02:53So I would take this Amount value up to 140% for example.
02:57And that is just a general rule of thumb. If you want to take it higher or lower than that by 10 or 20% that's fine.
03:02So let's say, I want to go with 140% and 0.6.
03:06That looks good at the screen resolution.
03:08So I'll go ahead and write down those settings; 140 and 0.6.
03:12Obviously, I am going to have to run the multiplier on the Radius value.
03:15Let's go ahead and cancel out because we don't really want to do anything with this version of the image; it's just the test.
03:22I'll go ahead and undo the effects of the Image Size command by choosing from the Edit menu, Undo Image Size or I can press Ctrl+Z,
03:28Command+Z on a Mac to restore the 360 pixel per inch version of the image.
03:34Now let's go ahead and run our multiplier.
03:37Now I am going to have to do a little bit of a calculation here.
03:39I'll get my calculator and I want to take 360, which is the actual resolution of this image, and I want to divide by 117,
03:50which is the monitor resolution, and I come up with 3.0769, blah, blah, blah. And then I will multiply that times the Radius value.
04:02So times .6, and that ends up giving us a radius of 1.8.
04:07I am going to bring back my palettes actually and switch over to the full screen mode for a second here
04:12so that I have a little more latitude where moving this image as concerned.
04:16Then I'll go up to the Filter menu, and again to Sharpen and Smart Sharpen.
04:21This time I'll go ahead and enter the settings that I know that work well for this particular image.
04:26So let's go ahead and move Sammy on screen here.
04:28I'll enter an Amount value of 140% and then I'll tab down to Radius and raise it to 1.8 per my multiplier.
04:35For Now I am going to leave Remove set to Gaussian Blur; we'll worry about that stuff later when we take a look at the tools.
04:41Just to give you a sense, this is the before version of Sammy right there, this is the after version.
04:46If I zoom in a little bit so that we can really see this inside of the video; this is the before version, this is the after version.
04:53You can see that he looks a little bit over-sharpened actually, but again, bear in mind that we are sharpening for the printer.
05:00So we need to go little bit farther than we normally would and we have to have a higher Radius value because our haloes are going to get shrunken.
05:08So now go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification and now Shift-Tab away my palettes once again move the image over little bit,
05:16I might even go ahead and zoom in and we want to take this all the way to... I gather this is the 100% view size, yes it is.
05:25This is the before version of the image and this is the after version right here.
05:30So hopefully you can see that on screen OK and it'll probably look nicely sharpened in the downsampled video that you are viewing right now.
05:38So I've managed to sharpen the image at this point, if I want it to convert it to CMYK because I am sending it off to a prepress device,
05:45that's when I would go up to the Image menu, I would choose Mode and I would choose CMYK Color in order to break
05:53up the image into cyan, magenta, yellow and black channels.
05:57In my case though, I am going to be printing this to a local inkjet device.
06:00I do not want to convert the image to CMYK, do not do that.
06:04Any local inkjet device, any local laser printer relies on a printer driver that's provided to you by your printer's vendor,
06:10and that printer driver expects to find the images in RGB, to convert the image from RGB.
06:15If you convert the image to CMYK before you print it, you'll mess things up and you'll get a bad print.
06:21So there it is, we have worked through the conventional printing process. It's pretty good, there is nothing terribly wrong with it
06:28because we are trying to sharpen the image for the printer which is a good thing.
06:33But it's not the best way to work; this is what I am going to tell you.
06:36We'll examine some of the problems that are inherent with the conventional system starting in the next exercise.
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Recognizing problems with the conventional workflow
00:00Alright, so we have seen how the conventional sharpening workflow works and there is nothing terribly wrong with it necessarily.
00:07I mean it does provide a benefit; you are sharpening for the printer, which is an important thing to do.
00:12It's just that I think most folks agree any more that it's an antiquated approach and one of the things it doesn't account for is layers.
00:20Layers have been with us, layers are a big part of what we do inside Photoshop.
00:23The whole conventional just sharpening for the printer workflow doesn't take layers into account at all.
00:29It doesn't take the source of the image into account either.
00:32It doesn't take the content of the image into account, it doesn't take the details into account, it doesn't take various layers into account,
00:39and as it turns out, it's not the right approach for this image at all.
00:43So let's see what went wrong where this image is concerned and we'll also see a better approach and sort of take a look at what's going
00:50on under the hood where this composition is concerned.
00:52Then in the next exercise, we'll take a look at few different kinds of workflows that are available to us and
00:59of course different workflows suit different kinds of images.
01:02Now where this image is concerned, currently I am looking at the sharpened version, the last thing that we saw at the end of the previous exercise
01:10and that was the sharpened version of the re-sampled image, the image that measures four inches by seven inches by 360 pixels per inch.
01:18In fact, I've gone ahead and save this version of the image as Sharpened 4x7x360.TIFF.
01:25So if you don't have your image up on screen, you can open this one if you like from the 02_when_to_sharpen folder.
01:31I'll tell out what's wrong here.
01:33Now most portions of this image are sharpened just fine.
01:37We've got Sammy's face, which is over-sharpened of course where the screen is concerned, but it's going to suit the printer quite nicely.
01:44We've got all of these details inside of his coat that all looks pretty good.
01:47We've got a little bit of patterning that's occurring in his coat. That's starting to show up here. That's natural patterning I believe from the coat.
01:54So that's OK.
01:55His jeans are a little crunchy, a little too much so I would argue, same with the rocks in the background.
02:02Max's jeans also suffer from that.
02:03Max has more of a problem going on inside of the orange, that sort of middle portion of his orange coat.
02:10You can see that things are breaking down a little bit, the shadows are and it's partly because of the reflectivity of the fabric, but it's the kind
02:19of thing that we might want to settle down with the little selective adjustment.
02:23Then his face is actually in very good shape given that he is a kid with his finger stuck up his nose.
02:30Generally speaking, I think most of the image looks pretty good; the background is in pretty good shape as well.
02:36The thing that doesn't look good, I'll go ahead and zoom in on it here, is the text.
02:40You do not want to be sharpening flatten text because you are start getting jagged transitions.
02:47Anything that's that graphic, in other words, we have very rapid transitions
02:52between different colors, between radically different luminance levels.
02:55When that occurs, when you have these kinds of graphic transitions whether you are working with text or with graphic art, then applying sharpening,
03:03any of the sharpening filters, is going to result in jagged transitions.
03:07Where the transitions used to look just fine before, now they are turning jagged on us.
03:11We've got all kinds of examples inside of this graphic.
03:14AlSo note this weird little bit of halo on George Washington's head right there following the Y, so the Y is creating this little weird halo,
03:23thanks to of course the halo that's applied by the Smart Sharpen function.
03:27So all sorts of weird little stuff going on with the text and it just breaks down in all kinds of ways.
03:32Towards the bottom of the image, you'll also see some radical transitions and some jagged edges around the tips of the arrows as well.
03:40So what's a better approach where this composition is concerned?,
03:44Well let's go ahead and switch over to the layered composition, the original one.
03:48Holiday Card 2007.PSD, once again found inside of that 02_when_to_sharpen folder.
03:55First of all, I want you to notice over here inside the Layers palette that we already have some sharpening going on.
04:02So this image already is sharpened and it has some noise reduction as well.
04:06If you go down to the boyz layer, the bottom of the Layers palette, and you expand it, you'll notice that this boyz layer is the Smart Object
04:14and as I say, I'll be telling you more about how Smart Objects work later in this series.
04:18Now I have a Smart Filter applied and that's the Reduce Noise filter.
04:21The great thing about that is I could now turn around and adjust the settings if I want to, so this is totally non-destructive.
04:28Whenever possible, you want to apply non-destructive modifications inside the Photoshop and that goes for sharpening as well.
04:34There's really no excuse for ever doing flat sharpening inside the program if you can avoid it.
04:39The only exception is at final sharpening for print but even then you might want to go non-destructive.
04:45Anyway, so I could modify the Reduce Noise setting just by double-clicking on Reduce Noise to bring
04:50up the Reduce Noise dialog box, and then I would make a few modifications.
04:54Now you can see if you look carefully here, I'll go in and zoom in on Max's face,
04:58you can see that we've got a heck of a lot of noise reduction going on.
05:02I am really smoothing over the skin, so I've got high Strength setting, a low Preserve Details setting.
05:08So when you are going back and forth like this, high for Strength, high for Reduce Color Noise, low for Preserve Details,
05:14low for Sharpen Details then you are going to have a maximum effect, a maximum smoothing effect. It's mitigated,
05:21I'll go and cancel out by a mask right there, by a filter mask which is something that you can do when you are working
05:27with Smart Filters and as I say I'll show you more about that later.
05:30Just important to remember that you can and should work non-destructively.
05:34I have another non-destructive modification going on. This guy right here, the HP 3.0 layer, that's a High Pass layer.
05:41That's actually a static layer but it's being applied non-destructively to the layer below.
05:46That's another way to work inside Photoshop.
05:49If I turn that layer off, you'll see, I'll go in and zoom in on Max once again because he is such a delightful kid to look at here.
05:57He is quite soft with HP 3.0 turned off and that's High Pass with a radius of 3.0 by the way.
06:04If I go ahead and turn that on, you can see that it does apply some sharpening on the fly and I could change the degree of sharpening
06:10on the fly if I wanted to either by adjusting the opacity of this layer or by adjusting this inset levels adjustment layer.
06:18Again, we'll see how all of those things work.
06:21The question becomes how should we sharpen this image for print at this point given all the things that are going into it?
06:27Well, notice that I have allocated all of the text elements to this group right here,
06:33I'll go ahead and zoom out from the image so that we can see that this is the case.
06:36So here we are at the 25% zoom ratio.
06:38If I turn off that text group, you can see that all of the text elements go away. As so.
06:44So that's great; they are already relegated to their own independent group.
06:47So let's go and turn them back on.
06:48I'll go and click on gradient and I'll shift click on boyz in order to select this range of layers, so everything except the text group.
06:56Then I'll go up to the Layer menu and I'll choose Merge Layers or I can press Ctrl+E or Command+E
07:02on the Mac in order to merge all of those layers together.
07:04Now we have a flattened version of just the continuous tone photographic image elements.
07:10Now I will reduce the size of this graphic by pressing Ctrl+Alt+I, you may recall that we need it to take it down to 4x7x360.
07:19So I'll press Ctrl+Alt+I or Command+Option+I on the Mac to bring up the image Size dialog box.
07:24I'll make sure all three checkboxes are turned on.
07:26Now that's very important because we have a live layer effect going on at this point, a live style applied, not only to that '&' right there,
07:35there is lot of stuff going on with it, but all of the other text elements, many of the other text elements anyway, have drop shadows assigned to them.
07:41So make sure all three of those checkboxes are turned on, four for the Width, Height will automatically change to seven,
07:48let's change Resolution value to 360 and then I'll click OK in order to accept that modification
07:54and I have resized this image. I've sampled it down.
07:57Now let's go ahead and apply the filter.
08:01So Smart Sharpen should be last filter I applied.
08:03It's right up there at the top of the menu.
08:05So if just want to reapply those same settings, I will just choose the command again, or if I want to confirm the settings,
08:10I'll press Ctrl+Alt+F or Command Option+F on the Mac.
08:13Sure enough I have an Amount of 140% just as in the previous exercise, a radius of 1.8, things are looking very good.
08:20Let's take a look at Sammy.
08:22You may very possibly be sick of looking at my son with his finger up his nose. I mean shame on you for that but still.
08:28I'll go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification and now let's take a look at what's going on here.
08:33I'll zoom in on the image and you can see that we have these wonderfully sharpened details.
08:38There's Max again.
08:39For those of who aren't sick of looking at him. And there's, of course, a handful of famous presidents.
08:45I'll go ahead and zoom in on Washington's head.
08:46You can see that we no longer have that halo that's being cast by the Y and notice that the text is not so brittle anymore.
08:54It's not all jagged, I'll go ahead and zoom in so that you can see it's nicely anti-aliased.
08:59Nice, smooth, transitional edges going on there.
09:03So things look much, much better indeed and now at this point, if you would go up to the Layer menu and you would choose Flatten Image
09:10to flatten everything together, to merge the entire image together and now this image is ready for print.
09:17Of course, you would go up to the File menu, you would go ahead and choose the Save As command
09:21so you don't overwrite your original PSD document and save that out as a separate TIFF file.
09:25So there you go a different approach where this specific image is concerned.
09:30In the next exercise, we'll talk about some other alternative sharpening workflows that are available to us inside Photoshop.
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Erasing sharpening with the history brush
00:00Alright. Now you may recall in the previous exercise at the end I told we were going to take a look at some alternative sharpening workflows.
00:06I lied. We are going to do that in the next exercise.
00:09In this exercise this one thing I forgot to show you and I want you to do that right now. I forgot to account for the fact
00:15that Max's coat is a little too textural and it's kind of have got a little bit of a pattern going on inside of it we don't that.
00:23So we want to able to mitigate the sharpening effect inside of this area.
00:27Now if I were working, what I would typically do and what I'll show you in the future.
00:31I would typically apply a non-destructive sharpening modification
00:35and then I could mitigate the sharpening effect using a layer mask or a filter mask something along those lines.
00:41But, in this case, I applied the Smart Sharpen filter it directly to the image.
00:44So I'm going to have to brush away the sharpening effects that I don't want using the History brush. It's a different way to work.
00:52Now before, I can use the History brush, if I were to grab the History brush here, this guy right there, inside the toolbox
00:59and you can also get to it by pressing the Y key if you like.
01:02You would notice, if you're working along with me and you know this is on screen too, I imagine,
01:06you would see that I get the little Ghostbusters's icon, which is telling me that I can't do any brushing inside of the image.
01:12So I go over here to the History palette, which you can get to by choosing History from the Window menu as well and I would notice my problem is
01:20that I flatten the image and that I'm trying to source from the original layer composition
01:25and Photoshop doesn't allow you to do that, for two reasons actually.
01:29One is because I don't have corresponding layers to work with since I went ahead and flattened the darn thing
01:34and the other problem is that I applied the Image Size command.
01:37So I re-sampled the image and the History brush doesn't like re-sampling.
01:41So first time, we need to do is we need to move our source to right after we applied Image Size
01:48so that we are getting rid of the re-sampling problem.
01:51That still does not take care of our problems, as you can see it.
01:53I move my cursor out I still have the Ghostbusters's icon and that's because I flattened the image.
01:58So let's move back one step to the Smart Sharpen step and you can see that now I've the gradient backdrop image set.
02:05It's called ?the gradient' because gradient was the top layer when I combined,
02:09when I merged all those layers together and then we have the text group, right there.
02:13So we still have a layered document and now I've got nice brush to work with here.
02:18I'll go ahead and hide my History palette on screen, I'll make my brush bigger, like So by pressing the right bracket key a few times.
02:25So I now have a 175 pixel brush, it's nice soft brush, that's good. I'm going to zoom in
02:30on Max's jacket and I'll just brush away the sharpening in this area right here.
02:36So we don't have a problem with the patterning that's starting to form there inside of his coat. And I'll just get rid of few areas of sharpness
02:43that are going on and I might just do a little bit of brush stroke in his arm as well, if I like.
02:48And where the pants are concerned, they are little tactile as well. I would say they are over-sharpened and you could brush those way.
02:54Now if you find that you are getting strange transitions,
02:57thanks to the fact that you are totally brushing away the effect inside the pants, but you are ignoring the effects outside the pants-
03:04I'm not brushing right Now I'm just pointing to this region- and you want a more incredible transition,
03:10then what you might want to do- I?ll go ahead and undo that modification there.
03:12You might want to reduce the Opacity value, so I'm going to press the 5 key to reduce the Opacity value to 50% and then brush over this region
03:20and that way we are sort of splitting the difference and we are not ending up with these completely radical transitions at this rate.
03:27I'll go ahead and do the same thing inside of Sammy's pants as well.
03:30So you get the idea. It's a subtle modification at this point, probably inside the movie, it's only semi showing up,
03:37but you would get the idea if you worked with the image on your screen or any other image for that matter.
03:42Now at this point having successfully mitigated the effects of the sharpening in the areas where we wanted to mitigate the effect,
03:49and we can even, by the way I should say, just interject one more thing, I could even decide that back here in a rubble,
03:54I don't want it to be quite so sharp either. This rubble that is falling away from the majestic Presidents' huge faces there.
04:01So I could brush that back as well.
04:03Alright. Anyway, I will just take the image out to the 50% view size. The final step of course, now that we're done brushing at the image.
04:10So the final step would be to go back up to the Layer menu, choose the Flatten Image command in order to merge the entire image,
04:16in order to flatten all the layer and then of course go ahead and save that image off as an independent TIFF file.
04:22Alright, now we are ready to look at some alternative sharpening workflows in the next exercise.
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Using alternative sharpening workflows
00:00Now that you have a sense for how the conventional sharpening workflow works and bear in mind, this is a wor flow that is held near
00:07and dear by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of print technicians in the world around.
00:12There is all kinds of different variations on this workflow.
00:15Some folks will tell you, you should convert to seem like a first and then sharpen just a black channel. Other folks will swear to you
00:22that the only way to go, is convert the image to the LAB mode and then sharpen just the lightest channel.
00:28You can also apply luminance blending, via the Luminosity blend mode.
00:33So there is a bunch of different ways to approach the conventional workflow.
00:38In this exercise, I am going to introduce you to three
00:41out of what are probably several dozen different alternative sharpening workflows out there.
00:47Part of my reason for doing this is to suggest to you that there might a different way to work. I certainly do believe that.
00:53I do believe there are better ways to work and to count the whole notion of a workflow into question.
00:59I think you are better of arming yourself with a variety of different sharpening techniques
01:03and then apply those techniques as warranted by a particular composition.
01:08So here I am working inside of a document called Alternative Sharpening Workflows found inside of the 02_when_to_sharpen folder
01:16and it obviously is going to tour us through, as I was saying, I am going to introduce you to three different alternative sharpening workflows,
01:23and then we'll check those workflows out in a little more detail in subsequent exercises.
01:28This is another one of those documents that is blessed with a ton of Layer Comps,
01:32I think I have got 26 different layer comps inside this file all together.
01:36Let's check them out.
01:37First of all different kinds of jobs require different approaches, which is obvious I think,
01:43but it's common sense as that sounds, it contradicts the conventional one size fits all approach.
01:49I'll offer three sample workflows and feel free to develop your own.
01:53Now here are the three samples workflows that we are be taking a look at.
01:56We are going to sharpen for film, we are going to see a way to sharpen for film, that is scanned film images,
02:02whether transparencies, color negatives, that kind of thing.
02:06We are going to see how to sharpen for RAW images that are captured with a digital camera and then we will see how
02:12to sharpen an image selectively, according to kind of detail that you find inside of the image. And these three different sample workforce may lead you
02:21to develop others of your own and I completely encourage that of course.
02:26We are going to see how to sharpen for film in the next exercise, then we will move on sharpening for RAW
02:32and then we will move on to sharpening an image selectively.
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Sharpening a scanned photograph shot on film
00:00In this exercise, we are going to take a look at alternative sharpening workflow number one right here, sharpening for film.
00:07And I'm taking up where I left off in the last exercise that is to say,
00:10I'm looking at the Alternative Sharpening Workflow.PSD document that's found inside of the 02_When_To_Sharpen folder. And if you were to bring
00:19up your Layer Comps palette you would see that I'm looking at this Layer Comp right there that's called 'and more'.
00:25We are about to move on to the next one, Workflow # 1.
00:29Let's go ahead and move on right now.
00:30And I've set this up, by the way, I am going to go ahead and Shift-Tab away my palettes there,
00:34I set this up so I have a keyboard shortcut to advance from one Layer Comp to another.
00:39So I don't have to keep bringing up that palette.
00:41Now you can see we are looking at a slide called 'Sharpening a Scanned Film Photograph'.
00:45We'll start by opening the scanned image.
00:48All film media whether it's transparency or color negative, print even, a print positive, exhibit 'grain'.
00:55A grain is just a function of working with film and regardless of the device, whether it's a desktop scanner or a drum scanner, what have you,
01:04the scanning process introduces noise and it's often as not softness. And by that I mean that many scanners, depending on your scanner frequency
01:13or your scanner resolution, the scanner may end up introducing interpolation and anti-aliasing,
01:19all of which of course leads to a slight softening of detail.
01:24Now your next step in that case would be the smooth and sharpening the image as much as they may seem like opposites,
01:28smoothing and sharpening are partners and enhance the appearance and quality of an image.
01:33One defeats grain. That is smoothing, of course.
01:35And the other, sharpening, compensates for the effects of interpolation, anti-aliasing and so on.
01:40Next, you would want to edit your image having established a foundation of solid detail, using the smoothing
01:46and sharpening functions, you are now ready to edit the image to suite your final needs,
01:51always taking care to make your edits non-destructive when possible.
01:54And I'm going to be emphasizing that over and over throughout the series, how to edit an image non-destructively so that your sharpening
02:02and your color adjustments and everything else don't conspire together to just ruin your photograph.
02:08And then finally, of course, you would flatten the image, re-sample it and sharpen it, save your edits to PSD,
02:13if you intend to print flatten the layers, re-sample to the desired size.
02:18Sharpen for output, yes, sharpen again, so this would be second pass for sharpening, and save the results as LZW compressed TIFF file.
02:26So very much the same steps we went through in the conventional sharpening workflow.
02:30Alright. So that's one alternative. That's if you are working with an image that you've scanned from film, whether transparency, negative or print.
02:38In the next exercise, we'll see how to work with a digital photograph that you've captured as a RAW image.
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Sharpening a digital photograph
00:00 In this exercise we are going to examine alternative sharpening workflow number two, which is sharpening for a RAW photograph,
00:08 for a RAW digital photograph,. And I am working once again inside of that Alternative Sharpening Workflows.PSD document that is found inside the
00:17 02_When_to_Sharpen folder, and I am looking at this and more Layer Comp here inside the Layer Comps palette.
00:23 We are going to switch for to this Layer Comp, Workflow # 2.
00:27 So I am go and deselect the image and switch over to it, and then I am going to Shift-Tab away the palettes of course.
00:34 That takes us to the headline here, Sharpening A Digital Photograph. What we are about look at actually applies not only to RAW digital photographs,
00:41 but to any photo captured with a digital camera, it whether captured as a JPEG or a TIFF File.
00:47 And we'll start things off here by opening the RAW image.
00:49 First and foremost, if your camera supports a RAW format, whether it is Cannon CRW or CR2, Nikon's NEF, Olympus's ORF,
00:58 Leica's RAW or one of may others, there's tons of other manufacturers out there with their own RAW formats.
01:05 Go ahead and use it.
01:06 Definitely use your camera's RAW format, if it gives you access to one.
01:11 It will give you way better quality images in the long run.
01:14 For best results, open that image in Adobe's Camera RAW, which ships along with Photoshop, or inside Photoshop Lightroom if you have it.
01:23 Then we are going to smooth and sharpen the image, once again just as we did with the film photograph.
01:28 But this time we are going to be sharpening it inside of Camera RAW or Lightroom.
01:32 Now it's important to note that most cameras capture just one channel of information per pixel, strange as that sounds.
01:39 You are either capturing green information or red information or blue information, and I will show how that works in the later Chapter.
01:46 ACR, that is Adobe's Camera RAW, or Lightroom calculates the full color image by averaging each pixel with its neighbors.
01:53 A process called demosaicing.
01:55 This leads to softness, which you can counter with sharpening and you typically apply
02:00 that sharpening directly inside ACR or Lightroom as you will see later.
02:05 Next you go ahead edit the image of course, after conveying the image to Photoshop, make any and all desired modifications,
02:12 keep them nondestructive when you can, and save the layers, masks and the other falderal in the native PSD format,
02:18 so just a different way of saying something that I have said several times now.
02:22 Then we move on to the final phase here, flatten, resample and sharpen, again we are in familiar territory,
02:28 but this time I am telling you why it is we can get away with the second pass of sharpening.
02:33 Downsampling averages away much of the first sharpening pass,
02:37 so it's really not that evident anymore, which is in part why I advocate second pass.
02:41 The other part is that the first pass and the second pass serve totally different purposes and therefore are warranted.
02:49 Alright. There you have and that's how you go about sharpening a digital photograph, whether RAW
02:54 or otherwise, as captured ofcourse by a digital camera.
02:57 In the next exercise we are going to talk about alternative sharpening workflow number three, which is selective sharpening, stay tuned.
03:05
03:05
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Sharpening specific details
00:00In this exercise we are going to examine alternative sharpening Workflow #3 which is this guy right there 'Sharpening Selectively'.
00:07I am once again looking at the document Alternative Sharpening Workflows.PSD found inside the 02_when_to_sharpen folder.
00:15I am currently looking at the 'and more' Layer Comp.
00:18I am going to move ahead to the Workflow #3 Layer Comp here inside the Layer Comps palette, and I am going to Shift-Tab those palettes away
00:26and notice the title 'Accentuating Specific Details', which is what selective sharpening is all about.
00:32First of all, you want to sharpen for the source, and by the source I mean, does it come from film? Does it come from a digital camera?
00:40Where does the image hail from? So you want to open the image, smooth and sharpen as warranted by the source- or don't.
00:46Your standard 10-megapixel or larger digital photograph requires slight or no attention except under special conditions.
00:53So if you have a high-end digital SLR and you are shooting 10-megapixel, 12-megapixel even 21-megapixel images on a regular basis,
01:01then you are probably not going to really have to spend too much time smoothing and sharpening the image inside of Camera RAW or Lightroom.
01:08You can almost give that phase a slip, assuming that you are printing standard letter size images.
01:14Let's say. If you are enlarging the images to very large sizes, poster sizes or if you are working with high ISOs or you've got extreme sort
01:22of noise conditions going on, then that's when you're going to have to go in and apply smoothing and sharpening very deliberately.
01:28And we'll look at that in a subsequent Chapter, but just for now know that this is the least important stage in the process.
01:35Next thing we're going to do is edit the image, and notice that we've got two phases right here,
01:39Edit followed by Sharpening Selectively here, these two phases are largely interchangeable.
01:44You can edit and then sharpen, you can sharpen and then edit, you can go back and forth.
01:48Order is less important than keeping your modifications nondestructive, because if each one of your edits
01:55and sharpening passes is nondestructive then they'll all interact with each other regardless of the order in which you apply them.
02:01Alright, next we move onto the big phase here, Sharpening Selectively, that's what this workflow is all about after all.
02:07Smart Filters, which are new to Photoshop CS3, permits you to sharpen independent layers or whole groups of layers
02:13without permanently committing to Amount, Radius or Blend settings.
02:17Even when Smart Filters come up short, as when High Pass sharpening
02:21- when you are working with a High Pass filter you can't really do everything I'd like you to do using Smart Filters-
02:27you can still keep the effect nondestructive. And I should say this term nondestructive right here, it's a little bit of a misnomer
02:34because any time you start heaping edits on top of edits, on top of edits you are going to "destroy" the fabric of the image.
02:43What's more accurate is to say that these modifications are temporary and editable.
02:48You can go in there and change the settings anytime you like, and hence,
02:52that's why we use the term 'Nondestructive', because it is nondestructive as it can be.
02:56Alright, then finally we move on to the Flatten, Resample and Sharpen phase,
03:00again a very familiar phase, but this is now our third pass of sharpening.
03:04Again, downsampling plays a role.
03:06So it helps to get rid of that first phase to a certain extent and the second phase as well, but more to that point each effect is unique,
03:13so each sharpening pass serves a different purpose and again therefore it is warranted.
03:19So there you have it. Three alternative sharpening workflows laid bare before you.
03:24I am sure that you could develop some alternative sharpening workflows of your own.
03:28In the next exercise I am going to explain what conclusions I think we can draw from these many sharpening workflows that are available to us,
03:36and then finally, I'll show you why I think techniques are more important than workflows.
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Finding broad workflow conclusions
00:00Now that I've filled your head with three of what must be a couple of dozen different alternative sharpening workflows that are out there,
00:08what are you to make of it? Well, I want to make it clear. What I am not suggesting is you'll pick
00:13and choose your favorite alternative sharpening workflow, one of these three must work for you my friend.
00:18I don't actually hold with a kind of reasoning. I am a big believer that different images require different approaches.
00:24So what is my big conclusion? Now I am going to tell you. I am working here inside of that same Alternative Sharpening Workflows.PSD document,
00:31that's found inside of the 02_when_to_sharpen folder and currently looking at the 'and more' Layer Comp right here,
00:37I am going to switch down to the Conclusion Layer Comp.
00:41Here's my conclusion; you need to do what needs to be done.
00:45Now that may seem like ridiculous and very obvious advice but just watch here.
00:50At the risk of sounding a little cavalier, image editing rules are at best guidelines.
00:55There is no perfect recipe for sharpening, although, there is undeniably more than one wrong approach.
01:01In another words, if you were to grab an image and then apply the Smart Sharpen filter flat, to a flat image like six times in a row
01:08with different settings, that would be a bad approach because you would be actively destroying that image.
01:14So I don't recommend you work that way but if you keep your modifications nondestructive and you try to rein them in as much
01:22as possible, use them deliberately and conservatively, then you're probably going to be in pretty good shape.
01:27So here's my recommendations. First of all, take care, be watchful for artifacts, pixels gone bad that is, so if you have random variations
01:37between neighboring pixels and they aren't contributing to the good in the picture,
01:41the larger overall view of your image, then they are considered to be artifacts.
01:46So things like JPEG transitions, noise -- any of that stuff you want to diffuse as much as possible.
01:52When in doubt, make a new layer, that goes to applying nondestructive modifications of course, and as always do as much as you dare
02:01with as little as you can. And that's something of an image editing mantra for me.
02:06Now you may say well, that sounds really great Deke, but what in the world does that mean? Well, here's what it means.
02:11Be decisive, make your edits count, don't overwork it.
02:15That's probably the biggest piece of advice because it's very tempting to go into a composition and just clobber it
02:22to the extent that there's nothing good left inside of it.
02:25So you really want to take it easy and make your edits count as much as possible. And the best way to do that in my opinion is to not think so much
02:34in terms of workflow but to think about sharpening techniques.
02:37I am going to show you the big four kinds of sharpening techniques that are available to you in the very next exercise
02:43and then we'll explore those techniques in detail in the following Chapters.
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Learning that technique trumps timing
00:00We now return to the original question posed by this Chapter is, when do you sharpen?
00:05When in the editing cycle do you sharpen your image? What I hope I have made clear with this ad nauseam discussion
00:12of these various sharpening workflows is that that's a very difficult question to answer.
00:17There is no one answer to when you sharpen.
00:21You can sharpen at various stages in the editing cycle.
00:24In fact, I would go farther than that.
00:26I would say that the technique, the sharpening techniques, that are available to you are more important than the timing.
00:32This is going to seem to some folks like a radical, even dangerous proposition, but let me explain what I am talking about here.
00:39Notice the title to this final slide of the Chapter, it says 'Technique Comes Before Timing', which is true, and if you want to open this image,
00:46it's called Technique Trumps Timing.PSD found inside the O2_when_to_sharpen folder.
00:52There are four broad categories of sharpening techniques that are available to you.
00:56Two of them are time specific, so you have to apply them at specific stages in the editing cycle.
01:02Now once you come to terms with that, the other two you can apply at any time you like.
01:07So let's go ahead and review these four broad techniques here.
01:10The first one is pretty familiar, Sharpen for the Source.
01:14So either immediately after or as you open an image, in other words at the very outset of the editing cycle, you have the option of compensating
01:22for the noise and softness introduced by the capture device, whether that capture device is a scanner or a digital camera.
01:28So for example, if you are working with a RAW image from a digital camera, you would open it inside of say Adobe Camera RAW.
01:35You would apply your sharpening settings along with a variety of color adjustments.
01:40Then you would send the image to Photoshop, most likely as a flat file.
01:45You could open the image as a Camera RAW Smart Object, but more often than not, you are just going to sharpen it and have it open as a flat file,
01:51which is entirely acceptable, a very acceptable way to work.
01:55The next technique that's available to us is Sharpen for Detail.
01:58Now the idea here is that different images contain different sorts of details, and you need to customize your sharpening to those details.
02:06For example, if you are working with a portrait shot, like a close-up, it would be characterized by gradual,
02:12that is to say low frequency transitions, and that would require different attention than a wide shot of a city scape, for example,
02:18that comprises mostly rapid high frequency transitions.
02:22So those two extreme images would require very different sharpening treatments,
02:27and as long as you keep your sharpening treatments nondestructive, then you can apply them at any stage in the editing cycle,
02:34and even treat different layers differently if you like.
02:37Next we have Sharpening for Effect.
02:40The idea here is that you should feel free to sharpen different portions of an image to heighten the impact or effect.
02:46Let's say you are working with a portrait shot. You might sharpen the eyes, and then you might smooth the skin contours,
02:52you might increase the contrast of the hair, and you might blur the background, all inside of a single image.
02:57On top are these other sharpening techniques that we have applied, and that again, as long as you keep it nondestructive,
03:03you can apply these changes at any stage in the editing cycle that you like.
03:09Then finally Sharpening for Output.
03:11Again, this is the conventional workflow right here.
03:14It has to happen at the end.
03:16In fact, it has to happen in a very specific way at the end.
03:19Whether your image is bound for page or for screen, you will want to add a final pass of sharpening to account for the output.
03:24Be sure to flatten first, that's important.
03:27Then save the image under a different file name, presumably as an LZW compressed TIFF image.
03:33Resample it down, and then apply the sharpening pass; either before or after converting it to CMYK, if you are going to convert it to CMYK.
03:42So this happens at the end of the cycle.
03:44So we have got four different techniques: one at the beginning, one at the end, and two in between,
03:49and this adds up to a multipass sharpening workflow, essentially.
03:53You might say well, altogether we could have four different passes of sharpening, but even more than that. Sharpening for Detail,
03:59you might do different passes, apply different passes to different layers, and Sharpening for Effect, you might apply different passes
04:06to different areas, different regions, inside of an image.
04:08So a single composition can contain seven or eight or upward of a dozen different sharpening passes,
04:15if you apply those passes with specific intentions, that you are trying to accomplish specific goals, and you apply those passes nondestructively.
04:24So technique trumps timing.
04:27We will be looking at every single one of these techniques.
04:30I devote an entire Chapter to every one of these four techniques, but before we check out the techniques,
04:35we are going to check out our tools starting in the very next Chapter.
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3. The Sharpening Filters
Comparing and contrasting neighboring pixels
00:00Most of Photoshop sharpening functions are expressed as commands under the Filter menu.
00:05The only exceptions are the Sharpen and Blur tools, but how should I say this.
00:09Ix-nay on the harpens-ay and lur-bay tools. They uck-say.
00:09These filters, these very good filters, compare neighboring pixels to create the illusion of sharpeness, as this Chapter explains.
00:21But here is the weird thing, crazy as it sounds, the pixel comparison operation, which is the operation that drives everything, is blurring.
00:30I know it doesn't even sound possible, but by blurring pixels Photoshop creates the illusion of sharpness,
00:36which is why we will began our discussion of the sharpening filters with Gaussian Blur.
00:40Trust me, in just a few exercises it will all make sense.
00:45Incidentally, well be wasting time on the single shot sharpeners, you know the ones without the ellipses, the dot, dot, dots.
00:51I am talking about Sharpen, Sharpen Edges and Sharpen More.
00:55You cant control their behavior so their inflexible.
00:58The good Commands have dots after them, Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen, Emboss, High Pass. You'll see.
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Using the Gaussian Blur filter
00:00Now strange is that may sound, any discussion of focus altering filters inside a Photoshop has to begin with Gaussian Blur.
00:07And if you know anything about Photoshop and youve spent six seconds using Gaussian Blur, you maybe thinking, "Give me a break, Deke!"
00:14Not only do you not need to show me Gaussian Blur, you don't need to show my grandmother Gaussian Blur, it is that easy to use.
00:20It just has a Radius value, you raise the Radius value, you get more blur, you lower the Radius value, you get less blur, that's all there is to it.
00:26But heres the deal, it's responsible for the way Unsharp Mask works.
00:31In fact, its so responsible for Unsharp Mask, I can actually duplicate the effects of Unsharp Mask,
00:37down to the last pixel, using Gaussian Blur by itself and no other filter.
00:42Out standing is that sounds, that incredibly boastful statement, I will bear out in an upcoming exercise, I'll show you what I mean by that,
00:50because it really is helpful to understand that sharpening is really blurring, that they are one and the same.
00:55But first, lets understand whats going on with sharpening and I also want to show you whats meant by the term Gaussian.
01:00We'll start off with this image called Happy family.jpg that's found inside the 03_sharpen_filters folder.
01:07And it comes to us from photographer Justin Horrocks of iStockphoto.com, and I am going to go up to the Filter menu, I am going to choose Blur
01:15and I am going to choose Gaussian Blur, the most essential of these many blurring functions.
01:20Notice that I decide to keep our shortcut to it of Shift+F7 for my own purposes. You can likewise assign a keyboard shortcut
01:27to this filter using the Keyboard Shortcuts command under the Edit menu.
01:30Alright, I am going to go ahead and choose the command, brings up the Gaussian Blur dialog box. Lets go ahead and center the zoom
01:36on this baby's face here and I am going to click on the plus (+) sign to zoom-in and increment here to 200% and if I click and hold,
01:44you can see that this is the original baby face, and when I release-
01:48if you look closely, you can see the effects of this default Radius value of one pixel.
01:54The idea is that Photoshop is applying this series of scrubbing bubbles to the image and each bubble is emanating from a single pixel at a time.
02:03So at any given nanosecond, Photoshop is applying a bubble to one of the pixels inside the image and the bubble currently has a Radius
02:10of one pixel, that is to say, a diameter of two pixels.
02:14But as well see in the next exercise, that Radius actually gets distributed,
02:18so that's larger than whatever the Radius value we entered here.
02:21But when it comes to just blurring the image, all you really care about is if you raise the value you're going to get more blur.
02:27For example at Radius value of 12 pixels, we're pretty much obliterating the focus of this image and we can much farther with it.
02:34If you take the value down, I'll go ahead and click on that Radius value again and lower it to, lets say 0.6 pixel,
02:41then you're going to reduce the amount of blur you apply to the image, but you can still see the effects.
02:46If you closely, I am going to zoom-in on the baby's face even more, click and hold, this is the original baby eye, and release,
02:53this is the blurred baby eye. So it's just a slight amount of blurring.
02:56Now the minimum value that will produce any effect whatsoever inside this dialog box,
03:00and inside Unsharp Mask as well by the way, is a Radius of 0.3 pixel.
03:05If you go below that, I'll press the down arrow key to go down to 0.2 pixel and I'll click and hold, this is before, I'll release, this is after.
03:13No difference. It's just a function of the way the math is calculated inside a Photoshop, that you have to have a Radius value
03:20of at least 0.3 pixel or higher to get any effect whatsoever.
03:24So if you ever just want to assign just a tiny little bit of sharpening to an image, something that verges on anti-aliasing,
03:31it's so subtle then a 0.3 Radius is the smallest you can apply.
03:36Just bear that in mind, of course you can raise the value by pressing the Up arrow key, that will raise it in increments of 0.1.
03:43You can lower it in increments of 0.1 by pressing the Down arrow key, for whole number increment you press Shift+Up arrow
03:48or Shift+Down arrow. It's just standard filtering stuff.
03:53Many filters actually don't subscribe to that role. The bad ones will ignore you when you press the arrow keys, but the good ones will pay attention.
04:00So anyway, I don't really feel like blurring these good people. They might as well remain nice and sharp,
04:05we'll come back to them actually when its time to sharpen the image.
04:08The image that I really want to blur here is this guy. It's a demonstration image, in fact its called Gaussian demo.PSD and its going to allow us
04:17to see the difference between a Gaussian luminance distribution and a Linear luminance distribution in the next exercise.
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Using Gaussian luminance distribution
00:00So those of you who watched the previous exercise and are sitting there going, I knew was not going to learn anything from that,
00:06what in the world? I mean, now I know that you can't drop below 0.3 pixel and get in the effect out of Gaussian Blur.
00:13Who cares? But yet you still are watching me.
00:16In case you fall in to that demographic, let me assure you its still highly theoretical information,
00:21but it goes to the to the heart of how Photoshop works.
00:24I cannot stress this enough.
00:26Back in the old days programs with blur images, this was before Photoshop, they would blur images by assigning a linear blur and then Photoshop came
00:34around and offered the Gaussian Blur and it made all the difference in the world.
00:40I know that's hard to believe, but let me show you, what's up here.
00:42As I say its very important to understand this whole Gaussian luminance distribution curve in order
00:47to understand whats going on with sharpening inside of Photoshop.
00:51So here I am working inside image called Gaussian demo.PSD found inside the 03 sharpen filters folder.
00:57I'm going to go over to the Layers palette, just to confirm that I've the Background layer selected.
01:02So we have got the rectangular area black in the left, a rectangular area of white on right.
01:06How is that for narrating the obvious? Lets go ahead and hide the Layers palette for a moment.
01:11I'm going to go up to the Filter menu and I'm going to choose Blur and I'm going to choose Box Blur.
01:15A Box Blur even though it was only added like a few years back inside a Photoshop its an old school blurring tool.
01:22This is the way other programs used to work back in the old days.
01:25It assigns a linear blur, so I'm going to go ahead and choose the command.
01:29And I'm going to take the Radius value- you notice that it looks just like the Gaussian Blur dialog box-
01:33I am going to take the Radius value up to a 140 pixels, so something really large and the idea- by the way, this image measures 800 pixels wide.
01:43So we are going to consume an area of about 280 pixels in the center here because Radius value times two gets you to the diameter.
01:50So about 280 pixels worth of drop off in the middle of this image and I'll go ahead and click OK.
01:57So its a zip we have converted what used to be a black and white image into a black and white gradient.
02:04Now with the slope right here in the center portion of the image.
02:07So I'm going to bring up the Layers palette, I hope this make sense.
02:10I have got a couple of graphs going on, all these other layers are graphs.
02:14So I'magine that we are to graph the image and anywhere where the image is black, we would graph those pixels to the bottom of the image and anywhere
02:24where the image is white we'd graph it to the top and then any gray values in between would be graphed in between as well.
02:31So let me show you what I'm talking about.
02:33I'll turn on original and this original version of this image.
02:37So if I go ahead and undo the modification, black over here on the left, white over here on the right, so I'll press Crtl+ Z or Command + Z again
02:45to redo that Box Blur that I've applied, so here's my graph.
02:49So all these pixels used to be black, hence this horizontal line along the bottom of the image, all these pixels used to white, hence this line
02:57across top of the image and there is our drop off in between.
03:00So it's a cliff essentially between those two extremes. That's the way the image used to be.
03:05I'll go ahead and turn that off and I'll turn on Linear slope, this is the way it is now.
03:09So just these pixels over here are black. These pixels over here are white. And I can confirm that by the way by getting my Magic Wand Tool.
03:18I'm going to go and switch over to the Magic Wand, make sure tolerance is set to zero, anti-alias is off.
03:23These are not default settings by the way, so you would have to change them if you are following along.
03:27Contiguous is turned on, Sample All Layers is turned off, so settings as you see them.
03:32Background layer is selected. I'll click right there and you can see that those are the black pixels.
03:38So sure enough, my graph is accurate and these guys over here are the white pixels and in between the white pixels and, Shift-click over here,
03:46the black pixels, it's the area of grey pixels that has the linear drop off, notice that.
03:51There is a very clear point at which the gradient begins and the gradient ends.
03:57So I'll go ahead in back step to get rid of those selection outlines. And the reason that this is important to know the fact that we have this point
04:05of which the gradient begins ands ends here is because, I'll go ahead and turn off the Linear slope, that means that we have a harsh transition
04:12at the point at which the blur begins at the point and the point at which the blur ends.
04:16So this is not a good blur. If we were to use this blur as a drop shadow for example, we would get a very sharp transition at edge,
04:23at the outer edge of the drop shadow, which would defeat the purpose since the drop shadow's supposed to look soft and it would no longer look soft,
04:29it would look sharp thanks to that linear distribution.
04:33Lets go ahead and undo the Box Blur. And the solution is Gaussian Blur.
04:38I'm going to go up to the Filter menu with the Background layer still selected, go to Blur and I'll go ahead
04:44and choose Gaussian Blur and I'm going to apply that same value, 140 pixels.
04:48Now notice something right off the bat, I think you can see this, as I was saying this is an 800 pixel wide image and yet just about the entirety,
04:56with just a few edge pixels intact, is taken up with this blur.
05:01Even though if you multiply a 140x2, you still get 280 and yet we are taking up the entire 800 pixels, almost just a few pixels on the side left
05:10over. And that's the function of the spreading that is occurring thanks to Gaussian Blur, the Gaussian distributions.
05:18I'll go ahead and click OK to accept that modification and you can now see that we have a much softer effect and that the colors are distributed not
05:28like this any more, not like the Linear slope, they are now distributed like this.
05:33We now have a Gaussian slope and notice what happens is that the colors transition very slowly at the beginning,
05:40more rapidly in the middle and very slowly at the end one again.
05:45If you want to confirm that, go ahead and bring up the Color palette and you can see that my foreground color is currently a 100% black.
05:51I'm going to grab my eyedropper and if I click over here on the far left side of the image, watch this value right there, watch that 100% value,
05:59what is currently 100%. If I click and hold on far left side of the image, its still says the100%, but as I move, I'm moving my mouse very slowly,
06:07notice that there is 99 and there, pretty soon, we'll see 98, then well see 97, 96, 95, things are going more
06:15and more rapidly and now notice its going very rapidly.
06:19We have a very rapid transition between these colors and now notice it's dropping off very, very slowly again and I'm still dragging my cursor
06:28over to the right and then finally we go from one to zero.
06:32So very slow transitions, that is at the edges, and the reason for that is because you want to have a gradual drop off so that your drop shadow,
06:40once again, just by way of example, doesn't look like it has a crisp, clear edge to it, instead it appears to just gently fade away.
06:50That gives you much more naturalistic effect and much more organic effect and that is like what I'm calling the Gaussian luminance distribution is
06:58so very important to the realism to the credibility of images that you produce with Photoshop.
07:05Alright. So I'm going go ahead and hide that Color palette and just in case this graph isn't totally doing it for you, maybe this version will.
07:13This is my Gaussian black and white version of the graph.
07:16So basically the white is very slowly growing to take up what used to be black space.
07:22Another way, I don't know if that helps. Just another way of viewing the image, and probably the best one is this guy that I came with here.
07:29So there is the Gaussian slope with the Gaussian Blur in the background.
07:33In the next exercise, we are going to look at Unsharp Mask and then after that I'm going to show you how you can make Unsharp Mask all by yourself,
07:40if you feeling like a boy or girl scout, you can make Unsharp Mask using Gaussian Blur and nothing more.
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Using the Unsharp Mask filter
00:00In this exercise, I am going to show you how to use the Unsharp Mask function, an oldie but a goody sharpening filter inside of Photoshop.
00:09Notice that I am working inside the Happy family.jpeg image found inside the O3 Sharpen Filters Folder.
00:14It comes to us from Justin Horrocks of iStockphoto.com.
00:17We are going to sharpen the image by going to the Filter menu, choosing Sharpen and choosing Unsharp Mask.
00:23Two things to note: I have gone ahead and given this filter a keyboard shortcut of Shift+F5.
00:27You can do the same using the Keyboard Shortcuts command under the Edit menu.
00:31It is a pivotal filter, that's why I have given it a keyboard shortcut, a very useful filter inside the program.
00:38But what's with the name? If it sharpens, which it does, why is it called Unsharp, which is the opposite of what it does and whats with the mask?
00:45Well, it's basically masking an unsharpening effect. It's masking actually Gaussian Blur in order to create the effect
00:51of sharpening and if you don't believe me- well, you will.
00:54Just check out the next exercise.
00:56It's amazing; it's just utterly amazing, that's what is going on under the hood.
00:59It's that Photoshop is actually blurring the image in order to create the effect of sharpening.
01:04But that's what it is doing.
01:05So I am going to go ahead and choose the command.
01:07Here is the dialog box. We have three sliders in all, we have already talked about how Amount and Radius work in Chapter 1,
01:14but we are going to see these functions at work inside of this image and I will explain how the Threshold function works right there.
01:21Instead of focusing on the baby's face this time, lets check out this gentlemen right here.
01:26In fact, I want to take a look at his ear.
01:29I am going to go ahead and zoom in on his ear a little bit here, so that we can take in a little bit of the razor stubble
01:34and he has got this piercing hole right there that I want to focus in on.
01:37And of course if we raise the Amount value, we are going to get a heightened perception of sharpening.
01:43So I am going to go ahead and crank this value all the way up to its maximum, which is 500%.
01:47I actually wish we could go higher with value, I wish that Adobe would change this filter.
01:52Since the beginning of time, we have been able to go as high as 500% for the Amount value, but these days I wish we could go even higher than that.
01:59And of course the Radius value is going to control the thickness of those edges, so of course the filter is exaggerating the degree of difference
02:09around the existing edges inside the image, around the previous original edges inside the image.
02:14It's drawing light halos on one side and dark halos on the other side and the width of those halos is defined roughly by the Radius value.
02:21Again, this is a Gaussian distribution, so its distributed across a larger area than 3.2 pixels.
02:28Then finally we have got this Threshold value.
02:30Now notice right now that I am exaggerating the contrast of everything.
02:34Of his pores, of his razor stubble, just a little bit of it going on.
02:39He is clean shaven.
02:40Just all this granularity that's associated with the skin and with the digital photography process and that's because I am currently saying,
02:49with the Threshold of zero, I am saying that any two neighboring pixels, you want to go ahead and sharpen them, Unsharp Mask, as long as they're
02:55at least zero luminous levels different from each other.
02:59Well of course any two pair, any pair of pixels, is going to be at least zero different from each other.
03:04It can't be less than zero different from each other.
03:07So everything is getting sharpened. But if I raise this value, then I am going to sharpen fewer and fewer details.
03:13So if I take this value up to lets say 40 luminance levels, then I am saying any two neighboring pixels have to be
03:19at least 40 luminance level different from each other in order to be sharpened and that's not much.
03:24So you can see that this entire range right here of skin tones and this area appears- well, its not getting sharpened. So if I click and hold,
03:32that's the original- this is the sharpened version, so this area is getting ignored, the piercing hole that's getting sharpened
03:39and some of the highlights and the shadows are getting sharpened as well and some of the razor stubble, just little bits
03:43and pieces of the razor stubble. I will go ahead and zoom in here, that's getting sharpened as well.
03:47So we are getting this kind of pockmarked effect.
03:49I don't like it.
03:50Actually, I am not really fond of the Threshold value because it is an on or off proposition.
03:56Either the neighboring pixels don't get sharpened at all or they do get sharpened according to the values I have specified for Amount and Radius,
04:04but there is no gradual drop off between the two, which means that you either want to leave the Threshold value set
04:10to zero or you just want to take it up a little bit.
04:14If you are trying to avoid noise inside of an image, random pixel variations that are associated with digital photographs for example,
04:21then you want to take this value up to two or three or even four, maybe even five pixels, but not higher than that.
04:28What you don't want to do is try to account for things like razor Stubble and pores and little tiny variations and get rid of them using Threshold
04:36because if you do that, you will end up with that pockmark effect that I have showed you before.
04:40So that's whats going on with Unsharp Mask.
04:42I just want to introduce you to the filter.
04:43In the next exercise, I am going to show you why this command is called Unsharp Mask and we will see how we can mimic the effects
04:49of the command using Gaussian Blur and nothing more.
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Understanding the history of Unsharp Mask
00:00The all we have going here a two-parter. We've got two exercises in a row.
00:04I am just basically trying to break things up a little bit to show you whats going on under the hood with the Unsharp Mask Command,
00:11because once you understand how Unsharp Mask is put together you're going to understand a lot more about how sharpening works inside the program.
00:17In the next exercise actually, I am going to show you how to build your own Unsharp Mask using nothing more than Gaussian Blur and Apply image,
00:24but first, I want to tell you this is going to be a little bit of a talky exercise.
00:28I am not really showing you too much at this point.
00:30I want to tell you where Unsharp Mask came from just so that you know that, in case you want to know that.
00:35You know by now that Unsharp Mark uses blurring hence the unsharp part, in order to create the effect
00:41of sharpening and it's basically masking away the edges.
00:44that's why we have the word Mask in there.
00:47But still you might think this is very tenuous.
00:49I mean what kind of engineer would come up with this crazy name? And in fact, no engineer did.
00:54Unsharp Mask is based on a traditional darkroom technique that I believe began in the 1920s, 1930s,
01:00somewhere in that range. So it's a very old technique.
01:02It's actually a fairly obscure technique.
01:05It wasnt very popular, it wasn't used very often, but the idea was, youd be working with a photo enlarger
01:10and you have a glass plate negative, just give you a sense of how old this technique is.
01:14You duplicate the glass plate negative onto a low contrast positive, and then you would take that low contrast positive and you would put it
01:22on the other side of the glass plate on the non-emulsion side of the glass plate.
01:26So on one side of the glass plate youve got the negative, on the other side youve got this low contrast positive.
01:30They are separated by the plate.
01:32Then you would put the plate into the enlarger, you would focus the enlarger on the negative, on the emulsion side of the glass plate,
01:39and that way the positive was a little bit out of focus, so it is little bit out of the focal range and that blurring effect would cancel
01:46out the low detail information and you would end up with this higher contrast effect.
01:52Now unless you have traditional darkroom experience and you've worked with an enlarger, I doubt that makes much sense.
01:58It's hard to wrap your mind around whats going on there.
02:01that's why I am going to show you how to do it with Gaussian Blur because actually the Unsharp Mask command that's available
02:06to us here inside Photoshop does a heck of a job of simulating the traditional darkroom technique.
02:13We can see that whole glass plate positive negative thing going on using Gaussian Blur.
02:18I am working inside of an image that's called Test shapes.PSD and its found inside of the 03 sharpen filters folder
02:25and notice that I've got this flat version of that familiar serpentine line with light dots inside of it that we saw back
02:32in Chapter 1, but I've gone ahead and flattened that image so that we have a single background layer here and then in front
02:38of that I've got this layer that's called USM which stands for Unsharp Mask 100/12/0. Those are range settings, the Amount value of a 100%,
02:46a Radius value of 12 and the Threshold of zero, and this is the effect we get right there.
02:51We can simulate this effect down to the last pixel using Gaussian Blur and Apply Image, nothing more.
02:55I am going to go ahead and turn off that layer just so that we can confirm that these are the settings I applied.
03:00I am going to go ahead and select the Background layer.
03:02I am going up to the Filter menu.
03:04I'll choose Sharpen and I will choose Unsharp Mask, and there are my settings right there,
03:08Amount of a 100%, Radius of 12 pixels, Threshold of zero.
03:12Now we are going to set our Gaussian Blur filter to a Radius of 12 pixels in order to exactly match this effect.
03:19Its important to note, however, that we can't vary the Amount value.
03:23We have to stick with a 100%.
03:25We cant vary this Threshold value, it has to be zero.
03:27This is the part that we can really simulate.
03:29So it has to be a 100%, it has to be a Threshold of zero, and then whatever for the Radius- we can change that.
03:34I am going to cancel out.
03:36In the next exercise I am going to show you how this is done because it's multi-step technique,
03:40this is really weird technique, but I think it's pretty interesting.
03:43It helps you understand whats going on under the hood.
03:45If you're inclined to think that its going to help you understand then please join me in the next exercise.
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Building your own USM with Gaussian Blur
00:00 Alright gang, are you ready to build your own Unsharp Mask using nothing more than Gaussian Blur, Apply Image and a booey knife?
00:07 In this exercise we're going to see how.
00:09 Now I do want to stress right upfront that there is no earthly reason to do this, this is not a technique,
00:15 I am not suggesting that you do this on a regular basis for your own images.
00:19 You'll see this is a very complicated technique that I am about to share with you and you would not want to do this on a regular basis.
00:24 Even if you actioned it, you'd be out of your mind to work this way.
00:28 The Unsharp Mask ommand is much more convenient.
00:30 I am just showing you this so that you have a sense of how Unsharp Mask works and how it is that Photoshop uses blurring in order
00:39 to create the effect of sharpening because after all, Photoshop is utterly incapable
00:43 of generating actual detail inside of an image, so instead its just an illusion.
00:48 So here I am working inside this Test shapes.PSD image, which features this Background layer, this demo file here.
00:54 The Background layer with this USM 100/12/0 layer sitting on top of it that we'll use to compare the two effects once we are done.
01:01 I am going to turn that layer back off, I've got the Background layer selected, and now I don't necessarily expect you to follow along with me,
01:08 I am going to work fairly quickly through this because its not necessarily going to make a ton
01:12 of sense, but I just want you to see this is how it works.
01:15 So I am going to start by pressing Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J on the Mac in order to jump this image
01:20 to new layer, and I am going to call this layer Gblur 12.
01:24 It's going to be Gaussian Blur with Radius of 12 pixels.
01:27 I am going to click OK, then true to it's name, I am going to go up to Filter menu,
01:31 I am going to choose the Blur command and I am going to choose Gaussian Blur.
01:35 It's probably still set to that big whopping a 140 pixel value. I am going to change it to 12 pixels and I am going to click OK.
01:42 Now believe it or not, this is going to create the effect of height and contrast. I know its hard to believe but it is going to do it.
01:49 That is the only filter we're going to be applying is Gaussian Blur 12 right there.
01:54 The next step is to go back to my Background layer, grab the original version of the image, and I am going to jump it once again
02:00 by pressing Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J on the Mac, and I am going to call this layer, this may seem crazy,
02:05 but I am going to call it Orig minus Gblur, because we're going to actually take the original version of the image
02:12 and subtract the Gaussian Blur version of the image from it.
02:15 So I'll click OK and then I'll take this guy and I'll drag it on top of Gaussian Blur.
02:19 So we reinstate the original version of the image.
02:22 Now I am going subtract the Gaussian Blur version of the image using the Apply Image command.
02:27 So I'll go up to the Image menu and I'll choose Apply image and I will go ahead and set Layer, currently we're applying whatever it is
02:35 we are applying. We're applying it to the Original minus Gblur layer right here.
02:40 The layer that I am going to apply to it is Gblur 12, and then I am going to set the Blend mode to Subtract,
02:47 in order to subtract that image, the Gblur image, from the original image, and I am going to leave Scale and Offset set to their defaults.
02:53 So 1 and 0, notice that Opacity is set to a 100%, that's all I am going to do. I'm not going to Invert anything.
02:59 I am going to click OK in order to accept that result.
03:02 Now this may look crazy but you can see what we have is we have the highlight edges set against blackness.
03:09 So now lets mix these guys together.
03:10 I am going back to the Background image, I am going to jump it once again by pressing Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J on the Mac,
03:21 and I am going to call this one Orig+(0-GB) and then click OK.
03:28 So basically I am going to take this guy and add this guy to it.
03:34 Let's go ahead and move it to the top of the stack so we can see what we were doing, and I'll go back to the Apply Image command
03:40 under the Image menu and I am going to set the layer this time to this one, Orig minus Gblur, and instead of subtracting I am going to go ahead
03:50 and Add it, and watch this. We get the highlight edges right there. Isn't that cool?
03:55 Check it out, I think that's awesome.
03:57 These are highlight enforcers, the highlight enhancements that are associated with Unsharp Mask.
04:03 Then I'll go ahead and click OK.
04:04 Now we still need the dark edge in here. We need the shadow edge, and so we're going to have to build that manually as well.
04:12 So I am going to go down here to the Background layer.
04:15 Once again, go ahead and Ctrl+Alt+J, Command+Option+J to jump it. This time I am going to call this one O, for Original, plus GBinv,
04:25 which is Gaussian Blur Inverted (O+GBinv). So this time we are adding by the way and still subtracting, and I could actually spell it
04:31 out because last time I spelt out minus for this letter.
04:34 So I'll spell it out O plus GBinv, click OK, drag it to the top of the stack, go up here to the Image menu, choose the Apply Image command,
04:43 so a pretty familiar stuff, even though its mind-boggling at this point but still familiar.
04:48 I am going to go to Layer and I am going to set this guy to Gaussian Blur 12 once again and instead of subtracting it, we're going to go ahead
04:55 and add it, but we need to add an inverted version of this. It's way too highlighted, it's like we've got back-lightning going on.
05:02 I am going to go ahead and click on the Invert option in order to create this effect here.
05:05 So we are getting rid of this white zone and we're going to keep the shadow edges.
05:11 Now click OK in order to accept that effect.
05:14 Now I am going to go back to Orig+(O-GB), that layer, the one that has, if I go and turn this layer Off for a moment,
05:21 you can see this is the layer that has the highlights applied to it.
05:24 So I want it to be selected, I'll go ahead and turn on again 0 plus GBinv.
05:28 I am going to jump that layer by pressing Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J on the Mac, and I am to call this one Orig+(0-GB)
05:38 just like we have, and then minus the sum, which is (0+GBinv) for invert.
05:44 It's not necessary that you name these layers anything; you don't have to name them so scrupulously as I am doing,
05:50 I am just doing so that I can keep track of what the heck I am ought to.
05:52 I'll click OK, drag the guy to the top of the stack so that you can see it.
05:57 We are actually going to subtract away those dark edges by going up to the Image menu, choosing the Apply Image command and we're going to go ahead
06:05 and set the layer to this guy right there, 0 plus GBinv and were going to subtract it this time
06:11 around by changing the Blend mode to Subtract and look at those dark edges.
06:14 So we have the highlighted edges, we have the shadow edges, everything's there, I'll go ahead and click OK
06:19 in order to accept that modification. Now I am going to zoom-in because some of you might be thinking by this point, if you are thinking at all,
06:26 if you have any semblance of a brain left, you might be thinking this can't possibly be the exact same effect.
06:33 Now I am going to scroll to the top of the Layers palette, I am going to turn on USM 100/12/0.
06:37 That is an authentic application of the Unsharp Mask command.
06:41 Did you see anything change? Nothing changed. That's because we exactly emulated, this is not even simulation.
06:47 It's an exact emulation of Unsharp Mask set to a 100 with a Radius value of 12 and a Threshold of 0.
06:53 You can build your own Unsharp Mask command using nothing more than Gaussian Blur and Apply Image.
07:00 So this is totally the effect of sharpening created using blurring.
07:04 Now at this point you might say, "Wow!
07:05 that's really cool, Deke, where in the world did you learn that one?'" If you are thinking it's cool of course.
07:10 And the truth of the matter is, I came up with it myself.
07:15 Alright, you should just kNow I mean that's the kind of sick man I am.
07:18 In the next exercise we will be shifting focus away from this totally theoretical, ridiculous application of the Gaussian Blur function,
07:25 we will be shifting to a much more practical application of the Smart Sharpen filter in Photoshop CS3.
07:33
07:34
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Using the Smart Sharpen filter
00:00In this exercise I am going to introduce you to what is essentially the upgrade to the Unsharp Mask filter And that is the Smart Sharpen command.
00:08Introduced a few years back inside Photoshop CS2, it allows you to do just about everything you can do with the Unsharp Mask command and then some.
00:16So I would go so far as to call it the preeminent sharpening function inside Photoshop,\.
00:21When in doubt, when you want to sharpen an image use Smart Sharpen. That's what I would say anyway. And I am going to demonstrate this filter
00:28on this Happy family.jpeg file, which of course comes to us from photographer Justin Horrocks
00:33of iStockphoto.com and its found inside the 03 sharpen filters folder.
00:38Lets go up to the Filter menu choose Sharpen and then choose Smart Sharpen.
00:42I've gone ahead and assigned this filter a keyboard shortcut of Shift+F6 using the Keyboard Shortcuts Command under the Edit menu.
00:49And that brings up this big old dialog box here, a much larger dialog box and the one associated with the Unsharp Mask command,
00:57but I am going to zoom-in. Lets go ahead and zoom-in, not on the baby's face, lets look at Mpm this time around.
01:02I am going to crank that Amount value up to 250% I think.
01:06So you can see that basically we are outfitted with the same Amount and Radius values
01:10that we've seen before and that we saw inside of Unsharp Mask.
01:13In fact, by default these Amount and Radius values behave just
01:17like they do inside the Unsharp Mask dialog box; they produce the same results and everything.
01:21The only option we're missing as you can see here is the Threshold value, and I was telling you I am not that fond
01:26pf Threshold in the first place, so I am not missing it anyway.
01:29I am going to ahead and raise the Radius value of 3 pixels, and by the way for now I just want you to focus on these three options right here: Amount,
01:37Radius and Remove. We'll come to More Accurate later and in a still later exercise we'll talk about Basic and Advanced and Settings
01:44which are kind of flawed options inside of this dialog box.
01:48In fact, I would go so far as to call them sufficiently flawed as to be broken essentially, but as I say, we'll come back to those.
01:54But if all you ever do is mess around with Amount, Radius and Remove, you're still ahead of the game.
02:00You still having more flexible filter than what you have with Unsharp Mask.
02:03So you already understand Amount, you understand Radius, it controls the thickness of the edges of course.
02:08What about Remove? Notice that you have three different Remove settings to choose from: Gaussian Blur, Lens Blur and Motion Blur.
02:16For a moment I want you to think of this word, not as being Remove, but rather as being Use.
02:21Should Photoshop use Gaussian Blur in order to correct the perceived focus of the image, in order to create the illusion of sharper focus?
02:30As we saw on the previous exercise, and recall if you were with me, that we used Gaussian Blur and nothing more than Gaussian Blur in order
02:36to fix the image. Or should it use the Lens Blur function or should it use the Motion Blur function? So its actually using these other filters,
02:44Lens Blur and Motion Blur are filters under the Blur sub-menu, and it's actually using these filters in order to correct the focus of the image.
02:51And I will prove that to you because I am so fond of doing that, I will prove that to you in a couple of exercises.
02:57But at any rate for now what's more important than understanding what's going under the hood, even though I love to show you what's going under the hood,
03:03whats more important is to understand when and why you would these functions.
03:07So first of all, when you have Remove set to Gaussian Blur, this command, assuming that More Accurate is turned off, and you are not messing
03:14around with the basic and advanced functions up here.
03:16Then the Amount and Radius values behave exactly like they do inside the Unsharp Mask dialog box.
03:22So if we were to choose Unsharp Mask and set the Amount to 250% and set the Radius to 3 and set the Threshold to 0,
03:28then you would see exactly the effect that's pictured here inside of the preview when Remove is set to Gaussian Blur.
03:34So why would you use Gaussian Blur though? I would suggest here's my very simple take on these three functions.
03:42When you're correcting for scanned artwork or a scanned film photograph you're generally better off setting Remove to Gaussian Blur.
03:49You can also experiment with Lens Blur if you want to, the Gaussian Blur is your best bet.
03:54Then if you want to compensate for a digital photograph like this one right here, then you would work with Lens Blur
04:00because Lens Blur better simulates the effect of actual optical blurring,
04:05and so it's better suited to compensating for optical blurring inside of an image.
04:10So use Gaussian Blur for your scanned artwork, use Lens Blur for your digital photographs that come from a digital camera and use Motion Blur
04:18for a camera shake. That is to say, when the camera moves a little bit and you get a little bit of back
04:23and forth blur, that's when you want to use Motion Blur.
04:26So what would we use for this image? Well this image happens to be a digital photograph. How do I know that? Well,
04:32I'll show you. I am going to go ahead and cancel out of here. Because I didnt shoot the photograph, right,
04:36so how am I so confident that it's a digital photograph?
04:39I'll go up to the File menu and I'll choose the File Info command right here, or I could press that big keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+Alt+I
04:46or Command+Shift+Option+I on the Mac, and you'll see all this information about the photographer, about Justin Horrocks, and that he lives
04:54in Lake Stevens, Washington. Because I've gone ahead and included this metadata for you to track this image, so you know where it comes from
05:01and you could also checkout this guy's URL right here, just by clicking on the Go To URL button,
05:05but that still doesn't tell us that it's a digital photograph.
05:08To see if its a digital photograph or not, you go to Camera Data 1 right there, click on it.
05:12If you don't see any information, any camera data, that means it's most likely, it's either
05:17a very old digital photographs or more likely because of the high-resolution
05:21of this image it came from a scanner- scanned artwork, but if you see a bunch of photographic information it means it's a digital photograph
05:29and then in this case, this image was shot with the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II and so on and so on and so on.
05:35This is all the information about the aperture and about whether the flash fired and about the focal length and all those other jobs.
05:41So I am going to cancel out of here, but that's how you tell if something is a digital photograph. If it is, and of course you might also recall
05:48if you shot it yourself that its a digital photograph.
05:50If it is, then you want to compensate for the focus by going
05:53to the Filter menu, choosing Sharpen, by-passing Unsharp Mask, of course by-passing these other guys.
05:59These are just single-shot sharpeners that don't do that much good actually, and you would choose the Smart Sharpen function,
06:06you would change Remove to Lens Blur and then you would set up the value set you want to work with.
06:10For this image, I think I'll try out an Amount value of 200% and a Radius value of 3.
06:15Now I want to show you one more thing about this Radius value, lets go ahead and zoom-in on the woman's face here for a moment,
06:21and notice the difference in the Radius, look at the thickness of the edges around her eyes and her nose and her mouth, all the edges inside the image.
06:29I'll switch the Gaussian Blur for a moment and did you notice how those edges just got thicker?
06:34Lets actually increase this Radius value to 6 so you can really see them. Look how thick and meaty those edges are. And recall one of the reasons
06:41that they are so thick and edgy is because of the Gaussian luminance distribution curve which ends
06:46up exaggerating the radius, exaggerating the size of those halos.
06:51Whereas- watch those halos there.
06:53As soon as I switch the Lens Blur, they shrink, they get tighter, they get more discrete.
06:59This is why the setting right here of Lens Blur is so much better suited to digital photography
07:04because it does more discrete job of sharpening those edges.
07:08So in our case I'd probably take this Radius value down, to something like 3 pixels, lets say. So an Amount of 200%, Radius of 3,
07:15Remove set to Lens Blur, click OK and just so we get a sense of what kind of difference it makes in the happy family here;
07:21this is the before-view of the image and this is the after-view.
07:26In the next exercise, I'll show you an example of camera shake which we can solve by setting the Remove function to Motion Blur.
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Compensating for camera shake
00:00In this exercise we are going to talk about setting the Smart Sharpen filter to Remove Motion Blur.
00:06Now I want to stress here, we're not really removing Motion Blur, we're not correcting a motion blurred photograph, we're merely compensating for it.
00:14There is a big difference as you will see.
00:16I am working inside of an image called Sammy shake.jpeg found inside the 03 sharpen filters folder and this is a photograph of my youngest son Sammy.
00:26And it may be that Sammy is shaking, that Sammy is in motion or it may be that my camera is in motion.
00:32However, it worked out, and I suspected its a little bit of both actually,
00:35this is the long exposure shot, and I shot this photograph, it looks a little bizarre,
00:40but I actually think it looks pretty nice generally speaking.
00:43But it does have a lot of movement going on and that is something that we can remedy to a limited extent using Smart Sharpen set to Motion Blur.
00:53First thing I am going to do is press the F key to enter the Full Screen mode and move Sammy over a little bit here,
00:58cheat him over to the left-hand side of the screen so we have some room for the filter down here.
01:03Then I am going to go up to the Filter menu, choose Sharpen and I am going to choose Smart Sharpen
01:07or because it was the last command I applied, you can see its up here at the top of the menu.
01:12I could just press, and this what I am going to do, I'll press Ctrl+Alt+F or Command+Option+F on the Mac,
01:17to invoke that last filter using different settings and I am going to zoom-in on his nose here for a moment.
01:25You can see this is the effect of the last settings on this particular photograph with Amount of 200%, a Radius of 3 pixels
01:31and Remove set to Lens Blur, which is not right for this photo.
01:35But it does create this kind of painterly effect on the nose right here, this area around the nose because there is a bunch
01:42of these interesting textures that are being resolved inside of this photograph.
01:47When you have blur going on inside of the photograph, either an Optical Blur or a Motion Blur like were seeing here,
01:54the camera tends to generate a higher amount of noise and the digital noise can take on different patterns.
02:02And in this case we have these almost brush strokes patterns going on inside this image, which I think is actually pretty nifty.
02:09But lets say that's not what I want.
02:11Well, then I wouldn't leave Remove set to Lens Blur, that's for sure.
02:14Lets go and zoom-out from the nose a little bit.
02:16I am going to leave that nose and some of the lips in the center of the photograph there.
02:20You really want to compensate for the eyes, but I am going to start with the nose.
02:23I am going to change that Remove setting from Lens Blur to Motion Blur.
02:28Now as soon as I do, a couple of things happen.
02:30First of all the nature of my Radius totally changes the nature of my Radius value,
02:35and it's going to appear to have less of an effect, even less of an effect in Lens Blur.
02:39So your halos get yet smaller.
02:42They're also directional halos.
02:43So light halos are going to show up on one side of an edge on the larger group of edges, and the dark halos are going to show
02:50up on the other side of larger group edges as you'll see in a moment.
02:54You also have this Angle value that you can work with, which is specifically designed to determine the angle at which you move the camera,
03:01but it's really the angle of the Motion Blur filter being applied.
03:05I am going to change this to something like this angle right here, now see if you can just drag this line inside the circle there.
03:11And something around 20 degrees is where I am going to start with.
03:15So I'll go ahead and actually take that down, what I mean to say actually is -20 degrees.
03:20I am also going to up the Radius value a little.
03:24Now it's difficult to determine exactly what Radius value you want to use when you are working with Motion Blur.
03:30Here's what I suggest. First of all, you want to be higher than the normal Radius values you would use.
03:36In this time you want to think about how much movements occurring inside of the photograph as opposed to how big you want your halos to be.
03:43At this rate I am saying that I have about 8.7 pixels of movement going on, and bear in mind that that's a Radius value,
03:49so it would really be twice that, it'd really be like 17 or 18 pixels of movement. And of course in the real world we don't move in pixels,
03:57but we're trying to figure out how it resolves in terms of this photograph.
04:00Now I am going to switch over to one of the eyes so that we can see how this Motion Blur setting is affecting the eye.
04:06This is the before, you can see there is a little bit of movement blur going on there;
04:10this is after, and so the details actually kind of come together.
04:14Now here's something else I am going to show you. I am going to zoom-in on this side so it takes up the larger portion of the screen here,
04:19and we're going to knock the Radius value back down to 3 pixels and with the value selected,
04:25you can see that its active because of the blinking insertion marker.
04:27I am going to press Shift+Up arrow, I want you to watch that eye and when I press Shift+Up arrow
04:31of course I am raising the Radius value in whole pixel increments.
04:35So we'll take it from 3 to 4 in this case.
04:37So watch what happens, when I press Shift+Up arrow, the eye seems to move, notice the details,
04:41its kind of moved over a little bit to the left, a little bit up and to the left.
04:45Then I press Shift+Up arrow again and now they move down into the right a little bit, so they move the opposite direction.
04:51Even though I am going continuously upward here.
04:53Shift+Up arrow again, the 6 pixels move a little bit the other direction, Shift+Up arrow again and move the other direction again, so it's moving back
05:00and forth, back and forth from one pixel to the next.
05:03Shift+Up arrow again moves over to the left, Shift+Up arrow again it doesn't move very much.
05:07At the point where it doesn't move very much, notice now as I go up again and its starting to move back and forth some more.
05:13So the point which you don't see very much movement inside the photograph, that's the right Radius value.
05:18So for us, its in that 8 to 9 pixel range, between 8 and 9 were not seeing much movement going on.
05:24In fact, were not seeing much difference and that's another way to tag the proper value, but that's an approximation,
05:30I have to tell you because sometimes you're going to find a very large value works out well,
05:34and sometimes you're going to find a very small value works out well, regardless of what you see going on with the movement.
05:39So this is just rule of thumb which you're going to feel free to violate of course, just keep in the back of your mind.
05:43If you have room, and then another thing is, what is the Angle value? How do you figure out the angle of the movement? Well,
05:49sometimes if its strict camera shake you will find that its almost exactly horizontal because you are vibrating back and forth with the camera.
05:57But in this case we've got some movement from our subject mixing with the camera shake and so it could be anything.
06:03What I would suggest is you just fool around with this Angle value in order to see what works best for you.
06:08So lets go ahead and zoom.
06:12I am going to move the image over, notice that you can move and zoom the image while you have these style dialog boxes up on the screen.
06:22What it really meant to do is zoom back out from the preview right there,
06:26and I am going to just play with the Angle value, just by dragging this guy around.
06:30So this currently were seeing an angle of -20.
06:32Lets try out an angle of 58 degrees which is running perpendicular to that, so this direction in other words, sort of up-and-downish a little bit,
06:40this would be south-west to the north-east, so in that direction.
06:44That looks pretty darn good and then if I try the opposite direction what I had before, that sort of spreads the eye-lashes out a little bit.
06:50So I don't like that nearly as much.
06:51So lets try something around this region.
06:53Lets try an Angle value, just so I can remember it, because I am going to show you different approach in a couple of exercises.
06:59Lets try an Angle value of 40 degrees for this image and I am going to leave More Accurate turned off. I'll explain that later.
07:05So we've got an Amount of 200, Radius of 9 pixels, Remove set to Motion Blur and an Angle of 40 degrees. And just for laughs here,
07:13I just want to show you big difference between Remove set to Motion Blur and Remove set to Lens Blur particularly at this big Radius value.
07:21So a very different effect indeed. And here's Gaussian Blur just to give you yet another very, very different effect.
07:27So we cant go with nearly those high Radius values for Gaussian Blur and Lens Blur, but we can with the Motion Blur.
07:33Alright, so it looks pretty darn good.
07:35The other thing to bear in mind is we are drawing noise out of the image, so we are exaggerating the noise, but not to the extent we were
07:41with Lens Blur or if we'd tried Gaussian Blur we would be exaggerating the noise that much more as well.
07:46So you're going to have use more noise removal before you apply this filter, or you can use a different route as I'll show you
07:52in an upcoming exercise, but for now lets just go ahead and click OK in order to take advantage
07:57of these settings. And lets go ahead and zoom-in on Sammy.
08:00So were taking a look at the child here at the 100% zoom level.
08:04So this is the before-version of Sammy and this is the after-version of Sammy,
08:10thanks to the Motion Blur settings inside the Smart Sharpen dialog box. It does not entirely cure the effects of Motion Blur inside the image,
08:18and you can see, we have a little bit of radial rotation going down here in the mouth that we can't compensate for,
08:24but it does make a difference, it does help to compensate.
08:29In the next exercise I am going to prove to you that Smart Sharpen does indeed rely on Lens Blur and Motion Blur so if you like to geek out on
08:37that kind of stuff, join me. If you hate to geek on that kind of stuff then join me in a couple of exercises when we talk about how
08:44to compensate for a Motion Blur using the Emboss filter instead.
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Building your own Smart Sharpen with Lens Blur
00:00 Alright gang, in this exercise we are going to be Daniel Booning it again. We are going to be doing it old style. This time
00:06 around we are going to be building Smart Sharpen using nothing more than the Lens Blur filter
00:11 in one case and the Motion Blur filter in another case.
00:13 So this is not a technique that I am suggesting you use; this is complete and total theory.
00:18 The only reason I offer it because it helped me understand how Smart Sharpen is put together and it help me know how to use the filter.
00:24 So presumably it is going to help some of you as well if you think like me. God forbid.
00:30 So what I have got here is this document called More testing.PSD and that's found inside the 03 sharpen filters folder.
00:38 Notice that it's got a flatten version of the serpentine line with the texture background, blah, blah, blah.
00:43 And in front of that we have two Smart Sharpen variations, hence the ss, and then the x means either the Lens Blur variation
00:52 or in the case of MB, we have got the Motion Blur variation.
00:55 So with Lens Blur, I have applied- I'll go ahead and zoom-in so we can really see the effect there.
00:59 With Lens Blur, I have applied an Amount value of 100, as you can see over here in the layer name, and a Radius value of 12.
01:06 Note that by the way, 12, because we'll be approaching this a little differently with Lens Blur.
01:11 Then with Motion Blur, I will go ahead and turn it on and notice that it will shift slightly on screen there.
01:15 You can see that now we have a directional blur going on so that its appearing just on the right and left side.
01:21 So that is a directional effect as what should I say and that's both with the dark halo and the light halo instead
01:28 of omni-directional, that is surrounding the entire circle.
01:31 So that is SSxMB 100 for the Amount value, 20 for the radius time and then 0 for the angle.
01:39 So lets go ahead and build these ourselves using nothing more than, in this case the Lens Blur filter and a nine volt battery.
01:47 In another words, we are getting very rustic here.
01:49 I am going to go ahead and select the Background layer; the other two layers are turned off.
01:52 Then I am going to press Ctrl+Alt+J or Command Option+J in the Mac in order to jump this layer and name it of course.
01:59 I will call this one Lens Blur and this time its going to be a Lens Blur with a Radius value of 24.
02:07 Now notice how that compares with the Smart Sharpen filter set to Lens Blur, we are using the Radius value of 12.
02:14 I was telling you how the Lens Blur radius is more subtle than the Gaussian Blur radius.
02:20 Well it's so subtle that you actually have to double the Lens Blur to even get there. So Lens Blur is just a more subtle filter in the first place.
02:27 So go ahead and click OK so its actually twice the Radius value.
02:31 Then I am going to go up to the Filter menu, I am going to choose Blur and I am going to choose Lens Blur.
02:35 Now the whole idea behind Lens Blur is that its simulating actual optical blur, the kind of blur you would get if you unfocused your camera;
02:44 if you want to focus on, for example, a background that would be a Lens Blur.
02:48 So I'll go ahead and choose that very different from a Gaussian Blur, much more complicated as you can see as well.
02:53 These are the default values you are seeing here.
02:55 I am just going to change one value.
02:57 Assuming default settings, I am just going to change the Radius value to 24, we are going to leave everything else set the way it is.
03:03 So Shape is Hexagon, Blade Curvature is 0, Rotation is 0.
03:07 Look at the values, make sure those are same as yours then if you are following along with me,
03:11 of course, then click OK in order to apply that Lens Blur.
03:14 Now I am going to create another duplicate of the Background layer by pressing Ctrl+Alt+J or Command Option+J on the Mac
03:19 and we'll call this one Orig minus LBlur this time around and I'll drag it to the top, we are going to go to Apply Image under the Image menu.
03:31 And I am going to change the Layer from Merged, I certainly don't want; I want it to be Lens Blur 24 and we are going to go ahead and subtract,
03:39 the Blending should be set to Subtract, Invert should be turned off and these are values you should be set the way you see them then click OK.
03:45 Notice we get a very subtle effect this time around.
03:48 I am going to go ahead and zoom-in so you can see that a very subtle highlighting effect right there.
03:53 Now we need to apply it to the original image so lets go back to the original image, Ctrl+Alt+J, Command Option+J on a Mac, and I am going
04:00 to go ahead and call this guy Orig+(O-LB) this time around and then I'll click OK in order to accept that.
04:08 Move it to the top of the stack, go up to the Image menu, choose the Apply Image command. I am going to go ahead and change the layer this time
04:15 around to this guy, Orig minus LBlur, and we are going to add it of course in order to get a highlight effect as you are seeing there.
04:22 Click OK in order to accept that.
04:24 Now once again, we are going to go back to the Background layer and going to press Ctrl+Alt+J,
04:29 Command Option+J on the Mac to jump it, we are going to call this one Orig plus LBlur.
04:35 Click OK, go ahead and move that guy to the top of the stack.
04:39 Go up to the Image menu, choose the Apply Image command and I am going to change the layer this time around back to Lens Blur.
04:47 We are going to turn on the Invert checkbox and we are going to leave the Blending mode set to Add.
04:51 You can see that we have these nice dark haloes this time around.
04:55 I will click the OK button in order to accept that modification.
04:57 Lets go to Orig+(O-LB), press Ctrl+Alt+J, Command Option+J on the Mac and we'll change the name of this new layer to - and this will be O+ LB
05:10 and then oopsactually, inv. We want invert. I didn't add this time around, we do want to invert.
05:16 That will be the name and click Ok and of course, layer names aren't absolutely essential, you get the layer name, right?
05:21 We are just going for a technique here- not a technique, just some theory.
05:25 So I move that guy to the top of the stack.
05:26 Lets go up to the Image menu, well choose the Apply Image command.
05:29 I am going to change the layer to Orig plus LBlur and I am going to make sure that the Invert checkbox is turned
05:37 on still and I am going to change this guy to Subtract.
05:40 So the Blend mode is Subtract this time around.
05:42 To invoke the dark halos, click OK and that is the finished effect.
05:46 Now lets go ahead and compare it to Lens Blur to SSXLB 100/12.
05:50 I'll go ahead and turn on that layer and you can see its identical; exactly the same effect.
05:56 The one weird thing that you have to do is you have to double that Lens Blur value.
06:00 So Smart Sharpen goes ahead and doubles the effect of the Lens Blur as it applies it, that's the only difference.
06:06 That's how you create the Smart Sharpen filters, the Lens Blur variation using just the Lens Blur filter.
06:12 It turns out you can do exactly the same if you have a mind to. You can follow those exact steps and do the very same thing with Motion Blur
06:20 with the Motion Blur filter. Abd I'll just go ahead and show you under the Filter menu,
06:23 you got to Blur and you got a Motion Blur, this guy right there.
06:26 You run through the exact same steps and you will get the Motion Blur variation of Smart Sharpen as well.
06:31 So that's where those function come from,. So Smart Sharpen, just like Unsharp Mask, is using Gaussian Blur in order to invoke a sharpening effect,
06:40 Smart Sharpen is using either a Gaussian Blur or Lens Blur or Motion Blur to invoke its sharpening effect as well.
06:49 In the next exercise, I am going to show you yet another way to account for Motion Blur inside of an image but this time we'll use the Emboss filter.
06:58
06:58
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Using directional sharpening with Emboss
00:00Alright just because we didn't quite get through that whole Lens Blur and Motion Blur thing in the last exercisem
00:05I went ahead and built up a group of these objects, inside of this file called lens&motionblurgroups.PSD
00:12that's found inside the 03 sharpen filters folder. What it contains is all of the layers- notice this Lens Blur 24 group-
00:20it contains all of the layers that are necessary to make up the Manual Lens Blur effect, the Lens Blur equivalent that is
00:28of the Smart Sharpen effect set to Lens Blur and that's this group right there,
00:33go ahead and turn it on you can see, that we now have a sharpened version of our image.
00:39Above it I have a group that is all of the various layers that were required
00:44when I was putting them together using the Apply Image command and so on.
00:48These are the layers that are required to create the manual version of the Smart Sharpen filter set to the Motion Blur effect.
00:57And just by way of an FYI, when you are applying Motion Blur that's the Motion Blur Command under the Blur sub-menu in the Filter menu.
01:06I've got an Angle value of zero in this case and a Distance value of 20, so you just go ahead and set the Distance value to whatever it is,
01:13that you want to use as a Radius value, so notice the Distance and the Radius values for Smart Sharpen they both match each other exactly.
01:22Just a bit of FYI, something you can play with if you are so inclined, because you did such a great job of sticking with that amazing amount
01:30of theory right there, I am going to lay on here right now a very practical technique.
01:34So this one is not theory at all, this is total practicality here.
01:38We are going to see how to compensate for Motion Blur and/or camera shake, but this time we are going to use the Emboss filter instead,
01:46which gives you quite a different effect that's better in one way than the Smart Sharpen filter and it's worse in another way.
01:53We are back inside the Sammy image, the one that's called Sammyshake.jpeg, its found inside of the 03 sharpen filters folder.
02:01What I am going to do just so that we can compare these two effects to each other.
02:06I am going to go up to the Filter menu, I am going to go ahead and choose Sharpen and I am going to choose Smart Sharpen,
02:12and with any luck we should see the last values we applied here, which is Remove set to Motion Blur, that's good, an Angle value of 40 degrees,
02:20More Accurate is turned off the Radius value is set to 9-pixels and the Amount value is set to 200%.
02:26Now I am going to go ahead and raise that Radius value to 10-pixels instead, so that we are comparing apples to oranges.
02:34You will see why that's necessary in just a moment.
02:36So I am just going raise that Radius value to 10-pixels and then I am going to click OK.
02:40Now I am going to go ahead and zoom-in so that we can see this effect up close in personal.
02:44We are working with the flat image as you can see here inside the Layers palette and I want to go ahead and keep this Smart Sharpen version
02:51of the image so we can back to it and I am going to use History to accomplish this, by the way.
02:55So I am going to collapse this right-hand column of palette here I going to bring up my History palette
03:00and you could see that I've got Smart Sharpen following Open.
03:03As opposed to undoing this effect, which would get rid of it, I am instead going to go over to the File menu and choose the Revert Command,
03:10or I could press the F12 key, and notice what that does. That adds another state called Revert.
03:15So my Smart Sharpen state is still intact, but I have restored the original version of the Sammy image here
03:21and now I am going to hide the History palette for a moment.
03:24Now we are working with a flat image so we're going to have to jump through a couple of hoops in order to make this Emboss effect work out.
03:31It works even better as it turns out if we are working with a Smart Object, if we are applying a Smart Filter version of Emboss
03:37to a Smart Object, well see how that works a little later.
03:40I am going to go up to Filter menu, I am going to choose Stylize and I am going to choose the Emboss command.
03:45Now what you should know about Emboss is it's a terrible embossing filter.
03:48It produces this hideous effect but it's a great alternate sharpening filter as we'll see.
03:53So I am going to go ahead and choose Emboss and notice what it does first of all, it makes the image look like its kind of engraved in lead
04:01or something along those lines,. It turns all of the non-edges to gray and then the edges get highlighted
04:07with either shadows on one side or highlights on the other side.
04:10It's a directional effect, and notice that I've gone ahead and matched the values that I applied inside the Smart Sharpen filter.
04:17So the Angle value is set to 40 degrees just as it was with Smart Sharpen, and of course, we don't need to set the Remove function or anything.
04:26There is no Remove function, so we don't have to set it to Motion Blur, Emboss is automatically applying a directional effect here.
04:33Now the Amount value is analogous to the Amount value inside Smart Sharpen, so I went ahead and set it to the same thing 200%.
04:39The Height value is analogous to half of the Radius value because the Height value is approximately twice as strong as the Radius value.
04:47So instead of setting it to 10, I set it to 5.
04:49Now the whole reason we made Radius 10 is so that we could evenly divide it by 2. Because you cant enter decimals into the Height value here.
04:57It has to be an even number of pixels.
04:59So 45 and 200% gives us something of an equal treatment but as you'll see, its pretty different.
05:06Go ahead and click OK, and of course, its very different and that we have all these grays all over the place.
05:10It doesn't look like a sharpening effect at all.
05:13Well, heres what you do.
05:14In order to get rid of those grays, you have to invoke the Overlay blend mode.
05:18You can't do it from the Layers palette since we have a flat image here, so I am going up to the Edit menu and choose Fade Emboss
05:24in order to fade that filter. You can also press Ctrl+Shift+F or Command Shift+F on the Mac.
05:29And now instead of changing the Opacity value I am going to change the mode to Overlay and that's going to drop out all the grays and it's going
05:37to screen the highlights and multiply the shadows so we are going to get this very smooth effect right there,
05:43where the Emboss effect is woven into the fabric of the original image essentially.
05:49Now if we felt like we've gone too far, you could go ahead and back off the Opacity value a little, and I might take the Opacity value down to
05:56about 80%, maybe even down to 75% for this effect and then go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification.
06:04Now here's the thing.
06:06This is a different effect than we saw with Smart Sharpen.
06:08So lets go ahead and compare them from the History palette.
06:12Here's my Smart Sharpen effect right there and there is the Emboss effect faded of course using the Overlay Blend mode.
06:18So heres Smart Sharpen, and I am going to go ahead and zoom-in even farther, so we can see what's going on.
06:23There is the sharpened version of the eye right there.
06:26Now in addition to producing a more subtle effect where edges are concerned, which you can barely see,
06:32notice that even though we had a very high Radius value 10-pixels.
06:36You cant really see any halos, you cant see those dark and light halos around the edges the way you can when you are Smart Sharpening
06:43with Lens Blur or Unsharp Masking or Smart Sharpening with Gaussian Blur.
06:48However, we are bringing out a lot of noise.
06:50So if you look at what ought to be smooth portions of the skin tones for example and this is a child after all.
06:55He doesn't have a wrinkly skin.
06:56He doesn't have big pores, any of the things that we adults have and yet we have a lot of weird articulation going on inside of the skin tones
07:04and that's because of the digital noise that was captured by the camera as a result of having so much blur associated
07:09with this image and it really gets exaggerated by Smart Sharpen.
07:13So lets go ahead and compare that to the Emboss version of the image- not nearly as much noise.
07:20So Emboss doesn't tend to bring out the noise in the image the way that Smart Sharpen does.
07:24However, it produces big thick halos inside the image.
07:28So the halos are much more obvious.
07:30You can see this weird light halo around the top of the eye here and this dark halo underneath.
07:35If we go down to the nose, it's even more noticeable.
07:38You can see the nostril has this Neon strip across the top of it, whereas with Smart Sharpen you don't see that pretty much at all.
07:46Its got a little bit of lightness there, but some of that lightness which is just brightness bounce
07:50that was already associated with the original image before we sharpened it.
07:53I can show you that, if I go to the Open option here which represents the original state of the image.
07:57You can see that we have a little bit of brightness here and that's a highlight that's reflected off of the top of his lip.
08:04Anyway, I am going to go back to Smart Sharpen.
08:06So that's the Smart Sharpened effect, that's the embossed version of the effect.
08:10Here's what I am going to tell you.
08:11If you're trying to compensate for a Motion Blur or you are trying to compensate for camera shake, that kind of thing, and you are going
08:19to screen, then you are better off if your final output device is a screen. Because you are going to the web for example
08:23or like a presentation, then your best option is to go with Smart Sharpen.
08:28However, if you are going to print, you want those nice thick halos, because they are going to survive the printing process so you want to go
08:35with Emboss instead. And of course the additional upside is that Emboss is bringing out less of the noise inside of the image.
08:42One more note about Emboss is that it produces some very clearly-defined halos.
08:48They aren't those soft drop off halos that you get with Gaussian Blur
08:52or Lens Blur instead they are very sharply-defined halos, so that's something to bear in mind as well.
08:57So take it easy on that Height value, don't go too far with it.
09:00A Height value of between 3 and 6-pixels is generally going to serve you well.
09:05In the next exercise we are going to see the remainder of the Smart Sharpen options including More Accurate and the others.
09:11Stay tuned!
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Using Smart Sharpen extras
00:00In this exercise we are going to review the remaining functions inside the Smart Sharpen dialog box, which include those Advanced shadow
00:08and highlight adjustments and the fact that you can ostenstebly save off your settings,
00:12although that feature is essentially broken the way it is right now. And then there is the More Accurate check box,
00:18the one feature that I think is actually useful of the functions we haven't discussed so far inside that dialog box.
00:24Now I am working inside of Happy family.jpeg which is found inside of the O3 Sharpen Filters folder and I am going to go to Filter menu
00:33and choose Sharpen and choose the Smart Sharpen command to bring up of course the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
00:38Now for the sake of demonstration, I am going to max out some values, I am going to change the Amount value to 500% and I am going to change Remove
00:45from Motion Blur to Lens Blur and I am going to leave the Radius size set to 10 pixels, which is insane if we are trying to correct the image,
00:53but I am just trying to demonstrate a few features here.
00:56So I am going to go ahead and zoom in on this woman's face and notice if you will that thanks to this radical sharpening that I've applied
01:03that we have some clips, highlights and shadows, meaning that many of the highlights have gone to flat white,
01:09so they are blown highlights, and many of the shadows have gone to flat black.
01:14That's not really acceptable. Now this happens all the time.
01:17The fact that I have exaggerated the value makes it very obvious, but this is happening on the less obvious basis anytime you apply Unsharp Mask
01:25or Smart Sharpen or one of the other sharpening functions.
01:29That's because Photoshop is going in there and enhancing the edge contrast.
01:33So you are bound to get black and white pixels out of it.
01:36That's what this Advanced option right here is designed to avoid.
01:39So if you turn on Advanced, you will get a couple of additional panels, Shadow and Highlight.
01:45Now they both work the same.
01:46I am going to demonstrate Highlight because it is more obvious in the case of this image.
01:50First of all, you determine how much you want to fade those highlights.
01:53So I will go ahead and change that value to 50% to fade them back 50% and notice they are still there, they are just not clipped anymore.
02:00So we went ahead and dim those highlights.
02:02Now the total Width value controls exactly what falls into the range of highlights.
02:08So currently with a value of 50% we are saying the brightest 50% of the colors inside of this image.
02:13So anything from medium gray or darker is ruled out and anything medium gray or lighter is ruled in
02:20and there is a nice soft transition between the two incidentally.
02:23So that we don't have harsh transitions the way we did inside the Unsharp Mask dialog box with the Threshold function.
02:29But if you want to incorporate more luminance levels inside the image into the brightness range, then you go ahead, increase that all the way to 100%
02:38and you can see, now you get some very smooth transitions at this point.
02:42Now the Radius value determines how these highlights are distributed because Basically this is another one in those filters,
02:49this is a filter on top of the filter by the way that's going through in scrubbing around the pixels in order to create it's effect.
02:56Right Now the Radius value is very lo. If you want to distribute the effect a little better and you want to bring back some
03:02of the highlights, then you would crank that Radius value up.
03:05Now the Radius value really has to be cranked; if you want to see any difference, you are really going to have to crank the heck out of it.
03:11So I want you to keep an eye on this region inside of the image along the top of her nose and I am going to change Radius value from one,
03:19the lowest value, to hundred, the highest value. Did you see that change? That was all there is to it. It's just a little bit of difference there.
03:27Keep an eye on it once again, I am going to now change it back to one and notice how it drops back.
03:33So we are going to recover some highlights, if I raise that value gets a little brighter and the effect is more distributed and we are going
03:39to lose those highlights, they are going to flatten out if we reduce the Radius value.
03:43It is such a subtle difference, however, that if we weren't operating
03:48with this incredibly exaggerated effect you wouldn't notice it all; it is very difficult to detect.
03:53So usually you don't need to worry about this Radius value' you are just change its something like 20 and call it a day,
03:58I mean it really doesn't matter what you set it to on a practical basis.
04:01Now here is the big problem I have with Basic versus Advanced. I like the idea and if Adobe would fix this dialog box, it could be really good,
04:09but watch what happens if I switch back to Basic. What should happen is the original values are restored,
04:15because we do not want those Advanced settings anymore, but they aren't.
04:18So the values persist, when you switch back and forth between Basic and Advanced and that means three months from Now
04:24you have decided that you do not even want to use those Advanced settings anymore, but you did changed them once upon a time,
04:28they are still operative and they are going to mess everything up.
04:32So what I would suggest you do is not work this way, quite frankly.
04:35I would go back to Highlight, I would change this value to zero for the Dade amount, so that we are not doing anything and just go ahead
04:43and switch these guys back to their defaults 15, 1, and then I would turn on Basic again and not worry about Advanced.
04:49Since it sticks, it gets in the way and it can create a lot of problems incidentally.
04:52Now ostensibly these Settings options right here should take care of it because you could save off a bunch of settings.
04:58For example, I could call this one, by clicking on my little floppy disk icon, since God knows we all use floppy disk these days,
05:04I will go ahead and call this effect, something like Extreme and then click OK.
05:09Now note that I still have my settings set to Default.
05:12So if I were click OK, I would change my Default settings, which is bogus.
05:16So I am going to switch this back to Extreme and that should ostensibly say 500% and ten pixels, right.
05:23So lets say I changed my Radius value to something like one and I change my amount to something like a 100%, well that's no longer Extreme.
05:30What should happen is settings should change to Custom now or something so that it doesn't overwrite the Extreme settings.
05:36This is what happens elsewhere inside Photoshop, but this feature the way it is, it's broken because if I click OK right Now
05:43I just saved over my Extreme settings, they are no longer Extreme at all.
05:46So I'll go ahead and undo that modification to bring back my original image.
05:49I will go ahead and press Ctrl+Alt+F, or Command+ Option+F on the Mac to bring back my previous settings
05:54and notice that now Extreme is set to a 100 and radius of one.
05:58If I go to Default, it's set to 200 and Radius of 10 and Motion Blur, which are not the default settings.
06:03So unless you are incredibly vigilant about saving and then selecting and then clicking OK and never overwriting your originals,
06:11because it is very easy to do, you are going to mess up all of your settings and they are going to be of no use to you whatsoever.
06:18I say this from personal experience, as a guy- I am the guy who just showed you how
06:21to build your own Smart Sharpen using just the Lens Blur Filter.
06:25That's how over the top I am, I am very careful about this stuff and I have ruined everything I have done.
06:31So that's not a challenge, I mean I am sure you can beat me, but I am just saying on a regular basis, it doesn't tend to be very useful.
06:37I'll tell you what's useful inside this dialog box that we havent discussed yet.
06:40So I am saying, give this is a slip, give this the slip, do not worry about trying to save your settings. And More Accurate.
06:46This can be useful, not for a portrait shot but it can be useful.
06:49Now I am going to go ahead and set my Amount Value to something relatively high like 250%.
06:54Let us take this Radius value, let us say to 4 pixels, so we can see what we are doing and I will change Remove to Lens Blur,
07:00which would be a setting we could use for this image.
07:02It's a little high, it's a little extreme, but it would work.
07:06Now watch what happens, I'll go ahead and zoom in on the womans face once again, watch what happens if I turn on More Accurate.
07:11Now you might think More Accurate is going to create a more accurate effect.
07:14So why wouldnt you try More Accurate on? Well, that takes a little bit of additional time, but not that much time.
07:20Here's the deal. It has nothing to do with accuracy. What its really doing is,
07:23it's applying a second layer, a second iteration of sharpening to the image.
07:29So it's actually applying a Multipass sharpening effect from the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
07:34So you are sharpening it multiple times in one operation and it's doing this using what's called a Convolution Kernel.
07:40So I am going to go ahead and turn it on, which means its a very detail orientated sharpening effect.
07:44So I am going to go ahead and turn on More Accurate and notice that its got a second level of sharpening applied,
07:50so we've got addition halos going around inside of this image.
07:54What it is good for is sharpening very minute details, which is not what we want when we are sharpening a portrait shot.
08:01We are taking a good looking woman for example here and we are sharpening our pores and our freckles and we are making your face
08:07like essentially a lunar landscape, right, that it is blasted.
08:11That is not what we want.
08:12Now if this was a still life or it was a high frequency image with a cityscape or something along those lines, and we will see examples of that,
08:19More Accurate would be good, it would be helpful to turn it on.
08:22But where portrait shots, low frequency images are concerned, it's bad.
08:26So in the case of this image, I would keep it the heck off, do not turn on more accurate with your portrait shots,
08:32because you would be doing terrible things to the unfortunate people in your photograph.
08:37Now I'll go ahead and click OK.
08:38Now I did say something that may have confused you or at least caused you to scratch your head a little bit.
08:42I was telling you that More Accurate applies that second pass of sharpening that's based on the Convolution Kernel.
08:48So I am going to show you what I mean by Convolution Kernel, well see what Convolution Sharpening looks like in the next exercise.
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Using Convolution Kernels for more accuracy
00:00Once again for those you who are fans of sharpening theory, I've got another theory exercise here for you.
00:06I was telling you at the end of the previous exercise how the More Accurate checkbox is based on the notion of a Convolution Kernel.
00:13A Convolution Kernel allows you to compare neighboring pixels to each other and exaggerate their differences
00:19or downplay their differences as well if you want it to.
00:23It's a primitive sharpening effect. It does a great job of bringing out noise inside of a digital photograph,
00:28which is one of the reasons you don't really want to work this way, but it also does a great job of sharpening the minutia
00:34in the image, which is what the More Accurate checkbox does.
00:36So I am to going to show you a Convolution Kernel.
00:38I am not suggesting this is the way you work once again, just a little bit of theory I am going to show you a Convolution Kernel
00:44and then we'll see how it compares to the better More Accurate checkbox.
00:48I am working inside the test shapes.PSD image which is found inside, once again, inside the 03 sharpen filters folder.
00:56I am going to go up to the Filter menu and I am going to choose Other and I am going to choose this guy right here, Custom.
01:01The Custom filter allows you to multiply the luminance levels of pixels inside of an image and then add them together
01:08or subtract them from each other. Do all this wacky stuff.
01:11Here's the idea. It's little hard to understand if you've never seen it before' which 99% of Photoshop users havent.
01:18Basically whats going on is, remember I was telling you that all of the sharpening filters inside of Photoshop and Gaussian Blur,
01:24the Blur filters as well and the Averaging filters, are actually scrubbing through the image.
01:28So you imagine all these little scrubbing bubbles going through the image and at any nanosecond
01:33of time you are evaluating a single pixel inside the image and trying to decide how to change that pixel or at least that's what Photoshop is doing,
01:41its making a decision based on the luminance level of that pixel and the luminance level
01:45of the neighboring pixels on a channel-by-channel basis incidentally.
01:49So whats going on inside of this 5x5 grid is were seeing a grid of 25 pixels.
01:57So 5 pixels wide 5 pixels tall, right there in the center that's that one pixel that's being evaluated at any given nanosecond in time,
02:05and right now according to the default settings we are seeing, multiply the luminance level of that one pixel by 5 and then look at the pixel directly
02:13above it and multiply it times -1, so subtract its luminance level and take the guy directly to the right and subtract him and take the guy below
02:21and subtract him and take the guy immediately to the left and subtract him.
02:24So if you do the math here, which is pretty simple: 5-1-1-1-1, that's 5 minus 4, so that's 1.
02:32So in other words we are attempting to maintain a consistent level of brightness inside of the image.
02:40If I were to raise this value to six, so the math is of, its now 6-1-1-1-1, so 6 minus 4, it gives you 2.
02:48We're essentially doubling the brightness of the image.
02:50If I were to take this value down to 4, so that the sum is now 0 instead of 1, we are darkening the image.
02:59Don't worry about Scale and Offset. This is just going to multiply the overall effect and this one is going to add or subtract luminance levels,
03:06you typically don't want to work with them, you want to leave them alone.
03:09Actually you probably want to give this filter the path in general, but you can't, there are things you can do with it, you can create these really cool
03:16like sort of Color Emboss effects if you want to and you can do some blurring and you can enter all kinds of values inside
03:22of these various option boxes and play it to your hearts content.
03:25All you want to make sure, those of you who are comfortable with arithmetic,
03:28you just want to make sure that all your numbers whether positI've or negatI've they all add up to one.
03:34So the end result is one, so I could enter 9 here for example and then a -1 here and a -1 here and a -1 here and a -1 here
03:44and now we have eight -1s, so we have 9 minus 8 and that's going to give us 1.
03:48Once again, so we are maintaining a consistent level of brightness.
03:52Now when you have a positive value in the middle and negative value surrounding it, you get a sharpening effect and so the default value,
03:59I'll go ahead and press the Alt key or Option key in order to change the Cancel button to Reset and I'll click on it
04:04and that will give us the original values which are 5 surrounded by -1 that gives you the most basic sharpening effect
04:11that you can apply essentially inside of this dialog box, so this is the lowest level sharpening
04:16and you can see how Photoshop is going in there on a really granular basis.
04:21This is before and this is after, and applying the sharpening on a pixel-by-pixel level essentially.
04:26So theres no such thing as radius or halos or any of that stuff, you don't have that kind of control.
04:32You are just exaggerating pixel differences.
04:35So I'll go ahead and click OK so that we have that saved up and I'll go ahead and zoom-in, and when I say, "Its saved up,
04:41its stored now inside the History palette, so we can come back to it.
04:44Then I am going to go to the File menu and I am going to choose the Revert command so I am bringing back the original version
04:49of the image inside History so we can work with a flat file which is important just because for demonstration proposes I am using a flat file.
04:56Later we'll be using layers which is a better way to work.
04:59So having reverted the image, now I am going to go up to the Filter menu, I am going to choose Sharpen and then I am going to choose Smart Sharpen.
05:05The idea is, we're going to compare the effect of the More Accurate checkbox,
05:10and this time I am going to change the Amount value something like 200%. I think it would work better for us.
05:15Lets take this Radius value down to 2 pixels, we've got Lens Blur, now lets turn on More Accurate and you'll see the difference,
05:24you might be able to see it there, lets go ahead and zoom-in a little bit so that you can see it little more closely.
05:29So this is what this image looks like without More Accurate, this is what it looks like with More Accurate.
05:35So it's bringing out even more information inside the texture detail.
05:41So it's over-highlighting essentially the texture and it's not doing much to the big details at all.
05:47So its highlighting that high-frequency information and ignoring the low-frequency information that's already been treated
05:53by the other values here and as a result we are making this sort of textury effect look almost leathery inside of this particular image.
06:03So I would say with this image More Accurate could be a good thing if you decide to go there out,
06:08because this isn't a portrait shot, it's a high frequency shot, so that's a good thing.
06:11Whenever you want to exaggerate the high-frequency details, that's when you turn on More Accurate.
06:16And well see more examples of this when we take a look at sharpening details in a later Chapter, but for now there it is, I am going to click OK
06:25and just so that we can compare the two effects I am going to move this guy over a little bit, bring up the History palette
06:30and this is what the Custom Convolution Kernel looks like and this is what the Smart Sharpen effect looks like.
06:37So if you were to compare them very closely you would see that the Custom effect is very detailed, but its also very choppy,
06:45we have some razor like lines going on and we have some jagged transitions as well, whereas Smart Sharpen is a little more rounded,
06:54its a little more defused and its ultI'mately a better effect, but again, More Accurate hails from days of Convolution Kernels because it gives us
07:02that control over sharpening the high-frequency details inside of the image.
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Using the High Pass filter
00:00Now if you have'nt guessed this already I am fairly obsessed
00:03with how the sharpening filters works inside the Photoshop and this goes way back for me.
00:07This obsession goes way back to when I first start working on the Photoshop Bible back in 1993
00:12and I came up with the edge masking back then which has fairly caught fire over the years.
00:17Actually, I will show you how to create an edge mask in the next chapter.
00:20But fast forward several years, I had it in my head that Gaussian Blur was the grand parent of Unsharp Mask and I am guessing that came
00:29from some casual comment, an engineer at Adobe made one day.
00:32But it lodged itself in my brain and I am sitting there, thinking, well whats the parent? What is the missing link in between?
00:38I came up with using the High Pass command in order to sharpen an image.
00:43Wrote it up inside my Photoshop CS 101 book and it's another one of those things that has become very popular.
00:49I am not sure if everybody is getting that from me because it's very possible
00:52people will come up with identical techniques and develop them independently.
00:57I am just telling you the story to make myself sound more important really, that's basically it.
01:01So let me show you how the technique works.
01:03Now I have open Happy family.jpeg which is found inside the 03 Sharpen Filters folder.
01:09I am going to go up to the Filter menu and choose other this time around and choose High Pass.
01:15I have assigned this Filter a keyboard shortcut because I find it so very, very useful for this purpose
01:20and of course you can do the same using the Keyboard Shortcuts command under the Edit menu and that brings up this weird looking filter right here.
01:27And it's lot like Emboss in that it takes all of the non-edges in the image and turns them grey
01:32and it only keeps any resemblance of luminance differentiation in the edge areas.
01:39But unlike Emboss, which is a directional effect and kind of a bad directional effect frankly because of the sharp edges,
01:45this one is a very good on the directional effect, so a very subtle effect.
01:49Now what's strange about it, as I said, it has one and only one option and its the Radius value just like the Radius value that's included along
01:57with Unsharp Mask and Gaussian Blur, its another Gaussian distribution radius and notice though
02:02that if I take this value higher that it seems to produce less of an effect.
02:07So we are sending few of the non-edges to grey.
02:09Actually we are making the filter work harder, so it's going to slow down as we increase the Radius value.
02:15It just appears to produce a more subtle effect if you reduce the Radius value,
02:20it's going to operate much more quickly, but it's also going to fairly decimate the image.
02:24It's going to send just tons and tons of these non-edges to grey and just going to keep the edges in a radius of 0.8 pixel in this case.
02:33I am going to go ahead and take this Radius value up to 3 pixels for demonstrational purposes here because after all,
02:39we know that radius of 3 pixels is a very good radius for output, tends to be anyway because we know that a Radius value
02:47of 3 pixels tends to be very good for high resolution output.
02:50So I am going to go ahead and click OK in order to accept that value.
02:54Now we need to fade away the grey non-edges and of course we can do that using the Overlay Blend mode and we will access that blend mode by going
03:02up to the Edit menu and choosing Fade High Pass or pressing Ctrl+Shift+F or Command +Shift+F on the Mac.
03:08I am going to change the mode now from Normal to Overlay and that's all I am going to do.
03:13I am not going to change the Opacity value at all at this point and you can see that we have a nice higher contrast effect.
03:19It's not super sharp, but it's slightly sharper than it was before.
03:22Now you can choose one of the other contrast effects if you want to anything
03:27between Overlay and Hard Mix will give you an edge contrast effect.
03:30So what I am going to do because I am working here on the PC and the Mode option is sticky,
03:34I just going to arrow through them so you can see each one of them.
03:36This is Overlay. If you want something more subtle, you would advance to Soft Light and you can how it drops off ever so slightly.
03:43I will go ahead and zoom in so that we can see this more up close in personal here in the video.
03:47So this is the Overlay effect and this is the Soft Light effect, so it is a subtle difference,
03:52but you can see some of the highlights and shadows diminished there.
03:55If you want an elevated effect that's slightly bigger than Overlay than you would go to Hard Light, which is going to give you more sizzling highlights
04:04and shadows essentially, but also you are going to have a higher chance of those highlights and shadows getting clipped.
04:10Then if you really want to elevate things you would go to Vivid Light.
04:13For example, this is a Vivid Light effect and you are going to get some crunchy edges going on in here.
04:18You can see how this texture in his beard is really showing up
04:22and we are having some other weird little details show up inside of the image, some harsh transitions.
04:28If you want to go even farther you go to Linear Light.
04:30Now notice with Linear Light you get an elevated effect over Vivid Light.
04:34However, we don't get so much crunchiness, so we don't get those harsh transitions.
04:39They are more smooth, but of course like I say an elevated effect.
04:44This is Pin Light which is going to be one of the lesser effects, we are just keeping the darkest of the darks and lightest of the lights,
04:51everything else is completely dropping out with pin light.
04:54Then finally, we have got, and this is going to look terrible, we have got Hard Mix,
04:57which just leaves you with a total of eight colors and that's it inside the document.
05:01So a total horrible posterization, however, if you want to work with it all you need to do is just take the Opacity value down.
05:08So notice if I take the value down to about 20, we get a nice heightened contrast effect that also happens to be very colorful.
05:16So it's increasing the saturation of the colors as well.
05:19However, what I am going to do for the sake of demonstrational purpose, so we can see how this command works,
05:24I am going to change it to Overlay, which is a when in doubt contrast blend mode inside of Photoshop.
05:29So an opacity of 100%, blend mode Overlay, click OK.
05:33Now just to compare this, I want to show you how it compares to Unsharp Mask,
05:37which is its nearest relative because after all, Unsharp is its child.
05:41So I going to go ahead and bring up the History palate, so that we see what is going on.
05:45I want to keep this Fade High Pass fade right there.
05:47So I am going to once again go to the File menu and choose the Revert command and again this is just for demonstrational purposes.
05:53We will see better ways to work with layers and so on in future chapters.
05:58So this is the original unsharpened version of the image.
06:01Now I am going to go to the Filter menu choose Sharpen and choose Unsharp Mask.
06:05I am going to apply an Amount value of 100%, Radius value of 3 pixels, Threshold 0, click OK.
06:12So in other words we are matching the Radius value to the Radius value that we assigned to High Pass.
06:17High Pass is analogous just by itself without doing anything.
06:20It is analogous to an amount of a 100%.
06:22I will go ahead and click OK.
06:24Just as we saw in the Gaussian Blur mimics an Amount value of a 100%.
06:28So I'll go ahead and click OK.
06:29Now lets go and compare this Unsharp Mask effect with the High Pass effect right there.
06:34I want you to keep a now eye on the details inside of this gentleman eye here.
06:38This is the High Pass effect.
06:41Notice how the highlights inside of his eye diminished slightly and the highlights along his teeth diminished slightly as well
06:47and we have more detail inside the dark areas of his mouth.
06:51Compare that to the elevated highlights and shadows associated with Unsharp Mask.
06:55Another words what we are getting from High Pass is a more subtle application of Unsharp Mask.
07:00The High Pass is very good when combined with Overlay.
07:03Its very good about avoiding any clipping to the highlights and shadows.
07:07So its actually a better effect, its a more sturdy effect anyway than Unsharp Mask is and we will see how we can really exploit
07:15that in future chapters, but for now I just want you to know that High Pass is there and available to you, if you would like to take advantage of it.
07:23In the next and final exercise we are going to take a look
07:25at how can we avoid sharpening color information inside of an image, using the Luminosity blend mode.
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Using Luminance Sharpening
00:00In this last exercise I am going to impart a fairly straightforward technique. Actually, this is very useful.
00:06Now you know that as you sharpen an image, you not only sharpen the good detail, the things like the eyes and the nostrils and the mouth
00:14and those sort of facial detail, you also sharpen bad cosmetic details, such as pores and wrinkles and pimmples and all that stuff.
00:22You end up sharpening noise, artifacts or JPEG Compression Artifacts as well that are part and parcel of the conversion from the analog world
00:31to the digital world and then you can also end up and you do actually end up sharpening arbitrary color differentiation that maybe a function
00:40of noise or maybe be a function of misalignment of luminance information between the various color channels.
00:47Now this last item is super easy to correct.
00:50And you will hear people say that you should correct it by converting an image into LAB mode, so I am working right now on RGB.
00:56You can convert the image to LAB right here and then you could switch to the Lightness Channel sharpen, just Lightness Channel independently
01:03of all the color information and then convert the image back into RGB.
01:07that's one way to work and a lot of people swear by it.
01:09Like I have got an e-mail from people, they are just mad at me, that I am not telling people to do this.
01:13The fact of the matter is, its a silly way to work.
01:16There is no sense, I love the LAB mode, its an awesome mode for adjusting colors inside of an image,
01:22however its silly to convert to LAB, sharpen and then convert back to RGB.
01:26It's mostly a waste of time, but you can also introduce some color problems into the image.
01:31It can potentially be a destructive conversion and to just do it for the sake of sharpening is nuts in my opinion.
01:38So I will show you a better way to work.
01:39We will just stick inside RGB.
01:42I am looking at this image.
01:43Its called Sammy Shake.jpeg that's found of course inside of the O3 Sharpen Filters folder.
01:49And I bring this image up because its so rife with noise.
01:52I am going to sharpen it, not the way I would really sharpen it.
01:54I am just going to sharpen it using Unsharp Mask just because it is the simplest approach.
01:58So I'll go to the Filter menu, choose Sharpen and choose the Unsharp Mask Command and I am going to do something else I wouldnt normally do.
02:05I am going to take the Amount value up to the maximum 500%, so we can see all the horribleness that this is going to create here.
02:12And I will go ahead and click OK in order to accept these settings and notice that the Radius value is set to 3-Pixels, Threshold to Zero.
02:19So I'll go ahead and click OK to accept that.
02:21Now I am going to zoom in and in addition notice that in addition to sharpening things like Sammy's eye and all this good detail,
02:29once again like his eyelashes and so on, we are just bringing to life all these weird color problems that we didn't see before.
02:35So this is the before version of the image.
02:37Looks like his skin is fairly homogeneous and his eye is fairly evenly white and then if I go ahead and redo the filter,
02:45you will see that all these colors are coming to life.
02:47We have got blues and pinks and yellows inside the eye.
02:50We have got all the kinds of colors like lavender and a sort of lilac I guess and these weird greens inside of the skin
02:56and that's because the noise is not evenly distributed inside of the various color channels.
03:02So the noise might pop up in one place inside the red channel and different place in the green channel, different place in the blue channel
03:07and because sharpening like all filtering effects and basically its just about every effect inside the Photoshop is applied on a channel
03:13by channel basis, so each channel is sharpened independently.
03:17We are basically exaggerating the differences between neighboring pixels inside the color channels
03:23and thereby were bringing out all these weird colors.
03:27Well, the way you get rid of them, very simple is to go up to the Edit menu and choose the Fade Unsharp Mask command.
03:34Now if we are working with layers or we are working with say Smart Filters then we could do this from the Layers palette but since we were flat
03:42as we explore these filters in this chapter, I am going to choose the Fade command.
03:47Then all I need to do is switch the mode from Normal to Luminosity, that's all there is to it and if I was working
03:53with layers I would still switch the Blend Mode to Luminosity and notice what happens is as soon
03:58as I choose Luminosity all those weird colors go away just like that.
04:04So this is before I have turned off the Preview check box, so we can see the before version.
04:07Lots of color weirdness, this is after all that stuff totally goes away and to replace by the colors we saw when we first open this image.
04:16So its another one of those perceptual items here.
04:19Then because I have gone too far with this sharpening effect as we can well see here.
04:25I would go ahead and reduce the Opacity value to something like, lets say 50%, its more sane. Its still a little bit of over sharpening,
04:32but its more saying than a 100% and then I will go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification.
04:38So this is the overly sharp version of the image with a bunch of whacky colors inside of it and this is the after blending version
04:47and all I did was applied the Luminosity blend mode and of course rein in the Opacity value.
04:52In the next chapter, we are going to look at what I am calling the sharpening support staff,
04:56which includes the smoothing filters the noise reduction filters and Smart Objects and Smart Filters as well.
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4. The Sharpening Support Staff
Smoothing filters, smart objects, and masks
00:00Filters like Smart Sharpen and High Pass are just one half of the sharpening equation; without them,
00:05you would not be able to get much sharpening done, but with only them you would not be able to do the job very well,
00:11which is where the sharpening support staff comes in.
00:14Filters like Median, Surface Blur and Reduce Noise which allow you to smooth over digital noise, film grain,
00:20and other non edges before you hit an image with a Sharpen filter.
00:24Smart Objects, which lets you apply both Smoothing and Sharpening filters non-destructively, and Filter Masks which allow you to isolate edges
00:31and non edges to zero in on the exact portion of the image you want to modify.
00:36Of all these features, the one that's going to make the biggest difference in terms of how you work is Smart Objects.
00:42Thanks to Smart Objects you can apply one or more filters, edit them, assign an edge mask, change the blend settings,
00:49and even turn the filters on and off and change the order in which they are applied.
00:53But Smart Objects are a little strange; they prohibit you from editing pixels directly, all the filters have to share a common mask,
01:00you can't change the results of a filter, you can't desaturate the effects of High Pass, for example, and then apply
01:07that to the original image, and they can be tragically slow.
01:10I will show you have to work around these issues and you and Smart Objects will be best of buds in the end.
01:16But like any friends, Smart Objects have their baggage.
01:19The trick is to give back as good as you get.
01:22Here, let me show you.
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Using the Median filter and Dust and Scratches
00:00In this exercise we are going to talk about some very basic but useful functions that allow you to average
00:06and smooth away noise and other bad details inside of an image.
00:12Now these are the most primitive filters that you can work with, but it turns out they can be useful.
00:17So I want you to get a sense of what you have available to you in your filtering arsenal.
00:21So I am going to start things out, working in that same image that we saw in the previous chapter; this one is called Sammy shake.jpeg.
00:27It's a picture of my youngest, Sammy, and it has got a little bit of camera shake going on and he is moving as well
00:34and it's a long shutter speed of course with out a flash.
00:37So that's why we have got some motion blur going on here.
00:40And this image is found inside the 03_sharpen_filters folder.
00:43So even though we are in Chapter 4, go to the 03 folder to find this one.
00:47I am going to go up to the Filter menu and I am going to choose this command right there, Noise, which presents you with a series of filters
00:56that either allow you to add Noise to an image, which is what Add Noise does.
01:00You can kind of get a little bit of a grunge effect if you want to. Well that's kind of an old school way to use Add Noise.
01:05These days people primarily use it to try to match digital noise.
01:08So if you have two different images that you are trying to merge together and one has more noise
01:12than the other then you then use Add Noise in order to match the noise.
01:15You can also use Add Noise in areas that you've smoothed over with the Smudge tool or the Blur tool or something along those lines.
01:22You can add the noise back in if you use the Liquify filter.
01:26That can end up getting rid of noise inside of an image, including overly smooth transitions,
01:31and you can re-invoke the noise using the Add Noise command.
01:34We are going to focus on the tools, however, that allow you to get rid of noise, starting with the most essential tool
01:42of them all, which is the Median command right here.
01:44Notice that I have given it a keyboard shortcut, once again using the Keyboard Shortcuts command under the Edit menu.
01:49And this command strictly averages neighboring pixels.
01:53So again it's going through and scrubbing with the scrubbing bubbles; it's going through and scrubbing the image one pixel at a time,
01:59nanoseconds by nanoseconds. It's averaging whole groups of pixels inside that bubble according to your Radius values.
02:07So the higher Radius values will give you more averaging inside the image and more smoothing as well and more or of a porcelain effect.
02:15So notice I am taking the Radius value up one pixel at a time here by pressing the Up arrow key as I am talking to you,
02:21and I have now got the Radius value up to 10 pixels and we get a very smooth effect indeed here.
02:27I will go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification.
02:31And then just to give you a sense of how this command reacts with something like sharpening, I'll go to the Filter menu, choose Sharpen
02:38and choose the Smart Sharpen command and then we will go ahead and apply a pretty heavy pass of sharpen.
02:44Lets make no bones about it here.
02:46I will raise the Amount value to 500% and the Radius value, lets take it up to 4 pixels.
02:51We are removing Lens Blur inside of this image, leave More Accurate turned off for this specific effect right here.
02:57And I will go ahead and click OK and you can see that we now have this plastic wrapped boy effect at this point.
03:05We do have a fair amount of color artifacting going on.
03:08You can see these wild color rainbows going along his ear and inside of his eyes as well.
03:13And if you want to get rid of that, then you would just go up to the Edit menu choose Fade Smart Sharpen; just like we saw in the previous chapter
03:21and you would go ahead and change the blend mode to Luminosity in order to blend the new sharpening effect with the old color information.
03:29Then you would click OK, so in other words we are keeping the sharpened luminance information and we're blending it
03:35with the unsharpened color information and we get this effect right here.
03:39So it's not the least bit- I would not say this is an effect for the sake of realism.
03:44It is not a realistic effect at all, but it just gives you a sense how the tools work and I will show you how
03:50to make realistic use of the Median function in a future exercise.
03:54Alright so that is Median.
03:56I want to compare it to another function very briefly here, that's under that same submenu.
04:02So lets go ahead here inside the History palette and lets restore the original version of Sammy by clicking on Open and then I am going
04:11to go ahead and close History for a moment, so that we can see that what we are doing again.
04:14I am going to go to the Filter menu.
04:16I am going to choose Noise and I am going to choose the command that is almost exactly the same as Median, which is Dust & Scratches.
04:22Now as I would like to say Dust & Scratches is useful for neither.
04:26It's no good for removing dust, it's no good for removing scratches; in fact it's really good at leaving behind dust and scratches
04:33because what it does is it medians, it applies to the Median command, so it averages pixels that are very different
04:40from each other while leaving pixels that are very close to each other, in terms of luminance information, the same as they were before.
04:47So it averages the image, it averages most of the information in the image while leaving the noise behind.
04:52So let me show you what I am talking about.
04:54I am going to go ahead and choose the command and lets go ahead and take that Radius value, which is just right out of the Median Ccommand.
05:00We will take it up to 10 pixels just like before.
05:03If I was to compare that with the effects of applying Median with 10 pixels, it would be identical.
05:08You would see the exact same effect on the screen here.
05:11The difference is when we start raising the Threshold value.
05:14So I am going to take this Threshold value up and again I am raising it by pressing the Up arrow key
05:19and as I raise this Threshold value we are starting to bring back the noise inside of the image.
05:25Do you see that? I am going to go ahead and zoom in on this image a little bit,
05:28o that we can see it in more detail here on screen, inside the video that is.
05:34And the higher I take this Threshold value the more of the noise I bring back.
05:38So with a Threshold of 17 luminance levels, I am saying go ahead and average any pixels that are
05:46at least 15 luminance levels different from their immediate neighbors.
05:50If they are not at least 15 luminance levels different, don't average them.
05:55So in another words average the big differences inside the image, but don't average the small differences; leave the noise behind.
06:02Now that may seem like a really strange thing to do.
06:05Certainly for sharpening purposes it's not the effect we want, it is the opposite of the effect we want.
06:10The reason Dust & Scratches exists and the reason it can be useful is because it allows you to basically smooth over image details inside
06:18of an image, especially if you want to paint them back in.
06:21If I was to take this on to an independent layer and then paint some of these details away so that they become smoother.
06:29But if I wanted to leave that natural organic digital noise behind, the noise that was captured by the digital camera, then I would use this command.
06:35And I actually have an example of this inside of my Photoshop CS3 One-on-One series.
06:41You can check out a way to make great use of the Dust & Scratches function.
06:45I am not going to show you that here though, instead we are going to focus on things that help us sharpen and Dust & Scratches ain't it.
06:50What we need is something that allows you to blur away either average away or blur away the noise inside of the image and leave the good detail behind
07:00and we are going to see examples of such functions in the very next exercise.
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Using Smart Blur and Surface Blur
00:00OK, so as you may recall the Median filter averages pixels inside of an image in order to create a heightened smoothing effect essentially
00:09and it is little bit of overkill, but you can mitigate that as you will see.
00:12Then the Dust & Scratches filter will go ahead and average the high contrast areas while leaving the low contrast areas alone.
00:21So it leaves the film grain and the digital noise, it leaves that stuff alone, while it gets rid of the details inside the image.
00:26We need something that is the opposite of Dust & Scratches where sharpening is concerned. If we are preparing the image for sharpening,
00:33we need to get rid of the low contract stuff, smooth it away, and leave the high contrast stuff intact.
00:40And there are examples of filters like that, it is just not obvious.
00:42I am going to go ahead and cancel out of Dust & Scratches here. I am still working inside the Sammy shake.jpeg image.
00:48That is found inside the 03 Sharpen Filters Folder, because it is an image that we worked with in the last chapter as well.
00:54I am going to go up to the Filter menu and I am going to choose Blur and I am going to choose one
00:59of my least favorite commands in Photoshop, which is Smart Blur.
01:03The reason I do not like it- Now it does do what I just told you, OK. It smoothes away the low contrast details such as film grain
01:10and such as digital noise and it leaves the high contrast details, the really good details inside the image alone.
01:16So that is good. The way it works is just nuts.
01:20So I am going to go ahead and choose the command.
01:22First of all, you can not preview the effect in a larger image window, which basically reduces its utility by a factor of twenty.
01:30I swear, because it is just not very helpful.
01:32You have to look at this tiny preview, this reduced size preview inside the dialog box.
01:36So I am going to drag it over a little bit.
01:38So that we can see Sammy's eye right there and you can see what it is doing. With a Radius value of 12 and a Threshold of 12, it is going through
01:45and averaging the information inside of the image and it is leaving- basically what it is doing, with this Threshold value,
01:53it is saying that any 2 pixels that are 12 luminance levels or less different from each other, go ahead and smooth those away
02:01and any 2 neighboring pixels that are 12 luminance levels or more different from each other, leave those differences intact.
02:09So that is what we want and this is an averaging filter, by the way, even though it is located under the Blur menu, it is an averaging filter.
02:16So it really belongs under the Noise menu.
02:18Now you can fool around with those if you want to, but for this image, I am going to go ahead
02:22and use 12 and 12, which are the last settings that I applied.
02:25They are not the default settings.
02:26You can switch this mode to these other bizarre settings here; like Edge Only will do that
02:31and then you have Overlay Edge which mixes the two together.
02:34I will go ahead and set this back to Normal.
02:36Now High Quality, which is not the default setting, Low Quality is the default setting,
02:40my tests show that High Quality actually delivers the least desirable results and it takes the most time to pull off.
02:47Low Quality is faster and gives you smoother results.
02:49So I am going to stick with Low Quality and then I am going to click OK.
02:53So now you can get good results out of that filter; it is not that the filter is inherently bad.
02:58What it does is not necessarily bad, just the way it is implemented is crazy.
03:02But notice it did a good thing to our image. It went ahead smoothed away all of the noise inside of the image and it left behind the good details.
03:12So if I were to follow this up with a Smart Sharpen by going up to the Filter menu and choosing Sharpen and choosing Smart Sharpen right here,
03:19we would actually get potentially a half way decent result.
03:22Now right now I have the Amount value cranked way too high.
03:25So I am going to go ahead and take that value down to lets say 200%, things are going to look better and then I will click OK in order to accept
03:32that modification and then I might follow it up once again.
03:36I will press Ctrl+Shift+F or Command+Shift+F on the Mac to bring up the Fade command. I will change the mode to Luminosity in order to get rid
03:43of any of the weird color stuff that I was bringing out and I probably reduce the Opacity value as well to something like 50% and then click OK.
03:51So given that I really have not done anything selective to this image, I just went ahead and accepted the results
03:56of the Smart Blur Filter, which is not really so smart as we just saw.
04:01Then I accepted the result of the Smart Sharpen Filter, this is not a bad effect. It's not great, but it is not bad.
04:06Alright so let us go back, let me show you a better command I think for this purpose.
04:10I am going to go back to History and click on Open to restore the original version of this image and then I am going to go to the Filter menu,
04:17I am going to choose Blur and I am going to choose Surface Blur.
04:20Now the reason I am showing you this filter second, because it is the better of the two.
04:24It previews the image in the background, it does all the stuff we would expect from it,
04:29but it is a blurring function, it is not an averaging function.
04:32So it is actually based on Gaussian Blur once again.
04:35Instead of averaging neighboring pixels, it is blurring them.
04:38So I will go ahead and choose Surface Blur and once again, it is saying, go ahead and apply Gaussian Blur with this Radius value here,
04:45ten pixels in my case because that is what I have entered, to any transitions that are
04:51in this case 8 luminance levels or less different from each other.
04:54If they are 8 luminance levels or more different from each other then do not blur.
04:59So once again it is the opposite of Dust & Scratches, except it is applying Gaussian Blur instead of Median.
05:04If you still feel like it is doing too much damage, you might take that Threshold value down a couple of clicks
05:10and I am going to take it down to about 5 luminance levels here.
05:13So a Radius value of 10, Threshold of 5; that is still some pretty major blurring for this image, but I think it is going to work out pretty well.
05:20I can preview the effect in the background and it is a simple filter and it has got a bigger preview. It is a much better function in general.
05:26I will go ahead and click OK and then I might as well go ahead and follow it up with some Smart Sharpen.
05:31Go to the Sharpen Menu, choose the Smart Sharpen command and I will apply those exact same settings as we saw before.
05:38So an Amount value of 200, Radius value of 4, Remove Lens Blur. Lets go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification and this,
05:45of all the effects I have shown you so far, I think this is the most successful.
05:49So just for the sake of comparison, I will go ahead and press the F12 key, which reverts the image to its original appearance on disk.
05:55So this is the unsharpened version of Sammy, with all of its noise and blurry details intact and this, if I press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac,
06:04this is the sharpened version, thanks to a combination of Surface Blur and Smart Sharpen here inside Photoshop.
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Using the Despeckle filter
00:00Alright gang, in this exercise, I am going to show you the Despeckle filter and it is here under the Filter menu. You go to Noise submenu
00:08and it is this guy right there, Despeckle. And notice that it does not have a dot, dot, dot afterward.
00:13So it's not going to bring up a dialog box, it's not going to ask you to adjust any settings, it is just going to do its thing and move on.
00:18It is what I call a single shot filter.
00:21And the thing that it does is it looks for and locates single pixel variations inside of an image
00:26and it effectively eradicates them, it averages those single pixel variations away.
00:31Now back in old days, you would see people demonstrate Despeckle as being useful for getting rid of say razor stubble,
00:38but that was back in the days when an average image measured 640x480.
00:43So something like razor stubble would actually only take up a single pixel inside an image.
00:48These days something as tiny as razor stubble will take up multiple pixels and so Despeckle is no good for it.
00:55What Despeckle is good for is removing digital noise, once again. And that's because digital noise comprises random single pixel variations.
01:05So lets check it out, here I am working still inside the Sammy shake.jpg file,
01:09found inside you may recall the 03_Sharpen_ Filters folder even though we are in Chapter 4.
01:14And I am going to zoom way in on one of the details inside of this image.
01:18Lets take in the iris and with any luck you are going to be able to make out here inside the video, in addition to what looked like these sort
01:25of Japanese characters, these really cool, sort of hieroglyphics in his eyes here, which are made
01:30up of these motion trails basically, these highlight motion trails.
01:34You can hopefully see in the video barring severe compression artifacts,
01:38you should be able to make out that we have a lot of pixel roughness going on inside of the iris.
01:45If we go up to the Filter menu and choose Noise and choose Despeckle, you are going to see a lot of those pixel variations go away
01:53and get averaged away. But notice right here, we are still ending up with some pretty jarring transitions right along the edge because these details,
02:02which are sensibly part of the eyelashes and so on, these details are made up of multiple pixels.
02:08So anytime you have got two or more pixels combining to make up the detail inside the image, Despeckle will bypass those variations.
02:15So let us just to get rid of single pixel variations. This is before, and you can see how a lot of these teeny-tiny ends
02:23of these hieroglyphic characters in his eyes how they are made up of single pixels. This is after they get blurred away.
02:29Now what you typically want to do, if you are trying to get rid of digital noise in the file and usually I only whip out Despeckle
02:37if I have got some severe noise going, then you probably want to run the Despeckle filter more than once.
02:43You might want to run it twice, three times, even four times. What we are going to do inside
02:47of this image is we are going to run it four times in a row.
02:49So I already ran it one time, we can repeat the filter, you may know this, by pressing Ctrl+F
02:54or Command+F on the Mac for Filter, three times in a row.
02:58One, two, three and each time we are blurring away more and more of the single pixel variations
03:05and things are getting very blurry indeed wherever we had groups of pixels clustered together to make up the detail,
03:11then the Despeckle filter gave it the slip and allowed that detail to stand.
03:16So lets go ahead and zoom out. That means the sharpest details, the most focused details inside the image remain intact and as we zoom
03:25out you are not going to see too much difference between the original Sammy and despeckled Sammy.
03:31For example, I am going to go up to the History palette here and this is the way - I'll go ahead and click on the Open state
03:36so we can see the original version of the image. It looks slightly sharper on-screen. Let me go and zoom the image into the 100% zoom size.
03:43So this is the original image, this is the four times, the 4X despeckled image.
03:49So slightly different but not nearly as different as it would be if we were to apply the Median command with say a Radius value of 2.
03:57So its a very slight modifier, the Despeckle command is.
04:01Alright, so here is what I am going to do.
04:03I am going to go ahead and lets say we want to sharpen this image and I want to do a comparative sharpening.
04:10So I am going to show you something. Since we are working with the flat file here, this is a little trick I can do, I am going to press Ctrl+A,
04:16Ctrl+C in order to select the entire image and then copy it to the clipboard. That's Command+A, Command+C on the Mac and then I am going
04:25to go back to the original state of the image, the Open state, so that I have the despeckled state copied to the clipboard.
04:31Notice that History did not keep track of the Copy command.
04:35It kept track at the fact that I did a Ctrl+A or Command+A to select the entire canvas but it did not keep track of copy. That means when I go back
04:43into the original Open state, I did not undo the copy, the copy is still sitting in the clipboard.
04:48So Photoshop behaves differently than other applications. If I were to pull that undo trick inside of a different program,
04:53it would undo the copying to the clipboard but Photoshop doesn't. So that's a cool thing actually because watch.
04:58I am going to go ahead for the sake of comparison, I want to show you the sharpened version
05:02and the original image compared to a sharpened version of the despeckled image.
05:05So I am going to go up the Filter menu, choose Sharpen, this is the original image we are looking at, and choose Smart Sharpen
05:11and we'll just go with the same settings we have been applying.
05:14An Amount value of 200%, a Radius value of 4 pixels, and Lens Blur, Remove set to Lens Blur.
05:18Notice that More Accurate is turned off.
05:20I want you to know because I am going to turn it on in just a moment. So click OK.
05:24So that's a sharpened version of the original.
05:27Now then I am going to press Ctrl+V or Command+V on the Mac to paste the despeckled version on an independent layer.
05:35Notice that if I go to the Layers palette, there he is on an independent layer. Lets call him despeckled because that's what he is
05:41and he is not wearing spectacles either- so he is also despectacled.
05:45Now I will go ahead and hide the Layers palette. Moving right along, of course, I will hide the Layers palette, press Ctrl+Alt+F
05:51or Command+Option+F in order to bring up the Smart Sharpen dialog box. I like the settings with one exception.
05:56Because I did so much despeckling, he is just coated in this protective layer, think of it that way,
06:03that will survive the application of More Accurate.
06:06So when I am sharpening on top of Despeckle, especially this many Despeckle's in a row, I will sometimes go ahead and apply More Accurate.
06:15Even though I told you don't do that with portrait shots, well this is an exception.
06:18So I am going to go ahead and turn on More Accurate and notice now I am going to go ahead and click and hold- this is before and this is after.
06:25If I zoom in, click on it- this is before and this is after- notice we have these little tiny bumps. It's almost like those little bumps
06:33on a basketball. That's kind of what we have woven in to the fabric of the image right now and I'll click OK in order to accept that modification.
06:42Now I just want to show you the difference between a sharpened version of the original, which is this right here, this is the sharpened original.
06:49Lets go and zoom in a little bit, so that we can see, actually the nose is one of my favorite parts of this image.
06:54Notice how painterly it looks. Once again, when we sharpen the original image and this is what it looks
06:59like when we have sharpened the despeckled version of the image.
07:02So we have little more rounding going on, a little more smoothing, also these interesting bumps that are being created by the interaction
07:11of Despeckle along with More Accurate and it gets even better, I am going to show you.
07:15Watch what happens if you press Ctrl+F or Command+F on the Mac to reapply Smart Sharpen with More Accurate turned on.
07:22We are going to get this kind of halftone effect right here. Pretty nifty.
07:26If you are going for a special effect of course. This would not be just standard photographic print,
07:31but if you wanted to have this little bit pointilization actually then you could go with this effect right here and it's different.
07:39There is a Pointilize filter inside of Photoshop but this is a different effect that we are seeing right now.
07:44So anyway pretty interesting stuff I think.
07:46Now we have seen a lot of interesting ways to work with this image.
07:50I am going to just go ahead and undo that pointilization effect, so that we back to a more reasonable sharpening effect, where this image is concerned.
07:58We've seen a lot of different ways to approach this image to get rid of some of the noise inside of the image.
08:04In the next exercise, I am going to show you how I would really approach this image.
08:08We have done so many different things to it.
08:09I will show you the best way to fix the focus problems that are associated with this image. Coming right up.
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Softening flesh tones selectively
00:00In this exercise, as promised, I am going to show you how I would really approach this image. What I think is the best approach
00:06to this specific photograph in terms of both smoothing and sharpening, and we are going to see a few different techniques along the way.
00:12We are going to actually use Motion Blur to correct some of the skin stuff that is going on because he is in motion after all.
00:20Because we have a motion blur going on inside the photograph, we can use Motion Blur to correct the image to serve as a smoothing agent
00:27and we are going to see a few other tricks along the way as well.
00:30So the first thing that I am going to do, of course, I am going to make sure that I have Sammy shake.jpg open. That is found, of course,
00:35inside the 03_sharpen_filters folder and I am going to select the skin tones inside of the face using the Color Range command.
00:43So I am going to go up to the Select menu and I am going to choose Color Range.
00:47If you are not familiar with Color Range, its basically an enhanced version of the Magic Wand; I would like to call the Magic Wand on steroids.
00:54If you would like to learn more about it, if you have never seen the command before,
00:56you can check out my Photoshop CS3 Channels & Mask series.
01:00There is a chapter called Color Range and Quick Mask that tells you how to use this useful command.
01:05I am just going to click inside of the face somewhere with this eye-dropper. Notice that and then I am just going to kind of Shift-drag
01:12around a little bit inside of the skin tones and I am going to Shift-click inside of this little preview here to select this little bit
01:19of gray that's going along the right side of his eye- actually this would be his left eye of course.
01:25That's basically the mask you want to be looking at.
01:28So that all of the white areas, by the way, inside of this mask representation
01:32of the image represent areas that will be selected in just a moment.
01:36I have my Fuzziness value set to 40 and I am going to go ahead and click OK to accept that selection.
01:42And then I am going to press Ctrl+H or Command+H on the Mac in order to hide the selection outline so that the image is still selected of course.
01:48Now then, as I say, because he is in motion and he has got all of these little sort of motion trails inside of his skin and if you zoom
01:57in like check out this area above what is his right eye, you can see the repetition of these lines right here, as if he has got some sort
02:06of proto-gills built into his flesh that will allow him to breathe under water through his eye flesh.
02:13That's what that looks like to me.
02:14What it really is, I believe, is the repetition of these weird artifacts inside of his flesh tones and they are getting repeated
02:23because the camera is basically catching this information multiple times as he and I are in motion.
02:31Alright, so I am going to go ahead and smoothen it out using a Motion Blur.
02:34So I am going to go up to this Filter menu, choose Blur and choose Motion Blur.
02:39These are the settings that I am going to apply: an Angle of 40 degrees.
02:43You may recall from the previous chapter, we are using 40 degrees in order to correct this image with Smart Sharpen and with Emboss.
02:49So I am going to stick with that 40 degree value and a Distance of ten pixels worked pretty well for this image actually.
02:56You can fool around with that if you like. I could go higher actually.
02:59I'll take it to 12 this time around.
03:00What the heck, as this is not really going to make all of that much difference.
03:03Then I'll click OK in order to accept that modification.
03:06Now we need to reverse the effect.
03:08If we were just to sit here and sharpen what we have now, we would end up accentuating the difference between the smooth area
03:16that doesn't have any film grain inside of it whatsoever anymore
03:19and these areas here, that we're not smoothing, that still have film grain.
03:24By film grain, of course, I mean noise.
03:26This is not a film image; that would be digital noise.
03:29So anyway, we need to reconcile that noise inside the de-selected portions of the image.
03:32So we are going to go up to the Select menu and choose Inverse in order to reverse the selections.
03:38So we are selecting the de-selected areas, and de-selecting the selected areas.
03:41So there we go.
03:42Press Ctrl+H or Command+H, again, to hide the selection outline just because they kind of get in your face.
03:47I am going to go to Filter menu, choose Blur and choose Surface Blur this time around.
03:53And these are the settings I want to use: Radius of ten and- actually you know what?
03:57We just raised Motion Blur so lets raise this guy, so we have a Radius of 12.
04:01Even though the Gaussian Blur that's used by Surface Blur and the Motion Blur, their Radius values are not really identical to each other.
04:07They are completely different operations but what the heck, might as well match them. And then I have got a Threshold of 12 in order
04:14to protect the actual good detail inside of the selection, in the eyes and the nostril and the mouth and so on.
04:19Then I am going to go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification and now I am going to press Ctrl+D or Command+D on the Mac
04:27to de-select the image so nothing is selected at this point. And I might as well, just to make sure we have some halfway decent transitions
04:34because we are beginning to get a little choppy inside of this image as you can see.
04:38So to settle down the transitions a little bit, I am going to go up to the Filter menu and I am going to select Noise and I am going
04:46to select this guy right there, Despeckle, and it's just to add a little bit of despeckling, just one hit of despeckling to the image and that's it.
04:54Alright, now it looks like we've over-blurred the image and were I going to screen, I probably would have over-blurred the image by this point in time.
05:02I am assuming that I am going to print with this image.
05:04You will see if you press Ctrl+Alt+I or Command Option+I to bring up the Image Size command,
05:09you will see that the document size is 5 by 7 by a resolution of 300 pixels per inch.
05:14So this is a high resolution print.
05:16So I am going to go ahead and cancel out.
05:18So in another words, a lot of this stuff is going to resolve itself away as you'll see.
05:22Alright, now lets go ahead and bring up the Layers palette here and I am going to press Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J in order to jump this layer
05:31and lets call this one Emboss because that's what its going to be.
05:33We are going to use the Emboss filter to sharpen this image.
05:36Now I am going to go up to the Filter menu, choose Stylize and choose Emboss and I have already got the last settings loaded that I have applied
05:45in the previous chapter, which were an aAngle value of 40 degrees, a Height value of 5 and an Amount value of 200%.
05:51I am going to stick with those values, click OK to accept that version of the Emboss setting.
05:56Then I am going to go up to this Blend Mode option here in the Layers palette, in the upper left corner of the Layers palette,
06:03and because we are working with layers, we do not have to resort to the Fade command as we have in the past.
06:07So I am going to go up here and apply the Overlay blend mode.
06:11Now that's going to get rid of the grey but it's going to leave all these weird color transitions behind.
06:17So we need to get rid of those with an application of the Luminosity blend mode.
06:20But we can't heap two blend modes on to a single layer.
06:23So heres what we have to do instead.
06:24I am going to combine these layers, these two layers right here, into a third layer by pressing- and this is really the best way to do it.
06:31You can go up to the Layer menu.
06:34You can press and hold the Alt key or the Option key in the Mac, and go to the Layer menu and then choose Merge Visible.
06:42That will work. And that will deliver a third layer, notice that. But the best way to work, I swear to you,
06:47if you can just remember this keyboard shortcut because we are going to come back to it multiple times here throughout this series,
06:52Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E, that's Command Shift+Option+E on the Mac.
06:57So its just mash your fist down on the E key and the E key is the second letter in merge.
07:02So its E for merge. That's sort of a standard keyboard shortcut inside of Photoshop. But you just mash your whole fist down with E
07:09and you get this layer that is a copy of the visible merge stuff inside of the image.
07:16Now lets turn off Emboss. Very important that you have turned off the Emboss layer; you can even throw it away if you want to.
07:21I am going to call this new layer Sharpened like so and then I am going to change its blend mode to Luminosity.
07:28Watch the weird little color stuff that is going inside the image.
07:32As soon as I choose Luminosity, it goes away.
07:34So we will go ahead and zoom in on that nose once again.
07:37This was before with the weird color artifacting and this is after applying the Luminosity blend mode that color artifacting goes away.
07:45Alright, lets zoom out just a little bit.
07:47Now it looks a little weird, it looks a little bit too porcelain as you may notice here. And to me,
07:52it looks a little too sharp like I have gone a little over board with the sharpening effect.
07:56So I am going to reduce the Opacity value to something like, lets say about 70%.
08:02I could do that just by pressing the 7 key as well if I wanted to, but I am going to go ahead do it with the slider.
08:07Alright, so that looks a little better to me. And lets go ahead and flatten this image just that we are merging all of the layers together.
08:12I would naturally, of course, go ahead and save off my layers as a PSD file because I wouldn't want to just throw away all of the work that I have done.
08:20But for the sake of demonstration here, I am just going to flatten the image and it's going to ask me if I want
08:24to discard hidden layers, which would be the Emboss layer.
08:27Do I just want to get rid of that one? Yes, click OK and so we have just sandwiched the entire thing.
08:31I am going to Shift+Tab away those palettes and I am going to zoom out a little bit.
08:36Now in order to really get a sense of what this image is going to look like when we print it, we need to downsample it
08:41and this is just a preview of what the image is going to look like when we print it.
08:44And of course, you could also print it if you want to. You could print a copy to see what it looks like
08:47but here is how to soft proof it as it were on screen.
08:50I am going to go up to the Image menu, choose the Image Size command, we saw this few chapters ago.
08:55I am going to go ahead and make sure Resample image is turned on, set to Bicubic (best for smooth gradients), which is
09:00of course not true at all; its best for just about all images.
09:03I am going to change the Resolution to 117 pixels per inch.
09:07Remember that's my little conceit here that I am working
09:10on a 17 inch MacBook Pro screen, even though I most obviously am not since I am working with Windows Vista.
09:15So resolution of a 117 pixels per inch, click OK and now lets zoom in on the image so we are seeing it at the 100% zoom ratio.
09:23It looks pretty darn good.
09:25Now I might do a little bit of work on the mouth, I might have actually erased away the sharpening
09:29where the mouth is concerned because the mouth is kind of in strange shape here.
09:33So the most motion is happening around this area right here.
09:36I suspect there is a little bit of a radial movement between Sammy and I.
09:40It helps to think, where my son is concerned here, think of him as a combination between Michael Cera, that actor who was in Superbad
09:48and Arrested Development, and imagine him mixed with Alfred E. Neuman of Mad magazine.
09:53that's what we have here. I think it helps to make more sense of this particular pose of Sammy,
09:57he doesn't normally look like that but in this picture he does.
10:00You will be glad to know in the next exercise, we are shifting away from this image.
10:04We are going to take a look at a totally different image and I am going to show you the best
10:08of the noise removal functions inside of Photoshop, which is the Reduce Noise command.
10:13Stay tuned!
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Using the Reduce Noise filter
00:00In this exercise, we are going to take a look at the best and the newest of the noise reduction functions inside the Photoshop, known appropriately
00:07as the Reduce Noise Filter and we're going to be trying this filter out on a more moderately-noised photograph.
00:15This image exhibits the kind of noise that you are likely to run into on a regular basis.
00:19So it also happens to be a professional quality image shot by a professional photographer,
00:24the Quebec-based Pascal Genest, once again of iStockphoto.com.
00:29I am calling this image Unguarded moment.jpg because she seems to be regarding us in an unguarded moment here.
00:36I am not sure exactly what she is saying, whether she loves us or she is breaking up with us. Something very deep is going on here.
00:42This image is found inside of the 04 Support Staff folder.
00:45Now as I say, it does exhibit noise. There is noise inside of this photograph.
00:50When we are zoomed up this far up to 25%, we are not going to really see it.
00:54If I start zooming-in we will begin to see more of the skin details inside of this image, which could use a little bit of retouching here
01:02and there, although this woman is obviously fairly beautiful.
01:05But where we have the noise is down here in the shadow detail.
01:09We are not going to really see it very well here inside the video, but I am going to zoom-in on the right side of her neck next to her collarbone here,
01:17and this is where a lot of the noise is residing down here in this particular shadow.
01:22The reason that you typically see noise in shadows or at least you are more likely to see noise in shadows
01:28than anywhere else inside of a digital photograph in particular.
01:31It's because the shadow region is compressed inside of a digital photograph, and as soon as you start drawing out this shadow,
01:38as soon as you start lightning the image, you are increasing the natural discrepancies
01:43between the neighboring pixels and you are drawing forth that noise.
01:47You are exaggerating it effectively.
01:49Now because we are not seeing the noise very well on screen here inside the video,
01:53I am going to exaggerate it even further by applying the Smart Sharpen filter.
01:57So I am going to go up to the Filter menu, choose Sharpen and choose Smart Sharpen right here,
02:02and I am going to go ahead and apply some crazy settings.
02:05Lets raise the Amount value to 500%, I am going to leave the Radius set to 4 pixels, Remove set to Lens Blur, this is all good.
02:12I am going to leave More Accurate turned off; I am not that crazy. We're not going to turn that on for a portrait shot.
02:17Then I am going to click OK in order to accept this modification, and you should now be able to see lots of noise inside
02:25of this shadow region here, including a lot of color noise as well.
02:29You can see how that's percolating to the top.
02:31Alright, so lets go ahead and zoom-out just a little bit here so that we can take in more of the image.
02:36You can also see how this sharpening effect is fairly detrimental to the image in general.
02:40We are drawing out all kinds of weird surface details inside of the image, we are drawing out a lot of weird color artifacting as well.
02:48We are going to take care of that in advance, by first applying the Reduce Noise filter and then coming in with Smart Sharpen afterward.
02:56Alright, so I am going to go up here to the History palette, and I just want you to see that were going to keep that Smart Sharpen state,
03:01so we can go back and compare it later to the better version of the image that's in store for us.
03:07So I am going to press F12 in order to invoke the Revert function and then Revert is added as a history state to the History palette
03:14so that we can come back to Smart Sharpen as I say.
03:16Alright, so I just want you to see that once again, so there is no confusion.
03:19Now lets go ahead and apply Reduce Noise.
03:21Now you get to Reduce Noise by going up to Filter menu, choosing Noise and choosing the Reduce Noise command.
03:27I have once again given this command a keyboard shortcut via the Keyboard Shortcut command under the Edit menu.
03:33The keyboard shortcut that I use for what its worth is Shift+F9, and that brings up the fairly whopping Reduce Noise dialog box right here.
03:40Now were seeing the default settings inside of this dialog box.
03:43Notice that we have four numerical options and then we also have Remove JPEG Artifact and we have the Basic and Advanced options right here
03:50which aren't quite as bad as they are with Smart Sharpen.
03:53They still do abide if you switch from Advanced back to Basic.
03:57The reason that I don't consider them to be quite as bad is because you are rarely going to go to Advanced.
04:01The only reason to go to Advanced is if you want independent control of your smoothing on a channel-by-channel basis.
04:07So you want to apply additional smoothing to one of the channels inside the image, one or more channels.
04:13You can choose the channels right here, Red, Green, Blue, and then apply a Strength setting
04:16and you'll also have the Preserve Details option available to you which is currently dimmed.
04:20You have to have some sort of Strength assigned before Preserve Details will become available.
04:25Anywa, we are not going to apply that right now. We are just going to go back to Basic.
04:28We also have the ability to save off the settings, but as I told you with Smart Sharpen, the way that this is implemented right now is just crazy.
04:35Basically, even though you have saved up your settings, every time you'll apply new settings, those old settings get overwritten and it's just pure
04:42and total chaos. It doesn't do me any good whatsoever.
04:44So I suggest you just ignore the top portion of the dialog box with the exception of the OK and Cancel buttons,
04:49and you pay attention to these numerical values write down here.
04:52Now Strength determines the degree to which you are smoothing over the luminance values inside the image.
04:59So that is the lightness values as opposed to the color values.
05:04You can crank this guy as high as ten, and that will give you the maximum amount of noise removal,
05:10or you can also take it down. If you want less noise removal, you can it down to a lower setting.
05:15I am going to suggest that most of the time you want to accept the default setting of six or you want to go higher with it.
05:21I frequently max out this filter in order to get rid of the noise and I am going to go ahead and scroll down to
05:26that shadow region here just so that we can keep an eye on it.
05:29Again, its going to be a little hard to keep track of inside the video.
05:32But I'll just tell you what's going on.
05:34So far Photoshop has pretty much nailed it. By applying a Strength value of 10, I pretty much smoothed over all of the noise inside of the shadows.
05:44Now Preserve Details tries to bring back the edges, that is the areas of highest contrast, tries to protect them from the Strength value.
05:54So the higher you go with Preserved Details, the more edges you are going to protec. The lower you go, the fewer edges you are going to protect
06:00and the more you are going to reduce noise inside the image.
06:03Reduce Color Noise allows you to specifically address color variations between neighboring pixels as opposed
06:10to luminance variations that are addressed by Strength.
06:13So that takes care of the color right there.
06:15Then Sharpen Details will apply sharpening inside of this dialog box after these values are finished.
06:22Now I am going to tell you that I want you to reduce this value right here to 0% on a regular basis. When in doubt,
06:28set it to 0 because you are better off following up the application of Reduce Noise with a sharpening filter
06:35that gives you a lot more control than a single sharpening slider right here.
06:39If you were to follow this up and you already had some sharpening that you'd applied down here with this option,
06:45then you would basically apply two sharpens in a row which is definitely not something I am going to recommend in this case.
06:51Then finally you have this Remove JPEG Artifact checkbox.
06:55If your image was saved with a heavy amount of JPEG compression, that is a low-quality setting, then you might start seeing little squares forming,
07:058x8 pixel squares forming inside the image or you might see some vertical lines or some horizontal lines at work.
07:12If so, you can get rid of those to a certain extent by turning on the Remove JPEG Artifact checkbox.
07:18Now we don't need that for this image, we just need to focus on Strength, Preserve Details and Reduce Color Noise
07:23and we're going to do exactly that in the next exercise.
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Combining smoothing and sharpening
00:00Alright kids, we are taking up where we left off in last exercise, so I am still at work inside the Unguarded moment.jpg file
00:07and all I have really done so far in a way of actual practical application of the tools is to go ahead and choose the Reduce Noise command
00:14under the Noise submenu, which is under the Filter menu, and I have brought up the Reduce Noise dialog box of course.
00:20Now I have gone ahead and reduced the Sharpen Details value to 0%, which is what I recommend you do for any and all images that you encounter.
00:28Because I prefer to apply my sharpening using Smart Sharpen or one of the other tools after I apply the Reduce Noise command
00:35because it gives me more control and I suggest you do the same, of course.
00:39Now in this case, it's hard to see inside of the video and it's even subtle on screen but we have managed to get rid of the noise inside
00:48of the shadow detail and currently we are looking at the right side of this woman's neck, right above her collarbone.
00:54So right in this area would be her jugular presumably. Just to give you a sense of where we are geographically inside the image.
01:01Alright, so just in case you can see this, let's go and zoom in just little bit more,
01:06we are going to have less context but we will be able to see whats going on.
01:08If I click and drag this image, you can see the original noise.
01:11If I release, you can see the noise dissipate.
01:13It's very subtle but given that we need to sharpen the image and we saw how bad it gets
01:18after we sharpen the image, we do need to first reduce the noise.
01:22Alright, so I am going to go ahead and take the Strength value down a little bit.
01:27What I typically do, by the way, is I go ahead and reduce Preserve Details down to 0% just while I am working,
01:33while I am trying to figure out what the best settings are.
01:34I take down the Reduce Color Noise value to 0% as well and then I fool around with the Strength value until I see
01:42that noise more or less go away inside of the image.
01:44It's about at a Strength value of eight that I see this noise go away and get smoothed over.
01:50Now if you look closely, you can still see color noise inside the image that is random variations and color values.
01:57So I am going to have to increase the Reduce Color Noise value as well.
02:01And this one is measured as a percentage. So it goes from 0% to 100% whereas Strength just goes from 0 to 10.
02:08And I am going to go ahead and take this Reduce Color Noise value up to 45% where this image is concerned and of course,
02:14this is a subjective, a purely subjective evaluation.
02:17I am just looking at what I can see on screen and trying to make a decision based on it.
02:22But I tend to actually keep the Reduce Color Noise value some place between 25% and 60%, but that's just kind
02:28of this vague guideline that I found for myself over time here.
02:32I am also going to take this Preserve Details value up to about 20% for this particular image.
02:38Now I tend to go low on Preserve Details because I would rather go a little too strong with this filter than too weak with it. Because really,
02:47if you start raising this value up too high and you take the Strength value too low, you are not going to do much in a way of any good for your image.
02:54It might be good enough for screen work but for print, it's barely even going to resolve.
02:57So I tend to go little strong with these values.
03:00So as I say, I am taking Strength up to 8 and I am taking Preserve Detail down to 20 and that's it.
03:068, 20, 45, and 0, leave Remove JPEG Artifact turned off for this particular image
03:12because it doesn't have a problem with JPEG compression and I will click OK.
03:16Even though it a JPEG image, by the way, it's a high quality JPEG image.
03:19So there is not much in the way of JPEG artifacts at work here.
03:22I'll go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification and the filter is not a super fast filter so it does take a few moments to apply.
03:32So you just have to wait have for this spinning beach ball on the Mac or that's spinning blue thing on Windows Vista anyway to disappear.
03:38It's not going to look all that different; this is the before view of the image.
03:41So lets go and zoom in on her eye. That's where we are likely to see the biggest difference.
03:45This is the before version of the image and this is the after version of the image.
03:49So a little bit of softening going on, but not nearly as big of an effect as we saw with the Median command, for example,
03:56and a more likely degree of effect that we'd see with Despeckle but its a very different effect.
04:02It is a much more disciplined effect that's being applied.
04:05Alright, so now that we have done that you may recall in the previous exercise in History palette,
04:09we made sure that we kept the Smart Sharpen state, which is the sharpened version of the original image without any noise reduction.
04:16Now lets go ahead and apply Smart Sharpen to the reduced noise version of the image.
04:20I am going to go up to the Filter menu and choose the Smart Sharpen command.
04:23I am going to go ahead and accept those exact same settings that we have applied before.
04:27So there is over the top Amount value of 500%, a Radius of 4.0 and so on, click OK in order to accept that.
04:33The reason I am doing this over the top version of the Smart Sharpen filter, it's just so that we are comparing apples
04:39to apples. Just so that you can see the difference here.
04:41This is Smart Sharpen after reduce noise and this is Smart Sharpen by itself, right there.
04:46Big difference as you can see. Tons more color artifacts going on and more artifacts in general, a lot of luminance artifacts as well.
04:54So this is the much smoother Smart Sharpen version.
04:58Lets go ahead and zoom out here so that we can take in more of her face.
05:01Now she is over-sharpened at this point. I would not really apply this much sharpening to this image.
05:06But just so you can see it, it's downright subtle compared to the previous effect, to Smart Sharpen by itself. So this is Smart Sharpen by itself.
05:13We have got all of these almost like flakes of snow on her at this point and we have all of these purple artifacts that are showing up in her hair.
05:21We could get rid of those, of course, by applying the Luminosity blend mode in order to settle that stuff down
05:26but we would still have way too much sharpening going on and way too many artifacts being drawn out.
05:31And especially, check out this shadow detail, this is different.
05:35This is the Smart Sharpened shadow detail by itself and this is the shadow detail subject to noise reduction and then Smart Sharpen on top of it.
05:44Now we are still seeing too many noise artifacts and that's because we went crazy with Smart Sharpen.
05:49Now that I have gone ahead and compared the two variations on Smart Sharpen, let's apply a more normal amount of sharpening.
05:57I am going to go ahead and click on Reduce Noise to back up to it.
06:00Then I am going to press Ctrl+Alt+F or Command+Option+F on the Mac in order to re-invoke the Smart Sharpen filter here.
06:06I am going to reduce that Amount value to 200%, which is still a high value, but it's a more normal value for this image and actually
06:14would be well suited if we are going to output with this image.
06:17It's a good amount of sharpening.
06:19She is going to look a little crunchy on screen here.
06:21Lets actually even take her higher, 250%.
06:24So that's going to keep her good and crunchy on screen but its going to look great in print as I'll show you.
06:28So anyway, an Amount value 250%, a Radius of 4.0, click OK.
06:33Of course, we would go ahead follow that up with an application of the Luminosity blend mode.
06:37So lets go ahead and hide the History palette, so we can see what we are doing.
06:40Even though we are not necessarily noticing an awful lot of color artifacting that's happening inside the image, it is still there.
06:47And it's always worth, if we are working with a flat effect, going up to the Edit menu and choosing the Fade Command or if we're working with a layer,
06:54go ahead and apply the Luminosity blend mode directly to the layer.
06:57But either way you need to apply that Luminosity blend mode.
07:00So I am going to go ahead and choose the Fade command.
07:02Go to Mode, set it to Luminosity.
07:04It's going to settle down the effect and then click OK. And you are probably going to notice the most in the eyes and her hair as well.
07:12This is the final sharpened version of this image and just to test it out, to make sure that its going to look good in print,
07:18what I would suggest you do is go ahead and image size it down, just temporarily, of course, just to soft proof it on screen
07:24to your screen resolution which you measured back in Chapter 1.
07:27So I am going to press Ctrl+Alt+I or Command+Option+I on the Mac.
07:30Notice that I have got it set to 8 inches wide by 12 inches tall.
07:34This is the native resolution, by the way, for the digital camera that captured this image.
07:38The resolution happens to be 292 when the width is 8 and the height is 12 inches.
07:43I am going to go ahead and click on Resample Image and I am going to reduce that resolution down to 117, which is my conceit, right?
07:50That's what I am pretending my screen resolution is for the purposes of this series. And then I am going to click OK in order to accept
07:57that modification and now lets just go ahead and zoom in on the image and this is the final version of the image. It's going to pop off the page.
08:04We could have probably stood to apply even a little more sharpening than this frankly.
08:08We do have a little bit of noise that's surviving down here in the shadow detail but its going to resolve out very,
08:14very nicely in print. A beautifully sharpened image.
08:17Thanks to the combination of Reduce Noise and Smart Sharpen here inside Photoshop.
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Making an image into a smart object
00:00Now that we have seen the first half of the sharpening support staff, namely the smoothing filters such as Median and Surface Blur
00:07and Reduce Noise and the rest, we are going to visit the second half of the support staff which includes things like Smart Objects and Smart Filters
00:13and other non destructive ways to apply filters as well as ways to apply filter selectively including edge mask and non-edge masks.
00:21We are going to start things off with Smart Objects and we are going to use this guy right here as our guinea pig, as it were,
00:29even though he is a very large guinea pig, of course,
00:32The name of this image Shaggy behemoth.jpg found inside 04_support_staff folder, and this image comes to us from me.
00:39I actually shot it out of the window of my car as we were driving through the Black Hills of South Dakota.
00:45We were surrounded by these animals, must have been a couple of hundred of them and they were on the road as well.
00:50These are all very exciting because couple of the bulls were fighting each other.
00:53I could have reached down and touched them, if I was like Mr. Fantastic, if I had really long arms,
00:57but instead I decided to capture a few photographs and this is one of them.
01:01Now this image is cropped and I shot it with a Leica Deluxe 3, which is a 7 mega pixel camera, something like that, but I cropped this down to
01:09about a 5 mega pixel image, and if I press Ctrl+Alt+I or Command+Option+I in a Mac, I can bring up the Image Size command.
01:15You can see that the image measures 11 inches wide, 8.5 inches tall, and 240 pixels per inch.
01:20Obviously, I spent a fair amount of time getting those exact measurements there, but I did not resample the images.
01:25Strictly cropping. I did a little bit of fixing to the luminance levels but that's about it.
01:31Very little work done to this image.
01:32So I will go ahead and cancel out here. And yeah, the image is actually in poor shape.
01:38Now you will see what I mean in just a moment, but we will start with the focus.
01:41Notice that the foreground grass down here at the bottom of the image, that's in focus and the background grass over here,
01:47that's in focus as well, but somehow the animal seems to be a little soft.
01:50Well, he can't be, obviously if the foreground and background are in focus, he is in the middle of that depth of field.
01:55This is a flat depth of field.
01:56So he is by definition in focus as well.
01:59It just that it's fur does not render out very well inside of this photograph, and we will bring it out.
02:04We are going to make to this guy look super sharp by the time we are done.
02:06But in the mean time, he is in kind of rough shape. You are going to see it better, if I go ahead and sharpen it.
02:12So lets go up to the Filter menu and notice that Smart Sharpen, that's the last command, I applied.
02:16So I might as well just go ahead and press Ctrl+Alt+F or Command+Option+F on the Mac.
02:20And each of the settings, I am going to apply for demonstrational purposes.
02:23I am going to turn around and undo it in just a moment.
02:25So we are going work with an Amount value of 350%, a very high Amount value, and a Radius of 4.0 of pixels. Lens Blur is our Remove setting.
02:32More Accurate is turned off, because he is essentially a portrait shot. Even though he is an animal,
02:36this is essentially a portrait shot, because it's a low frequency image.
02:39We have smooth contours that work inside the image, not a lot of rapid transitions from one luminance level to another.
02:46So we want to keep More Accurate off.
02:48I will go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification but even though we have given a fairly reasonable sharpening settings, I mean,
02:55high because the Amount value is 350% but 4.0 pixels and Lens Blur, that works out pretty well for print purposes, especially given our resolution.
03:03And check it out, it's done some pretty big damage to this creature. If I zoom in here, actually I'll zoom in a click farther, this is the animal's eye
03:13and you can see over here to the left of the eye, the horizontal lines sort of running through that are coursing
03:18through the shadow detail inside the image. And this is not JPEG compression artifacts or anything like that, this is camera artifacting.
03:25This is something that the camera has delivered to us, for whatever reason. Could be the function of the camera model,
03:31it could be the function of my camera, it could be a function of the shot, that it did not have a lot of detail to work with,
03:36it did not have a lot of detail inside the shadows to work with.
03:39It could be for a variety of reasons, but whatever the reason, it is showing up inside of this image and it is something we have to deal with.
03:45I will go ahead and zoom out and you can see that there are some color blotching going on as well.
03:49If you look closely, right around this area here, there is a sort of burgundy pattern going on whereas out in this region
03:56we have some fairly continuous orange and brown details going.
04:01We do see smattering of green color artifacting that showing up as the result of a Smart Sharpen filter
04:07but this burgundy is in the image even when it's not sharp.
04:10You can see it, you can make it out on screen, on your screen, if you open up the image, even if you have not sharpened the details.
04:16We have got some issues to deal with, is basically where it comes down to.
04:19What I am going to do, just to clear the slate here, I am going press the F12 key or I could choose the Revert command under the File menu,
04:25in order to restore the original version, the saved version of the image.
04:29So far, we have been applying filters destructively, that is to flat versions of the image, and I have only been doing that because I wanted
04:37to just focus in on, pardon the pun, I wanted to focus in on the filters without a lot of other falderal to sort of confuse the issue.
04:44Now that we know the filters, we need to begin to work non-destructively because that's by far the better way to work.
04:49There are a couple of different ways to work non-destructively.
04:52One is to pop the image on to a new layer, to jump it to a new layer, apply your settings to that duplicate image
04:57and then you have got the underlying original to blend with, if you so desire. But it is also a safety measure
05:03so that underlying original is there, in case you need to go back to it.
05:07In a case of the flat file like this one, that ends up doubling the size of the image in memory and it increases the size of the file on disk as well.
05:14The better way to work, if you can work this way, is to put the onus on Photoshop to do the work for you without a lot of overhead
05:22and that means converting the image to a Smart Object and then applying Smart Filters to it.
05:27You can convert multilayered image to a Smart Object or you can convert a flat image to a Smart Object, either way.
05:33A Smart Object is basically a file inside of a file and you will see what that means in just a moment.
05:39Alright, so I have got the layer selected, the Background layer selected here inside the Layers palette,
05:43I will go ahead and make the palette a little wider, so we can see the work background there.
05:46Then I going to go up to the Filter menu. There are two ways to make a Smart Object.
05:49One is to go the Filter menu and choose Convert for Smart Filters, and that will bring up a little warning message
05:54and it will tell you you are about to make a Smart Object.
05:56The other way to work, and I think the better way to work long term here, especially if you have got multiple layers that you are trying to combine
06:03into a single Smart Object, the better to work is to grab your layers and that means clicking on one, Shift-clicking on the other one,
06:09in order to select a range of layers, for example. In our case, we have just got one and then you go to the Layers palette menu,
06:15and you would choose Convert to Smart Object. I have got the keyboard short cut assigned, Ctrl+, or Command+, on the Mac and you can do
06:21that as well by going to the Keyboard Shortcuts command under the Edit menu, locating the Palette menus and then locating in that long list
06:28of Palette menus, you have to find the Layers palette, and then you will find Convert to Smart Object and give it a keyboard shortcut.
06:33I am going to go ahead and choose this command in order to convert the background into a independent floating layer. That is now a Smart Object
06:39and you can tell the Smart Object through the link icon in the bottom of the thumbnail, that shows you that the image is basically embedded inside
06:47of itself which is kind of strange concept but that's what going on.
06:50What that means is- lets go ahead and name this guy, lets call it Bison. And what that means is you do not have direct access to the pixels anymore,
06:58so if you go to your editing and painting tools right here, like you want to heal the image, for example,
07:03you want to get the Healing Brush and start working on it, you cannot.
07:05You will get a little ghostbusters icon, because you do not have direct access to the pixels.
07:09If you want to get direct access to the pixels, you have to double click on the thumbnail, like so. I'll go and double click,
07:15you will get this warning that will tell you, "hey, here is how to work with the Smart Object".
07:20But I am going to show you that, so you can ignore it and actually you can safely go ahead and click on
07:23Do not show again so you are not bothered by this dialog box over and over again.
07:27Then click OK and then you will be inside of the original version of the image. Notice it has a background layer, once again,
07:34so its a flat file that, as I am telling you, is embedded in the larger composition now.
07:40You can see right here that I can use the Healing Brush on it if I want to.
07:43So I am just increasing my brush size so we can see what I am talking about. There it is, I could paint all I want to.
07:48Once I get done, I would just go ahead and close the image. So you can close the image, any way you want to,
07:53and go up to the File menu and chose the Close command.
07:56If I had any changes, Photoshop would ask me if I would like to save those changes, by which if I were
08:02to click the Save button, I would be saving the image to memory.
08:05I would be saving this version of the image into the larger composition.
08:09I would not be saving it to the disk.
08:11But I did not make any changes, so I am just going to go ahead and chose Close and it is not going to give me warning,
08:16it is just going to return me to what I am calling the larger composition.
08:19Now at this point, lets say I want to save whatever I have done so far. I would press Ctrl+S or Command+S on the Mac and Photoshop is going to say,
08:27"Hey buddy boy," Photoshop likes to call me buddy boy.
08:30"By the way, you cannot save. This is now a layer composition with a Smart Object in it, smart guy.'
08:36'You cannot save it to the JPEG format, you have got to save it to the PSD format."
08:39So I am going to go ahead and call this one Shaggy Smart Object.
08:44I will save it along for you so that you can open up in the next exercise if you want to, and then I will click on the Save button.
08:49I make sure that the Layers check box is on and these guys are turned on as well. As a copy should be turned off and then you click
08:55on the Save button in order to save your layer composition.
08:58I am going to turn off Maximize compatibility, because I am only using this image inside of Photoshop, otherwise it is going grow unnecessarily.
09:05And then I would click OK in order to save that Smart Object version of the bovine creature right here, of the bison.
09:13Alright, that's it.
09:14We have now made a Smart Object. That is a first step to gaining access to the non-destructive Smart Filters,
09:19which is what we will begin to apply in the next exercise.
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Applying editable smart filters
00:00If you were with me in the precious exercise then you witnessed me turn a bison into a Smart Object
00:06and if you are working along with me, you did the very same.
00:08If you like to catch up by the way with where I am at, then you can open this image, its called the Shaggy smart object.PSD and its found inside
00:16of the 04_support staff folder. And we have this Smart Object thumbnail here inside the Layers palette.
00:23Now I am going to go ahead and sharpen the creature. That's how we are going to start things off and we are going
00:27to apply a non destructive Smart Filter. The way you do that, you just make sure that you are working
00:33with a Smart Object, that's step 1, we already did that.
00:36Now you go up to the Filter menu and you just choose the filter.
00:39Now you will notice that most of these top filters are not available to you, just the Filter Fallery is available to you
00:45if you are working in a RGB image. Not available in CMYK or any other modes and then we have all these filters are available, again
00:53assuming that you are working in the RGB mode, except for, if you go the blur menu, you will see Lens Blur is mysteriously not available
01:01to you because it is too complicated, as I understand.
01:04There's a couple of other filters that are misplaced in another submenu that are also available to you and I will go ahead and show you them.
01:10They are under the Image menu, you go to Adjustments and you can see Shadow/Highlight is available as a non-destructive Smart Filter
01:17and so is the Variations command, also available to you.
01:20Well anyway, what we are going to apply, of course, we want to apply a sharpening function and it is going to be Smart Sharpen,
01:26so we can just run Control+Alt+F, so that's what I am going to do here.
01:29I will press Control+Alt+F or Command+Option+F on the Mac. Brings up the Smart Sharpen dialog box and these are the settings I want to apply.
01:37Amount value 350%, a Radius value of 4.0 pixels, Remove set to Lens Blur, More Accurate turned off, end of story.
01:44Really that's it.
01:45You can check out the preview if you want to. Otherwise just go ahead and click OK, and that's all it is to it,
01:50because I am working with a Smart Object, Photoshop knows that I want to apply a non-destructive Smart Filter and there it is.
01:56Also we have a couple of things going on. If you take a close look at the Layers palette here, we have got this item that says Smart Filter,
02:02so this is sort of the heading for all of your Smart Filters that are contained underneath, they are inset underneath.
02:08And then we have got what's called the filter mask that affects all of the Smart Filters in kind.
02:14So you can't assign different mask for different filters.
02:16If you want to do that, you have to create a nested Smart Object.
02:20I will show you how to do that actually in a future exercise, but for now just notice that you have got this filter mask.
02:26Now if you don't intend to use the filter mask, you can just go ahead and throw it away because it kind
02:30of clutters up the palette, and that's what I am going to do.
02:32I am going to grab it and I am going to drag it down to the trash can and that throws it away.
02:36Now you can always bring it back later. Notice how things are much tidier now inside the Layers palette and sometimes
02:41it is useful to be tidy because otherwise when you start working in big layer compositions, you start taking up the entire height
02:46to the Layers palette, and it's is nice to be able to see more than the just a handful layers at a time.
02:51If you want to bring that filter mask back at any point in time, you don't click on here on this little guy.
02:56That creates a layer mask, you can make it create a filter mask for you.
03:00So instead what you have to do is you right-click on the word Smart Filters and you choose Add Filter Mask.
03:06Now we will go ahead and bring that filter mask back.
03:08Alright, I am going to go ahead and do that though.
03:10I want the filter mask gone for now and I just want to focus on Smart Sharpen.
03:14Now this inset here tells me that I have applied this sharpening effect and it's non-destructive and if I want to modify it, I can just double click
03:23and that will bring up the Smart Sharpen dialog box and I can change the settings, if I wanted to.
03:28I am happy with the settings the way they are though.
03:30Now I click OK, presumably to go ahead and update the settings, and I will do that right now.
03:34Now you will notice a lot of delays associated with Smart Filters.
03:39Smart Filters are not the fastest features on earth and once you start combining multiple smart features together, which is
03:46where the real power comes in, that's when you really start to get some major slowdowns.
03:51So when you start combining your sharpening options with your smoothing options, which is something you need to do inside Photoshop.
03:58So anyway, we have got this very sharp buffalo, just like that one sharpened versions of the bison I was showing you in the previous exercise.
04:05I was telling you it wasn't very good because its bringing out all these artifacts, so we need to down play the artifacts to the degree that we can,
04:12and we will do that by changing the blend settings associated with this Smart Sharpen effect right here. And you do that
04:18by going to this little icon, the slider icon, and you double click on it.
04:22That brings up the blend settings.
04:24Now you need to be prepared to wait. You are going to get delays, like I was telling you, just slight delays at this point,
04:29they are going to grow to be bigger delays shortly here.
04:32I am going to go ahead and click on the eye, so we can keep an eye on it, here inside of the Blending Options dialog box.
04:40Notice that I can change the Mode or the Opacity. I am going to change the Mode of course to Luminosity and I can do this on the fly,
04:47live, non destructively. And you could see, if you look closely there, I will go and zoom in so that you can see that this is before,
04:54if I am clicking and holding, you can see that the eye has sort of blue halos around it and as soon as I release, all that blueness goes away
05:01because we are no longer sharpening the color discrepancies between the various color channels,
05:07and we are just focusing on the luminance information.
05:10Alright, I will go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification.
05:13Now this is good but its by no means good enough. We do need to smooth this creature to some extent before we sharpen it and I really want
05:23to smooth away this weird color patterns that are showing up. For example we are still seeing that burgundy pattern.
05:31Notice this area of sort of burgundy stuff that's going on inside the animal, as if we threw some wine on him. Which we didn't, we had the wine later
05:39in the day actually. But we did not do anything to this animal. It's just part of the photographic process.
05:43I have no idea why the camera captured the data this way because its really not there.
05:48So we need to downplay this color anomalies.
05:51We did our best where Smart Sharpen was concerned, we set it to Luminosity but that didn't do the trick.
05:56So what we are going to have to do is apply a pass of the Median filter just to the color information and we are going to apply Median
06:03as a non destructive Smart Filter in the very next exercise.
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Combining two smart filters
00:00 In this exercise we are going to get rid of the weird color anomalies that are showing up inside of this Bison photograph.
00:08 I am working by the way, in a catch-up document, if you are just joining me.
00:12 If you have been working along with me, stick with the document that you have been creating,
00:16 but if you are just joining me you can open this image called Nondestructove sharpening.PSD, found inside the 04_support_staff folder.
00:23 You can see that there is this area of sort of burgundy stuff that's showing up to the left of the creatures jaw, but also we have some other colors
00:32 that are showing up down here in its muzzle, so we have some more burgundy at work here
00:37 in various different areas actually. Also over here on the creature's nose.
00:41 Then we have some sort of greens and blues that are showing up in this sort of, what is it, a mustache? I don't know.
00:48 We have got a lot of weird stuff.
00:49 Then of course the creature is just covered in these seeds, but that's his business, we are not getting rid of that.
00:56 We are not grooming him. We are just trying to make him look the way he really looks, and of course emphasize the details with some sharpening.
01:03 So what I am going to do is I am going to apply a pass of the Median filter to just the color information inside of this image.
01:10 So with the Bison Smart Object selected, I am going to go up to the Filter menu and I am going to choose this guy right there,
01:17 Noise, and then I am going to choose the Median command.
01:19 I am going to apply a big heaping amount of Median here.
01:23 I am going to raise the Radius value to 50 pixels, which does fairly average the appearance of the bison at this point, but that's OK.
01:31 We are going to turn around and apply it to just the color information.
01:35 So I will click OK in order to accept this modification.
01:39 It's going to take a few moments to apply Median at this point, for two reasons.
01:44 First of all, this is a big amount of Median that we are applying.
01:47 A high Radius value takes longer to render, but the other thing is that we have Median and Smart Sharpen working together nondestructively,
01:54 and that takes a lot of computational effort on the part of Photoshop.
01:58 Meanwhile though, if you take a look at the file size information down here in the lower left-hand corner of the image window,
02:04 you can see that the file size is not growing despite this layering stuff that we are doing here.
02:09 Despite that we have an image embedded inside the larger composition, the image size has not grown, its still 15.4 megabytes,
02:17 which was the original size of the file when we first opened it.
02:20 So we are not going to get a big file on disk.
02:22 Alright, so anyway the Median filter should only be applied to the color information inside the image, not the luminance information.
02:30 So we are going to have to double click on this little Blend Mode guy right there.
02:33 Now two things about this Median item right there, this Median Smart Filter that's included inside my Smart Filters list,
02:41 because it's at the top of the list, it's being applied after Smart Sharpen.
02:45 So the bottom item is applied first and then the top item, so you read up the list.
02:51 We really want Median to be applied before Smart Sharpen, because I told you, you always apply- this is the universal rule by the way,
02:59 when you are doing sharpening, you always apply your smoothing first and then your sharpening afterward.
03:05 So I need Median to be applied before Smart Sharpen.
03:08 So I need to grab it and drag it underneath Smart Sharpen, like so.
03:12 Now this isn't true on the Mac, but under Windows Vista you are going to see this little preview of the icon right there, the Smart Filter Icon,
03:19 and you are also going to see, on both platforms you are going to see this horizontal bar that's showing you
03:23 that you are moving it below Smart Sharpen, then release.
03:26 It is going to take a moment to reapply the filters.
03:29 Notice you get this progress bar that's saying it's rendering the Smart Filters;
03:33 it means both of the filters, it's having to reapply both of them to the image.
03:37 This is where you start getting into the big delays where Smart Filters are concerned,
03:42 and this is not something I am very pleased about. I wish it didn't occur.
03:46 I will tell you that Photoshop CS3, which is the version I am using, that's the first version of Photoshop
03:51 to support Smart Filters, so this is essentially 1.0 feature right now.
03:55 So hopefully we will see it get quicker in future incarnations.
03:59 Alright, so I just moved Median below Smart Sharpen. That's good.
04:02 Now I need to change the Blend Mode assigned to Median to Color, so that Median is only averaging the colors inside the image
04:09 and it's leaving the luminance information untouched.
04:12 I will do that by double-clicking on this little Blend Mode icon right there.
04:15 But when I do that, when I double-click on the Blending icon, I am going to get an alert message that's telling me-
04:20 now this one is really important, it's telling me a Smart Filter stacked on top of this filter will not preview while this filter is being edited.
04:27 So in other words, we will be able to preview Median by itself in a vacuum without Smart Sharpen on top of it.
04:34 That's another bad version 1.0 implementation of Smart Filters.
04:38 Hopefully they will fix that one too because that's not acceptable on my opinion, but anyway,
04:42 they will be applied after committing the Filter Parameters dialog box.
04:47 OK, so don't show again because there is nothing you can do about it, just remember it or leave it unchecked
04:52 if you want to see this every single time. I don't think you do.
04:54 But click OK in any event, and then you will get the little Blending Options dialog box after yet another progress bar.
05:02 Now this is making this feature look very bad indeed.
05:05 The thing is it does invoke delays, but it is a great way to apply parametric effects, to apply nondestructive filters, and it does put,
05:15 like I said, it puts the onus on Photoshop to keep the file size down.
05:19 If you are more concerned about time than file size, and you are willing to accept the big files,
05:24 then there is another way to working, and I will show you that in a later exercise.
05:27 But for now we are going to just suffer through it.
05:29 I am going to change the Mode now from Normal to Color, and that will preview very quickly, notice that.
05:36 So Photoshop is armed and ready to preview this effect as soon as it gets done with its progress bar.
05:41 This did go ahead and do a pretty darn great job actually of just making the colors inside of the image more homogenous.
05:50 You can see most of that burgundy junk it has gotten rid of, and the weird blues and greens inside the muzzle are gone as well.
05:57 But we are left with a very boring beige background as well.
06:03 We got rid of some of the greens that work inside the background, the good greens that we need in order to give the image a little variety.
06:09 So we are going to need to apply a mask, but for now we will just go ahead and accept this modification. Click OK.
06:15 Now quite surprisingly, we don't get a progress bar. So sometimes you wait, sometimes you don't. That's a good thing.
06:20 Anyway, now we are seeing the effects of Median and Smart Sharpen mixed.
06:24 Median has the Color Blend Mode assigned to it, so it's just affecting the color, not the luminance,
06:29 whereas Smart Sharpen has the Luminosity Blend Mode assigned to it, so it's just affecting the luminance information and not the colors.
06:36 These guys are affecting different parts of the image, opposite parts of the image.
06:41 Alright, in the next exercise we need to take care of the fact that we just wiped out all the colors in the field,
06:48 and the best way to see that you wiped out the colors in the field, because you could turn on and off these eyeballs,
06:53 but I don't recommend you do that because that invokes new progress bars.
06:56 If all you were trying to do is just see it before and after, don't turn the eyeballs on and off. That's going to waste a lot of your time.
07:03 This is a big tip, by the way, huge.
07:06 Instead, make sure you got your History powered up and go back to a history state before you applied it, for example, Median.
07:12 So I am going to go back to Deselect, and I will close History,
07:17 and now you can see that we have got these great colors that work inside of our background.
07:20 So this is the way the colors used to work. Now I will press Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac, this is the way they look now.
07:26 Did you see the difference there? I am going to go ahead and zoom in on these grasslands in the background.
07:31 This is the before version with more color of work.
07:33 Notice the green right there, and there is some green here, a little patch of green, some greens around this area.
07:39 These are good color anomalies, because they were actually in the original theme.
07:45 This is the way the colors look now. Strictly homogeneous, very flattened, very dead, boring.
07:51 We don't need that in this image.
07:53 We want to keep those colors where we can.
07:55 So what we are going to have to do is we are going to have to apply a Filter Mask,
08:01 and we are going to make that Filter Mask in the very next exercise.
08:05
08:05
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Assigning a filter mask
00:00I am working, by the way, if you are just joining me, I am working inside
00:04of a document called Two Smart Filters.PSD, that's found inside the 04_Support_Staff folder.
00:10I am going to go ahead so we can see what the grasslands in the background originally looked like.
00:14I am going to turn off the Smart Filters eyeball right there.
00:18I was telling you that you are going to waste a lot of time if you turn on and off eyeballs in order to preview before
00:24and after effects, I was telling you that in a previous exercise.
00:27That's true if you turn off one of these two eyeballs right here that's associated with a single Smart Filter,
00:33but if you turn off all of the Smart Filters, that typically goes pretty fast.
00:37So I am just going to go and turn off the eyeball for all the Smart Filters right there.
00:41Right away, it goes back to the original version of the animal, and you can see all the wacky colors that are going
00:46on inside of its eyes and its muzzle and inside of its coat.
00:50But you can also see the good colors that are going on inside the background;
00:53those greens that work inside of the background, and the yellows.
00:56We have got some oranges almost showing up, but we do have a little bit of greenery left, and I would like to go ahead and save that green if I can.
01:03So that's why we are going to restrict our Smart Filters to the bison itself, which needs all this color editing that's going on,
01:10thanks to the application of the Median Filter to just the color information inside of the photograph.
01:16So in order to create this Mask, I want you to leave the Smart Filters off,
01:20and I want you to go to the Channels palette. So go ahead and click on the word Channels.
01:23Now I tell you all about masking inside of my Photoshop CS3 Channels & Masks series.
01:29It's broken into two pieces: Essentials and Advanced Techniques.
01:33It's a part of the Online Training Library, so if you subscribe to lynda.com's Online Training Library, you have access to it.
01:39In all there are 32 hours worth of information; 300 different movies.
01:44I cannot begin to convey to you everything about masking right now in this one exercise,
01:49so I am just going to run through it as if you know basically how masking works.
01:53We are going to start off with the red channel because it has the highest degree of contrast between the animal and the grasslands.
02:00We want the animal to be white so he is affected, and we want the grasslands, the background, to be black, so it's not affected.
02:06So we are looking for contrast for starters.
02:09We will grab red. I am going to drag it to the bottom here on this little page icon at the bottom of Channels palette and release.
02:16Now we have got the colors inverted; he is dark and the background is light.
02:20I need the opposite, so I am going to press Ctrl+I or Command+I in the Mac in order to invert those colors.
02:26I am going to zoom out a little bit here to the 50% zoom size, just so I can take in more information.
02:31I am going to go ahead and call this guy Mask.
02:33I am just going to rename this Mask by double clicking and changing its name.
02:38Now I am going to increase the contrast a little bit inside of this channel, by going up to the Image menu,
02:45choosing Adjustments and choosing the Levels command.
02:47that's the easiest thing to do here.
02:49You could also press Ctrl+L or Command+L on the Mac.
02:52I am going to change this first Input Level value to 70.
02:55So I am saying anything that has a luminance level of 70 or darker is going to become black.
03:00So that's going to make a lot of colors inside that background black, as well as the seeds on this animal's head.
03:05Then I am going to change the white point to 190, by which I am saying,
03:11anything that has a luminance level of 190 or brighter, should be made white.
03:15So much of the interior of the animal is now becoming white.
03:18Some of its coat is remaining sort of grayish, that's OK.
03:21I am going to go ahead and click OK in order to accept these settings; so 70 for the first value, 190 for the third value, right here.
03:29You can leave that middle value alone.
03:31I will click OK in order to accept that modification.
03:33Now I need to convert this mask to a selection outline, and you do that by pressing and holding the Ctrl key on the PC
03:41or the Command key on the Mac, and clicking on that thumbnail.
03:44So Ctrl-click or Command-click on the thumbnail for the Mask Channel, and you will see that you load a selection outline.
03:51Now lets go back to the RGB image by clicking on it at the top of the Channels palette.
03:56I want you to go to the Layers palette now.
03:58Turn the Smart Filters back on by clicking on the eyeball in front of Smart Filters, and then I am going to right -click on Smart Filters and I am going
04:07to choose Add Filter Mask, and that will go ahead and convert the selection outline to a Filter Mask, just like that.
04:14So you can see the thumbnail view of this Filter Mask right there.
04:17By the way, if you are seeing itty-bitty icons inside the Layers palette here, you can right click in an empty area,
04:22the empty area at the bottom of the palette, and you can choose Large Thumbnails, which is a lot more helpful.
04:26Then you can see what's going on.
04:28So there is the Mask, and what it's doing is it's constraining the effects below it in the interior of the Mask,
04:34in the white area, and it's excluding the filters from the black area.
04:38So white reveals and black conceals in the case of this Filter Mask right there.
04:43As a result, we are sharpening and also applying the Median function to the interior of the buffalo,
04:49and we are not affecting the grasslands at all around the outside.
04:54You can verify that by turning this eyeball on and off.
04:56Once again, this should be fairly quick.
04:58So turn that eyeball off and you can see that the grasslands are not affected but the animal is very much affected.
05:04Then turn it back on, and you can see that the sharpening effect comes back into play, and so does the smoothing effect, the color smoothing effect,
05:11as a function of this Median Smart Filter right there.
05:14There is a problem however, I do want to sharpen the grasslands; I don't want to average the colors of the grasslands.
05:22So I am glad I have this Filter Mask here, but I do want to sharpen those grasslands in the background,
05:26and the problem is that this Filter Mask affects all of the Smart Filters in kind.
05:32There is no way to say, don't affect Smart Sharpen, just affect Median.
05:36That's actually OK to a certain extent, but somehow we need to sharpen that background.
05:41We are going to have to do that by embedding a Smart Object inside of this Bison Smart Object.
05:47So we are going to have to have one Smart Object inside of another,
05:50so that we have another Smart Object that has some sharpening functions applied to it.
05:54You will see what I mean if you join me in the very next exercise.
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Nesting one smart object inside another
00:00Alright gang, in this exercise, we are going to embed a Smart Object inside another Smart Object.
00:05We are doing this So that we can apply a series of unmasked filters to the image independently of the mask filters that we have already applied.
00:15So the logic starts to get a little twisted here.
00:17I am working inside of an image called Filter mask.PSD which is found inside the 04_support_staff folder.
00:24This is just a catch-up document, in case you are just joining me or for some reason something is going wrong inside your file.
00:30If you are humming right along, stick with the image you are working on.
00:33Please, by all means I want you to work this through from beginning to end if you can.
00:37I was telling you one of the great things about Smart Objects is that they are super efficient.
00:41Your file size doesn't grow, like it does if you are creating duplicate layers and you are applying effects to those duplicate layers
00:48and all that jazz as we used to have to do before Smart Filters came along.
00:52Well, the size of the file might imply that I am lying to you because now the file size has grown from 15.4 megabytes,
00:59as you can see down here on lower left corner of the image window.
01:02The value after the slash tells you the size of the image with layers and masks and everything else that's going on.
01:07The reason it's 25.7 megabytes now, which is fairly considerably larger, almost twice as large, is because we have two masks inside of this image
01:17and each one of the masks takes up another channel's worth of information, so another third again.
01:22We don't really need two versions of this mask because they are identical to each other.
01:27We need the filter mask that we are seeing right here, this is sort of silhouette white buffalo here,
01:32the ghost buffalo that's next to the word Smart Filters.
01:34We need that in order to mask the Smart Filters below it.
01:37But if you go to Channels palette, you don't need this one that's just called mask right here.
01:41That says upright, that has upright character saying mask.
01:44This guy right there, that's the Bison Filter Mask,
01:46that's the one that's assigned to the Smart Filters..
01:49But this guy is the one that we created originally in order to make the mask in the first place in the previous exercise.
01:54These are the same darned things.
01:56I'll throw the mask away, make sure you are throwing the one that's the Roman word, not the italic words, and you'll see that your file size goes down.
02:03Look in the lower left hand corner of the image window once again.
02:05Now its 15.4 megabytes, before the slash. That'll stay the same of course.
02:09So that's a flat size of the image.
02:11But the after slash file size, which is the more meaningful one, that's how much a room it's taking in memory and that will also
02:17contribute to the file size of the image on your hard drive. That's 20.5 megabytes.
02:22So it just went down precipitately, I mean, we just lost 5 megs.
02:25So that's good.
02:26Anyway, lets go back to the Layers palette.
02:29What I want to do basically, lets take a close look at the buffalo.
02:33You'll see that it still has this pattern of horizontal lines.
02:36We got rid of that splash of burgundy that's on the animal and all that have the weird sort of color anomalies that were going on.
02:42But we have these horizontal lines that are still at work.
02:45We also have some weird patterns that are going on in the grasslands as well.
02:49So we need to apply the Reduce Noise filter.
02:51We are going to do that without the mask.
02:54That means we need to apply it to the image inside of the Smart Object.
02:59So we are going to have to enter the Smart Object and we want
03:01to apply Reduce Noise non-destructively, so we need to create an embedded Smart Object.
03:05Does that make sense? I hope so.
03:07The logic is twisted.
03:08Some of you are going to totally understand this; other people are going to be going, what!?
03:12Anyway, what can I do? It's like the seeds on the buffalo.
03:14I can't do anything about that. I am going to go ahead and double click on that Bison thumbnail and that takes us in o the Smart Object.
03:23I turned off the warning.
03:24I said Don't show again so I didn't get a warning this time.
03:27I am just seeing that it is a Background layer that tells me that I am working on the Smart Object.
03:31I can also tell because I can look up here in the title bar and its telling me Layer 01.PSD.
03:37It may tell you some other file name; it may tell you Layer, just, 0.PSD because this is actually a temporary file that is embedded
03:47in larger composition and as soon as you open it, Photoshop creates a temporary file on disc.
03:53Actually, its just a temporary file that's in the system folder.
03:55Don't worry about it.
03:56But that's why it changes names every once in a while.
03:59Because I want to apply Reduce Noise non-destructively, we need to convert this image into its own Smart Object and I am going to do
04:05that, same way I did it before, by going to Layers palette menu and choosing Convert to Smart Object or I can press my keyboard shortcut which happens
04:11to be Ctrl+comma or Command+comma for me. And that's not the default keyboard shortcut in other words.
04:16I am going to call him Bison 2 or something along those lines, just to tell me that in case I accidentally enter the Smart Object and this name changes,
04:24that would give me a signal. Or I can say You're in the So just so that I know that I have accidentally double clicked on something
04:34and I just entered the Smart Object, I'll know I am inside of it.
04:37Does that make sense? Again, I hope so.
04:39I'll click on the thumbnail in order to make it active.
04:42Now we can apply Smart Filters to it and the first Smart Filter I am going to apply is Reduce Noise.
04:48I got up to the Filter menu, choose Noise and choose Reduce Noise and that's going to bring up the last applied settings.
04:55The ones that I applied to that image of the woman by Pascal Genest.
04:59This time around, I am just going to take my Reduce Noise value down to 15 and the reason is because I have already reduced the heck
05:07out of the noise using that Median filter that's applied to the parent Smart Object.
05:13So I don't really need to do much to the Color Noise at this point of time.
05:16So I am going to take that value down just to save a little bit of effort on Photoshop's part.
05:20Strength of eight is great, Preserve Details 20% is great, Sharpen Details zero is great, Remove JPEG Artifact does not need to be on;
05:27we don't have JPEG artifacts at work inside of this image.
05:29So that's good.
05:31I can take a look just to see if I got rid of some of those horizontal lines and I did.
05:35This worked wonders actually on those horizontal lines there.
05:38So, I am in good shape. I'll click OK in order to accept that modification and I will see that I have Reduce Noise applied.
05:44Now I don't need this filter mask. So I am going to throw it away because I don't like clutter.
05:49Then I want to apply a little bit of sharpening on top of this Reduce Noise pass.
05:55But I am just going to apply a little bit of edge contrast enhancement, not really sharpening strictly speaking, and just a little bit of it.
06:02So I am going to do this using the High Pass command.
06:06So lets go ahead and zoom in on the image and with the Smart Object still selected, I'll go ahead and drag,
06:10open the palette a little bit so we can see the full name.
06:12I'll go up to the Filter menu and I will choose Other and then I will choose High Pass.
06:18Now I'll bring up, of course, the High Pass filter right there and I am going to apply a Radius value of 20 pixels. That sounds great
06:24for this particular image. Because like as I said, I am not really trying to sharpen it at this point; I am just trying to enhance the edges
06:29to keep it nice and tactile essentially and to defeat some of the effects of the Reduce Noise filter right there.
06:37I will click OK and then I am going to change the blend mode because obviously the blending is not right at all.
06:42We need to drop out those grays.
06:44So I am going to double click on this blend mode icon right there.
06:47Now things are going a little faster because I am working on the top layer in the stack.
06:51They're not going super fast but a little bit faster than they were if we are trying to work on one
06:55of the earlier filters like Reduce Noise at this point.
06:57Then I am going to change the blend mode this time too Soft Light because Overlay is too much.
07:02If I choose Overlay, we are going to get a very emphatic contrast effect.
07:07So I'd rather work with Soft Light, something that's a little more subtle. So that's going to take the edge off a little bit.
07:13And then I am going to reduce the Opacity to 50% in order to take the edge off quite a bit
07:17and then I will click OK in order to accept that modification.
07:21These are the filters that I want to apply.
07:23Click on this eyeball, this should go pretty quickly for the entire filter stack.
07:27This is the before version of the buffalo and this is the modified version of the buffalo.
07:33Thanks to the High Pass and Reduce Noise filters.
07:36Now note something.
07:37When you are trying to turn on and off the entire Smart Filter stack, you need to click over to the left.
07:43Notice that underline right there; you need to click to the left of it.
07:45If you try to click right there where you think the eyeball should be, you are not clicking on anything.
07:50Photoshop is very sensitive; you have to click over here to get the eyeball.
07:54That's nuts of course.
07:56I mean what else would you be trying to do? But anyway I guess that it's a very sensitive, very sensitive program sometimes.
08:01Lets go ahead now and update the entire composition and I am going to do that by going up to the File menu and choosing Close.
08:08Don't choose Close All.
08:09Just chose Close to close this Smart Object, this particular Smart Object.
08:13Photoshop will ask you if you want to save the changes to this document and you want to go ahead and say Yes.
08:19Now you are not saving the document to disc; you are saving the image that's embedded inside
08:24of the larger composition, like I was saying, in memory.
08:27But go ahead and click Yes in order to update. That's essential to getting any work done at this point.
08:32Then you should see, notice we've got the original bison Smart Object with the filter mask assigned to it and of course,
08:38Smart Sharpen and Median as a subset of that filter mask.
08:42It will take a moment though for Photoshop to reconcile these four filters being mixed together on the flight.
08:48It is actually trying to do a fair amount of work with juggling four filters at once.
08:51So the more filters you heap on as single Smart Object or a single group of Smart Objects in this case, the slower Photoshop is going to perform.
09:00I still encourage you to go ahead and put the program through its paces.
09:05It is better to have a slow program than not to take full advantage of the features that are available to you, I think.
09:11Anyway, this looks a heck of a lot better and you can check out the difference if you want to from the History palette.
09:17I am going to bring up the History palette and I would go back here. Basically all that work is represented by a single history state.
09:24Just Update Smart Objects.
09:25If I just click on Delete Channel, it goes back to the version of the image before I had assigned Reduce Noise and High Pass.
09:34So you can see that there is more of a pattern of horizontal lines going on and this is the before version; this is the after version.
09:41A lot of those horizontal lines are going away.
09:43It is a much better effect and you can see that on screen.
09:46I am actually going to zoom in, so we can see it up close and personal inside the video.
09:50This is before we did the work inside of this exercise, lots of horizontal lines going on.
09:55This is after we did the work.
09:57So much more solid detail, those lines are almost completely gone at this point, not entirely but almost gone.
10:04They will certainly disappear in print and this is the final version.
10:08I am just going to go and press the F key in order to switch to the full screen mode.
10:12Press the F key a couple of times, tab away my palettes and then I'll go ahead and zoom in and this is the final sharpened version of the bison.
10:21Thanks to a combination of four filters, four Smart Filters, two different Smart Objects and a filter mask here inside Photoshop CS3.
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Employing a static High Pass layer
00:00In this and the next exercise we are going to talk about a couple of scenarios that aren't well suited to Smart Filters and we are going
00:06to see how we can still achieve non destructive effect albeit using old school technique essentially.
00:13I am looking at this image that is called Trade runner.jpeg that's found inside of the 04_Support_Stuff folder and this image comes to us
00:22from photographer Nick Roberts of iStockphoto.com once again.
00:26I am going to sharpen this image using the High Pass filter.
00:32Now High Pass. You can combine High Pass along with a Smart Object if you want to, so you can apply it as a Smart Filter,
00:39however its a rather limited utility as you will see.
00:44So lets run through the Smart Filter approach.
00:46I am going to take this image here inside the Layers palette, I am going to click on the Layers palette menu and choose Convert to Smart Object,
00:54in order to convert it to Smart Object. We will just go ahead and rename it something like Model or something along those lines.
00:59Then I am going to go up to the Filter menu and I will choose Other and I will choose High Pass, and I want to apply a radius of- 3 pixels ought
01:09to work pretty well for this image because I am going to output with this image.
01:12I am actually going to print this image at 240 pixels per inch.
01:16So the radius of 3 pixel, a little on high side, but it will work out nicely I think.
01:20Then I will go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification.
01:24Then I need to change the blend mode of course, so I'll double click on this little slider icon right there, the blend mode icon in order to bring
01:32up the Blending Options dialog box and I will change the Mode from Normal to Overlay.
01:37Now I was telling you can exaggerate the effect if this effect is not enough for you, which it is not enough for me,
01:43then you can elevate slightly by going with Hard Light.
01:47That's just a slight improvement, however, that's just a little tiny bit more sharpening and after that you have got to resort to things
01:55like Linear Light that are really pretty much over the top effects,
01:59although they do in this cases it does deliver something along the line to what I want it to.
02:03I can back off the Opacity values as well if I want to, something like lets say 70% in order to give this effect right here.
02:11Alright that's one way to work, however, what I would really like to have is independent control over the Amount value.
02:18So you may recall the High Pass filter gives the Radius value, so you have control over radius, but it doesn't give you any control over Amount.
02:26In order to control the Amount, if you really want specific control over the Amount, then you have to add a Levels adjustment
02:34to that High Pass result and you can't really do that.
02:38If I were to apply a Levels adjustment to this image right now as an adjustment layer for example,
02:45it would effect the entire image, not strictly the High Pass effect. I want to gain control over the High Pass effect independently
02:52and that's not something I cant do with Smart Filter.
02:55If you are not sure exactly what I am talking about, you will know in just a moment.
02:59Lets go ahead and back up here by pressing the F12 key or I can choose the Revert command from the File menu.
03:05Here is a different way to work.
03:07This is like I said, this is old school, it's going to increase the size of the file on disk, but its a good technique.
03:13It's an old school technique that just doesn't have a Smart Object equivalent.
03:16So here we go.
03:17I am going to start by pressing Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J on a Mac and I will call this layer High Pass and then I will click OK in order
03:25to make that layer. So I have got a new version of the image on an independent layer.
03:29You can see down here on lower left corner of the window that the size of my image has grown from and 7.91 megabytes to 15.8 megabytes.
03:37Now I am going to go up to the Filter menu and apply that same High Pass treatment, so a Radius of 3 pixels.
03:43There it is. Looks terrible of course. That's why we are going to change the blend mode from Normal to Overlay.
03:49Now I want to gain some independent control over the Amount setting, so that I can elevate this effect
03:55and you do that using a Levels adjustment layer, which will be applied strictly to a High Pass layer.
04:00Now how do we make that happen? Well you press and hold the Alt key or the Option key in the Mac and then you click here
04:07on this little black white icon and with Alt or Option down you choose the Levels command.
04:12I am going to call this- that should by the way, having Alt or Option down, should force the display of the New Layer dialog box.
04:18I am going to call this guy Amount because he will be my Amount control and then I am going to turn on this check box.
04:24Use previous layer to create clipping mask. Very important so that the Levels adjustment effects the High Pass layer by itself
04:31and then both the Levels adjustment and the High Pass layer are applied as a group to the background layer.
04:38Alright. Now I'll click OK in order to accept that modification and you can see we are going to end
04:42up with an indented adjustment layer right there because its clipped to High Pass.
04:47Now we have got this sort of cone right here.
04:49This cone of brightness values, luminance levels inside the High Pass layers. So not much left.
04:55They are all shoved towards the center, that's why so much of the image is grey.
04:58We are going to spread it apart by grabbing the first Input Levels value and I am going to press Shift+Up Arrow as many times as required
05:06to get it close, to get this black slider triangle close to the beginning of the cone, the point at which it starts going up.
05:12So 80. So I just need to remember that I am going to subtract now 80 from the maximum brightness side right here and I am going to that
05:21by pressing Shift+Down arrow 8 times. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 like so. Because if you don't modify both of these values by identical amounts,
05:32so adding 80 on this side, subtracting 80 on this side.
05:35If you don't do that then you are going to end up affecting the overall brightness of the image,
05:40and we don't want that. We want brightness to stay the same as this is right now.
05:43So I am, however, increasing the heck out of the sharpening effect. I'll click OK in order to accept that modification.
05:50So this is what the image looks like without that Amount adjustment.
05:53This is what it looks like with the Amount adjustment.
05:56So I am going to go and zoom in so we can see that again.
05:58I will go ahead and turn the Levels adjustment off and I will go ahead and turn it back on.
06:03So it makes a huge a difference to the overall sharpening effect of the image.
06:09Now there is a couple of things that are troubling me about this effect so far.
06:13I think it is too over the top and I can back it off. That's no problem.
06:16I can back it off by selecting this High Pass layer and then lets say I want to take it down to 80% opacity.
06:23So I press the 8 key to reduce the Opacity value to 80% right there; you can see that in the upper right corner of the Layers palette.
06:30Secondly, I am going to go ahead and scroll around here and we will see, especially in this coat, that I have brought out all kinds
06:37of weird color artifact. So this is what the original image looks like without High Pass, we will turn it off for a moment.
06:44So reasonably homogenous colors. That is, mostly in the orange range, but there are some blues and purples that are showing up.
06:51They are just very tenuous at this point, but as soon as I sharpen the purple comes right to the surface,
06:57we also have this weird lilac strains inside of the hair.
07:00So to get rid of that, we need to get rid of all the colors that are occurring in the High Pass layer. We can't change the blend mode
07:08to Luminosity because it is already Overlay, but we can extract the color from the High Pass Layer and we are going to do that by going
07:15up to the Image menu and this again, this is not something you could do if you were working with a Smart Filter. You couldn't extract the color
07:23out of the High Pass layer because you don't have that kind of access to it.
07:27So I am going to go up here because I do have access.
07:30Now I am going to go up here to the Adjustment submenu under the Image menu and I am going to choose this guy right there,
07:35Desaturate or I can press Ctrl+Shift+U Command+Shift+U on the Mac and keep an eye on the fur right there whether it is real fur
07:41or fake fur, don't know. I am just going to go ahead and choose the command and notice all of that color goes away. So this is before,
07:48lots of lilac in there; this is after. I de-saturate. It looks great and it looks exactly the way I want it to.
07:54This now is the final sharpened effect. It looks a little over the top. This is before, this is the unsharpened image that is to say.
08:02This is after I appllied the High Pass sharpening, but bear in mind, we are printing it so it's probably going to look
08:09about the way it looks at 50% or 25%'s another way to gauge it.
08:14So here we are at 25% zoom level.
08:16This is without High Pass, this is with High Pass.
08:20I could of course go ahead and flatten the image and image size it down to the resolution of my screen in order
08:26to get an even more accurate view if I wanted to, but this is good enough for now.
08:30So that's something that you canst do with Smart Filters. This whole exercise I just showed you, we couldn't pull that off with the Smart Filter.
08:37We can pull it off the old school way using an independent layer and of course we keep the file size down by relying
08:43on an adjustment layer right there, the adjustment layer didn't add any size to the image.
08:47In the next exercise I am going to show you yet another thing that we can only do if we are working old school
08:53and that is adjust luminance blending as we will do very shortly indeed.
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Matching static pixel-level edits
00:00At the end of the last exercise I promised we are going to look at luminance nlending. We are,
00:04but in just a moment. In the next exercise actually, to be more specific.
00:08In the mean time, I want to show you a little bit of a problem associated with working with this High Pass layer
00:13and I was telling you this independent High Pass layer, this old school technique, provides two advantages over Smart Filters.
00:19One, we are able to adjust the amount of the High Pass independently using a clipped Levels adjustment layer and we are able to take the saturation
00:28out of the High Pass layer, so that we don't exaggerate any color discrepancies inside the image. But here is the downside, check it out.
00:36I am going to go ahead and zoom in on this model's eye here and it looks like she is over-sharpened,
00:41but bear in mind we are printing this image, so I want it look extra crunchy on screen.
00:46But I am not sure that I want this. I am not sure what this thing is. First of all,
00:50it might be a lump of makeup because she has some makeup stuff going on over here.
00:54But if I was on the set or wherever this is, I would have recommended against this particular bit of makeup if indeed that's what it is.
01:02I think we should get rid of it, in fact.
01:05That's a little tricky.
01:06If we were working with a Smart Object then I could just double-click on the Smart Object,
01:12edit this item inside of the independent image, inside of the Smart Object image.
01:17Then go ahead and save the changes and the Smart Filter would update automatically.
01:21But that's not the case. We have easier access to this image right here, we can edit the pixels directly without having to open up the Smart Object.
01:29That's a good thing, but the filtered version of the image is not going to update automatically.
01:34So here is what I am talking about.
01:35I am going to go ahead and deselect the image.
01:37I am going to grab my Healing Brush right here, and this is the standard Healing Brush by the way, not the Spot Healing Brush, and I am going
01:44to Alt+Option+click in order to set a source point right about there. Then I am going to paint over this boogie here in order to get rid
01:52of it, then I'll release and I will hope that the thing goes way.
01:56Now it doesn't really appear to have totally gone away.
01:59We have a little bit of a remnant left behind right there and the reason that we have that remnant left behind is
02:06because the eye booger is still extent on the High Pass layer. It is still there.
02:13So if I were to go to the High Pass layer for example, and I were to change this Blend Mode from Overlay to Normal, which I will go ahead
02:19and do right now, you can see there it is. Showing up right at that location, so we need to get rid of it.
02:23So I am going to have to get rid of it independently.
02:26I am going to have to heal twice essentially. And of course each one of my healing strokes is going to be slightly different,
02:32so I may end up getting a different effect, but it should be good enough and if you are
02:36at all worried, you could recreate this High Pass layer as we did in the previous exercise.
02:41But I am just going to go ahead and do a separate Healing Pass. I am going to Alt+Option+click on this layer, because you need to make sure
02:47that you are healing from the proper layer in this case. Otherwise you would be healing
02:50from the background layer and that would make a mess of things.
02:52And then I am going to paint over this area.
02:55Hopefully, that will heal things well pretty nicely. It doesn't. I don't like that at all actually.
02:59Let me try Alt-clicking or Option-clicking over here instead and painting that away.
03:03I think we will get a better effect that way.
03:04That looks better to me. And it doesn't look perfect, we have got some weird pattern right at the allocation but that's OK,
03:11I mean this High Pass layer doesn't contribute all that much information,
03:15it doesn't contribute so much information that we are going to notice this repeat pattern.
03:19So here's what we going to do.
03:20We are going to go back to the Layers palette and change this Blend Mode back to Overlay
03:26from Normal to Overlay and now things look pretty darn good.
03:29It looks like its more or less gone. And this is the unsharpened version of the image and this is the sharpened version of the image. And I lied!
03:36Look at that. We can see that patterning, it is getting repeated.
03:40So let's go ahead and reduce the size of the cursor a little bit by pressing the left bracket key a few times and I'll Alt+Option-click
03:47down here lets say, and then I will just click right there and see if that takes care of the problem.
03:51It works out pretty nicely. I don't want to do that, I don't think. Maybe this.
03:55Anyway, you could heal like a crazy person if you wanted to.
03:58Actually I am going to undo that last modification there.
04:00This looks good to me; I am going to leave it alone.
04:02That's what I think is the best bet at this point, leave it the heck alone; looks much better.
04:07The main point here is not whether and I should be healing these various details, but the fact that if you do make a pixel-level modification
04:16to a layer that's affected by a static High Pass layer, you then need to turn around
04:20and apply that same pixel-level modification to the High Pass layer as well.
04:25Alright then, in the next exercise we will be taking a look at luminance blending, which is something we can only do
04:32if we have an independent layer. Doesn't work with Smart Filters. Coming right up.
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Avoiding clipping with luminance blending
00:00 Alright this time around, as promised, I am going to show you how to resolve clipped highlights and shadows that are a function
00:07 of a sharpening effect that are created by a sharpening effect. We will get rid of those clipped highlights and shadows using luminance blending,
00:13 which is only applicable to static layers; you can't apply it to a Smart Filter.
00:17 Of course I'll show you what I mean, but first I am working inside of this image here called High Pass layers.PSD,
00:23 its available inside of the 04_support_staff folder, for those of you who are just joining me.
00:30 It includes the High Pass layer and the clipped Levels adjustment layer.
00:33 I want you to see something about High Pass and this amount elevation right there.
00:38 If I zoom in on the fur and I want to show you before and after view, so if I click on the eyeball to turn off this layer,
00:45 this is what it looked like before. This is the unsharpened version of the image, that is to say, and this is the sharpened version.
00:52 Now the highlights and shadows are a lot more noticeable, so we have created these hot highlights inside
00:58 of the fur, thanks to High Pass, and these dark shadows.
01:01 But we are not clipping at this point.
01:03 High Pass is very good about avoiding clipping; the clipping of highlights and shadows, it does a great job,
01:10 which is why its such a splendid sharpening effect in my opinion.
01:13 But you do get clipping when you work with Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen, more often than not anyway. Not all of the time but very often you do.
01:22 I'll show you what I mean. So I am going to go ahead and Alt+click or Option+click on the eyeball in front
01:26 of the background layer in order to hide the other layers for now.
01:29 Lets go ahead and apply Smart Sharpen by the Smart Filter route very quickly here.
01:36 I'll go to the Layers palette menu; I'll choose Convert to Smart Object.
01:39 I am not going to worry that's called Layer 2. I don't care about that for now because we are going to get rid of it in just a moment.
01:43 I am going to go up to the Filter menu and I am going to choose Sharpen and I am going to choose Smart Sharpen.
01:48 Now we'll bring up the last settings I applied.
01:51 Now these are the settings I applied to the Bison, you may recall, an Amount of 350%, the Radius of 4.0 pixels, Lens Blur, that's just fine.
01:58 You can see, you may be able to see that we are definitely clipping highlights and shadows this time around.
02:03 We have some very light information here. This is white, white information that's clipped inside of the hairs and some very black clipped shadows
02:13 around the hairs, around the outside of the hairs and underneath her chin, just all kinds of clipped shadows as well.
02:18 That's no good.
02:20 Now you could resolve it using Advanced. If you clicked on the Advanced radio button right there and you go to Shadow,
02:27 you could back off your shadows if you want to. You could fade those shadows like so and that helps a little bit.
02:33 We get a lot of fading if we go with- if we decide to fade the highlights,
02:38 we are going to have a nice faded effect to those highlights there. It works out pretty nicely.
02:42 The only problem is that same old problem I was telling you about before. If I now switch back to Basic that doesn't undo those modifications.
02:51 So those changes that I made will persist throughout my use of the Smart Sharpen filter in the future. You may want that to happen.
02:58 If we find that desirable, that's great and you can go ahead and work it out with those advanced settings if you like.
03:04 I don't like the fact that they persist; I think they should retract as soon as we go back to Basic.
03:08 So anyway, I am going to go back to Advanced here and I am going to unfade these amounts like so and then I am going to switch back to Basic
03:16 and I am going to leave those controls alone, so that we can focus on luminance blending instead.
03:20 Click OK in order to apply that Smart Filter.
03:23 Now lets change the blending options. Luminance blending is part of the blending options, right?
03:27 We also need to get rid, of course, the color artifacts that are showing up here.
03:31 So I'll double click on these little slider guys right there, next to the word Smart Sharpen and I will change the Mode to Luminosity
03:38 and that will get rid of the color weirdnesses. But otherwise we just have an Opacity value. We don't have independent luminance blending control
03:47 and if you are not sure what I am talking about, you will be in just a moment. But it ain't here inside the Smart Filter.
03:52 I am going to cancel out. This is not doing me any good and I am going to press Ctrl+Alt+C, Ctrl+Alt+C a couple of times in a row.
03:58 That would be Command+Option+C twice in a row on the Mac.
04:01 Here is the better way to work if your goal is to get rid of the clipped highlights and shadows.
04:06 You want to press Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J in order to jump that Background layer, which is no longer Smart Object as you can see.
04:14 And I'll go ahead and call it Smart Sharpen because that's what its going to be and I'll click OK.
04:19 Now with this independent layer available to us and you can see that my file size is going quite a bit down here in the lower left hand corner
04:25 of the window that is a function of working with pixel based layers.
04:28 I am now going to go up to the Filter menu and choose that first command Smart Sharpen in order to repeat those settings
04:34 and we are going to get exactly the same effect of course.
04:37 Now I definitely want to change the blend mode right here from Normal to Luminosity to get rid of those aberrant colors and then I am going
04:45 to double click on the thumbnail for the layer to bring up the Layer Style dialog box and I am going
04:50 to direct your attention to these slider bars down here.
04:53 Now you'll sometimes hear people refer to these as the Blend If Sliders, but they are not.
04:58 Blend If refers to this popup menu right here and that's it.
05:01 I call these the Luminance Blending sliders because they give you selective control over the luminance levels inside
05:08 of the active layer and the composite view of the layers below.
05:12 So what I want to do is I want to drop out these highlights and I can do that by dragging this white slider triangle over to the left.
05:19 And notice if I drag it to 230, I am saying anything with a luminance level of 230 or higher becomes invisible, anything 230 or darker remains visible.
05:27 Now I am going to zoom in here, so you can see what a cruddy mess this has become, we have all of these jagged transitions.
05:33 Normally, what you can do is you can Alt+drag or Option+drag the two halves of this triangle apart from each other and that creates a smooth transition
05:42 between the invisible pixels and the visible pixels. And if this is news to you, check out the first chapter in my Photoshop CS3 Channels & Masks:
05:54 Advanced Techniques series and it goes into all kinds of detail about luminance blending.
05:59 Its' a part of the lynda.com Online Training Library for those of you who are subscribers.
06:05 But in any case, this is not working for us, so for this specific image.
06:08 Normally for another image, it might workout fine, but this image, it's not working at all.
06:12 So lets just go ahead and take these guys and drag them back over to the right to make the whites visible once again.
06:18 Instead, what I am going to do is I am going to Alt+drag or Option+drag the left half of this white slider triangle at the bottom in order to force
06:27 through the more moderate highlights from the underlying background layer.
06:34 So this looks a heck of lot better, you can see that I just got rid of my white.
06:37 So this is how the effect looked before with hot whites, this is how it looks now with the duller whites.
06:43 That's actually- the duller whites- are a good thing; we don't want those highlights popping to that extent.
06:48 So in this case, what I am saying is anywhere where the luminance levels
06:52 on the background layer are 135 or darker, let them be covered up by Smart Sharpen.
06:58 Anywhere where they are 135 or lighter, they are going to gradually force through the Smart Sharpen layer.
07:03 So we are going to be able to see those highlights as we are seeing them right now.
07:07 Now lets move the image over a little bit so that we can go ahead and get rid of some of the shadows and I am doing this
07:14 by dragging the black slider triangle over to the right.
07:16 I don't want to go too far with it. I'll take it to about 30, lets say, so a luminance level of 30 or darker is becoming invisible at this point.
07:23 You can see a bunch of jagged transitions right here around the hairs.
07:27 So I'll go ahead and Alt+drag or Option+drag the right half of this triangle over to the right and I might actually drag this guy down over
07:36 to the left a little bit as well so that we have nice group of transitional pixels between 16 and 60 here.
07:42 If that's not enough for you, you could also force through a few of the original colors using the Underlying Layer slider.
07:49 In my case, though, I am going to just move it over a little like so to 20 and then I am going to Alt+drag
07:53 or Option+drag the left half of that black triangle back over to zero.
07:58 I end up getting some moderate values instead of those clipped highlights and shadows this time around, so it looks much better than before.
08:07 I'll go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification and then finally what I am going
08:11 to do, because this effect is little bit over the top.
08:14 It's much more severe, it's a much more severe sharpening affect than what we created using High Pass.
08:18 So I am going to press the 5 key in order to back off the opacity to 50%.
08:24 So this is what the image looked like before we sharpened it and this is what it looks like after we have sharpened it.
08:30 So basically what we are doing is we are focusing in on the midtones; we are just sharpening the midtones.
08:35 You know what, I am going to take that Opacity value up to 70% so that I can make sure that you see the effect inside the video.
08:43 So once again, this is before; the unsharpened image that is to say and this is the sharpened version of the image with Smart Sharpen honed
08:52 in on those midtones inside the image and thereby, we are avoiding clipping the highlights and the shadows.
08:58 In the next exercise, we are going to take a look at how we can apply our sharpening selectively using an Edge Mask.
09:05 Stay tuned.
09:06
09:07
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Sharpening and smoothing
00:00In this exercise we are going to talk about how to use an edge mask, in order to limit the portions of the image that we want to sharpen.
00:08So use an edge mask with sharpening and then as well see in another exercise, you use a non-edge mask to identify the non-edges
00:16of course inside the image and you use that to smooth the image, in order to reduce the noise and we will be performing both of these feeds
00:23on that Unguarded moment.jpeg file that's found inside 04_Support_Stuff folder,
00:29that comes to us from photographer Pascal Genest of iStockphoto.com.
00:32Now you may recall that we have already been through this image, we use the Reduce Noise command combined along with the Smart Sharpen filter,
00:40in order to create a fairly smooth version of the image.
00:46But it does have some noise, right now I am looking at her neck, so this region right here and I am looking at it magnified and you maybe able
00:53to make out, especially if I zoom in some more that I have brought out some noise in this image.
00:58Even though I went ahead and downplayed the noise using Reduce Noise then when I turned around and applied Smart Sharpen,
01:04I brought the noise back out and I compared this with the original version of the image right here, this is that same area of the neck,
01:13it is definitely lower noise before we go and sharpen it.
01:16So that worked out pretty well I thought. This time around we are going to make it work out better.
01:21So basically, edge mask and non-edge mask, they are your tools when just combining things like smoothing
01:27and sharpening together just doesn't cut it for you. It's not good enough.
01:31But they do involve some extra work, I will warn you about that.
01:34Alright. So I am going to go and switch to the full screen mode for this Unguarded Moment image and I am going to go ahead and press Shift+Tab
01:42to bring back my palette here and lets go ahead and convert her to a Smart Object because that's going to be the best way to work
01:49where this image is concerned. Then we are going use the edge mask to mask of course the sharpening effect.
01:54So I am going to go over to the Layers palette and I am going to click at the Layers palette menu icon and choose Convert to Smart Object
02:01and lets go ahead and call her once again Model and now I am going to apply Smart Sharpen.
02:07I am going to up to the Filter menu, choose Sharpen and then choose Smart Sharpen and I am going to enter some pretty high values this time around.
02:15Actually lets just max it out so we can really see what's going on because the edge mask is going to serve to greatly limit this effect.
02:22So we'll start with an Amount value of 500%, I frequently do that just in order to gauge what kind of Radius value I want to use and in order
02:29to make sure that I am seeing the effect as I am making the edge mask, because we can always come back and change it later. That's the idea.
02:36Alright. So Radius value of 4.0 pixels, Remove is set to Lens Blur, More Accurate is turned off,
02:40go ahead and click OK in order to accept that effect.
02:44And then you probably going to want to turn around and go ahead and double click on little blending icon right there. And lets change the Blend Mode
02:52of course to Luminosity because we just want to focus in on the luminance information inside the image,
02:58we don't want to be sharpening the color stuff.
03:00Looks like we are looking at her lips right now. This is before and this is after I switch to Luminosity.
03:05So right here we are seeing the color artifacts inside of her lips, you can see a little bit of some purples around the bottom of her lip
03:11and some greens on the top lip and so on and they will disappear as soon as I release.
03:15So it's a good thing. I'll click OK in order to accept that modification.
03:19I am going to go ahead and get rid of this mask by dragging it to the trash can right there because its easier to create the mask
03:27by invoking your selection outline and then just converting it to a mask as opposed to doing anything else.
03:32So it's just easier to start the mask over again.
03:34It's basically what I am saying.
03:36Before I go to the Channels palette, I want to turn off the Smart Filters effect.
03:40So we are looking at the original version of the image.
03:43Alright. Now I am going over to the Channels palette and the reason I am going to Channels palette is I need to select a channel from which
03:49to derive an edge mask and I am going to ahead and zoom in on her just a little bit here.
03:56Lets check out the channels that are available to us.
03:59Ctrl+1 would take us to the red channel, that'd be Command+1 on the Mac. Command or Ctrl+2 is going to take us to the green channel
04:05and Command or Ctrl+3 is going to take us to the blue channel.
04:08Now the blue channel is in absolute mess.
04:10We have got all kinds of harsh choppy transitions going on inside the blue channel and also we have some lightning occurring inside the shadows.
04:20This is the kind of stuff that frequently happens with the blue channels and it's because our eyes react less to blue light than red or green light.
04:29So bad information can hang out. It can hide out in the blue channel and also the blue filter in digital cameras is sufficiently dark
04:37that it leaves very little wiggle room in terms of generating image data.
04:43So your blue channel is typically going to be your least satisfactory channel inside of an image and it's quite bad inside of this photograph.
04:50This is the green channel, it's in much better shape but it still has some roughness
04:54and also it doesn't really have enough contrast. It's a low contrast channel.
04:58I want a higher contrast channel and for portrait shots, that's going to be your red channel.
05:03You are going to want to start from your red channel most of the time when you are working with portrait shots.
05:07So lets go ahead and grab that red channel and we are going to load it as a selection outline by Ctrl or Command-clicking on its thumbnail.
05:16So Ctrl-click on the thumbnail on the PC, Command-click on the thumbnail on the Mac, then I am going to switch back to the RGB image
05:23and notice that we have loaded the light areas as the selection outline.
05:27So we selected light areas of that channel, we have deselected the dark areas essentially and this marching ant selection indicates
05:34that we have either selected or deselected areas, it actually just represents the 50% Threshold.
05:39It is a very gradual selection outline.
05:42I am now going to move over to the Layers palette.
05:44Lets turn the Smart Filters item back on, recall that you need to click outside of the underline right there, in order to turn it on.
05:52Then I am going to right click on Smart Filter and choose Add Filter Mask and that's just going to go ahead
05:56and convert the selection outline back to a channel essentially.
06:01And this is what it looks like.
06:02I'll Alt-click or Option-click on this layer mask right here and we can see this mask and its exactly it is identical
06:11to the red channel we were just looking at a moment ago.
06:13So converting from a channel to a selection outline and back to a mask is a non-destructive conversion every single time.
06:20So all that pixel data is still intact which is really great.
06:23Now we need to take this information right here, this mask in progress, which is just a red channel so far, we need to take it and convert it
06:30into an edge mask and we are going to do that in the next exercise.
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Making an edge mask
00:00In this exercise we are going to the mask that I have assigned to the Smart Sharpen, Smart Filter and we are going to convert it into an edge mask.
00:08It just traces along the edges inside of the image and protects the non-edges so that we don't sharpen a bunch of noise.
00:14I am working inside of a catch-up document, those of you who may just be joining me called Sharpened moment.PSD and it's found inside
00:22of the 04_Support_Stuff folder. I am going to Alt-click or Option-click on this Filter Mask icon right there in front
00:31of the words Smart Filters in order to view the mask by itself.
00:35Now currently it's just a copy of the red channel nothing more and the sharpening effect is going to show through the white and light areas
00:43of the mask and its going to be hidden by the dark and black areas of the Mmask and then we are going
00:48to have sort of soft transitions provided by the gray areas.
00:53Alright. So lets make an edge mask.
00:55Lets convert this guy to an edge mask.
00:56Now if you have watched my Photoshop CS3 Channels & Masks Series, you know how to create an edge mask for sharpening archival photographs.
01:04This edge mask is going to be slightly different.
01:06Its basically the same idea, just a little different spin here.
01:10So the first thing that I am going to do is I am going to apply the Median filter because I want to get rid of as much noise inside this image
01:18as possible right upfront. I am going to go onto the Filter menu and I am going to go to Noise and then I will chose Median
01:25and I am going to apply a pretty high value Radius of 10 pixels.
01:29Now this recipe that I am about to share with you is going to work for just about any image as long as you follow the steps.
01:35So the steps will always remain the same. You will choose Median and then you will choose another filter and another filter and so on. However,
01:40the exact Radius values you enter is kind of up to you.
01:44Basically you need to enter a high enough Radius value.
01:47It's totally OK to go over the top here a little bit.
01:50A high enough Radius value that you get rid of the noise inside the image is as much as possible. If you ruin a little bit of image detail,
01:57if you are gumming up a little bit that's OK. But high resolution images you might want to go even higher, although this is a big image.
02:03Alright. So Radius value of 10 pixels is what I am going to apply and I will click OK
02:07and you can see that we have a pretty gummy image going on here.
02:11Now I am going to go up to the Filter menu.
02:13This is the key step to creating an edge mask.
02:16You go to Stylize and you choose this command right there, Find Edges, and it locates the edges inside the image,
02:21which is a terrific thing. Without Find Edges we wouldn't be able to create an edge mask and you get this effect here.
02:27Now I want the edges to show up this white and the non-edges to show up as black; so I need to reverse this mask,
02:34and I am going to do that by pressing Ctrl+I or Command+I on the Mac to invert it.
02:39Next, I want to increase the brightness of this mask, because right now we wouldn't be able to see much at all in the way of sharpening going
02:48on inside of this image and if you want to check it out you can just Alt-click or Option-click on that mask icon
02:54and you will see now we have pretty much obliterated the sharpening effect.
02:58Alright. So I am going to Alt-click or Option-click on the filter mask once again and I am going to press Ctrl+L or Command+L on the Mac in order
03:06to bring up the Levels dialog box and you can see we just have a little bit of a Histogram here.
03:11I am going to increase the brightness by dragging this white slider triangle right there over until I get a value of about 40;
03:19so notice that its starting to cut into the slope of that Histogram, and we are bringing out a lot of whites,
03:25a pretty cool effect, that we are seeing right here.
03:28Even though we are just using as amask, it looks pretty darn cool actually.
03:31So I went ahead and applied the white point value 40.
03:34So that I am saying anything with a brightness value of 40 or lighter is going to become white.
03:38So that's an awful lot of luminance levels.
03:40Then I will click OK in order to accept that modification.
03:45Alright. Now lets take a look at what we have brought so far.
03:48I am going to Alt-click or Option-click on the filter mask once again or I can just click on the layer thumbnail right there in order to switch back
03:56to the full color image and you can see that this has limited the sharpening filter to a great extent here actually.
04:03I am going to bring up the History palette so that we can compare this last step that we just applied to the original filter mask.
04:11So I will go ahead and choose Add Filter Mask right there and you can see that we have a lot more sharpening going
04:16on before we converted this right channel right here to an edge mask.
04:20So its a much more subtle sharpening effect, though by no means subtle because I still have this very high Amount value assigned to Smart Sharpen.
04:28Alright. So this is pretty good, I would just like to expand the edges a little bit.
04:33They're still a little thin for my taste.
04:35So I am going to go ahead and click on the filter mask icon and from this point on we are going to work on the filter mask
04:41but we are going to preview the effects in the full color image.
04:44So here's how we make the edges thicker inside the Mask.
04:46The first step is to go up to the Filter menu and choose Other and choose Maximum. Maximum increases the maximum brightness value, which is white.
04:56So it expands the white areas of the mask and I am going to go ahead and expand those edges by a radius of 4 pixels.
05:04Now again this is going to vary exactly which values you apply are up to you so you might want to experIiment with this a little bit.
05:10But I will go ahead and click on the eye here so we can see that eye; this is before.
05:14And bear in mind, we are looking at the mask here inside the preview inside the Maximum dialog box.
05:20This is the before view of those edges and this is the after view.
05:24So that greatly expands those edges so that we are sharpening a wider swath of edge there.
05:29And then I will go ahead and click OK to accept that modification.
05:32Now the one thing before we click OK I want you to notice that Maximum ends up blowing up pixels,
05:36it ends up expanding pixel so you get these big squares, you may notice here.
05:40So I will click OK. We need to round up those squares and the ticket where rounding squares is concerned is the Median filter. Once again, the Median
05:48filter will go ahead and round off corners inside of an image.
05:52So I am going to go to the Filter menu, choose Noise and choose Median.
05:56It's a part of the averaging process as it turns out. I am going to enter a Radius value
06:00that matches the radius inside the Maximum dialog box, which was 4.
06:05Alright. So whatever you enter in Maximum, enter the same value here into Radius and that will round off those edges as you can see there.
06:12So this is before with all the little squares; this is after with all the little circles essentially.
06:17Now I will go and click OK. Then finally we want to go ahead and blur the edges a bit and I am going
06:23to apply a Blur value of twice the Maximum and the Median values.
06:27So I am going to go to the Filter menu, choose Blur and choose Gaussian Blur the best blur for our purposes
06:33because we need a nice Gaussian distribution and I am going to go with the Radius value of 8 pixels.
06:37Just as I have here, lets look at the eye again. So this is it before, this is it after. It looks very blurry,
06:43doesn't look as cool as it looked before the mask. Doesn't looks nearly as cool as it did before, but it's going to serve our purposes much better.
06:49Now I will click OK in order to accept that modification.
06:53You can see that we now have a pretty subtle sharpening effect considering how high the Amount value is and we have managed
07:01to avoid sharpening much in the way of the noise inside the image.
07:06So if I turned off, I will go ahead and turn off the Smart Filter here.
07:09This is a before view of this noisy area in the image and this is the after view
07:14and if you are not seeing much happened inside the video that's no surprise, not much is happening.
07:19There is not much difference.
07:20We have successfully avoided that noise.
07:22We are doing a little bit of sharpening, but mostly we are avoiding it, thanks to this edge mask.
07:27So an edge mask is ideal for sharpening.
07:29Now one more thing I am going to do here is change my Smart Sharpen settings
07:33because I don't really want to work with an amount of value of 500%.
07:36I'm going to go ahead and double click on the word Smart Sharpen right there and I am going
07:39to take the value down to lets say about 250% or it may go higher.
07:44Why don't we take it up to about 300%? And then click OK to accept that modification.
07:50The dialog box preview here does not take the mask into account, so you are going to see the amount applied across the entire image.
07:57When you click OK though, you are going to see the effect applied inside of the mask region.
08:03So this is perfect.
08:04In the next exercise I am going to show you how to use a non-rdge mask in order to smooth away the noisy portions of the image.
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Making a non-edge mask
00:00 In this exercise I am going to show you how to make a non-edge mask that allows us to smooth away the noise inside the image
00:06 and the other non-edges inside the image while leaving the edges more of less intact so that the Sharpen filter can operate upon them.
00:14 Now I am working on a catch-up document and I am calling edge mask.PSD, if you are just joining me, you can open it inside the 04_Support_Stuff folder.
00:23 Notice that it includes a Smart Object along with the Smart Sharpen Smart Filter that's mitigated by this Filter Mask right there.
00:31 A non-edge mask is in many ways the opposite of an edge mask.
00:35 It allows us to select the non-edges inside the image.
00:39 As you may recall, Smart Filters, a group of Smart Filters can only be modified by a single layer mask.
00:44 So we can't actually add the Reduce Noise filter to the same Smart Object here and apply a different Mask to it.
00:50 Instead what we have to do is, we have to create a nested Smart Object, the way we did for the buffalo image.
00:56 So I am going to double-click on the model thumbnail right here in order to open her up as a standard static image.
01:05 Notice that it says Background layer right there.
01:07 We are then going to turn around to convert this into a Smart Object.
01:11 So we have a nested Smart Object to work with.
01:13 To this end I will go ahead and bring up the Layers palette menu and I will choose Convert to Smart Object and I will go ahead
01:19 and call this one Noise or something along those lines.
01:23 Now I am going to approach this Smart Filter differently and its mask as well, before we assign the Smart Filter.
01:29 Lets go ahead and load the red channel as a selection outline.
01:32 So I am going to the Channels palette and I am going to Ctrl-click or Command-click on the Mac on the red channel right there,
01:38 on the red channel thumbnail, in order to load it up as a selection outline.
01:43 Now I am going to return to the Layers palette and I am going to go up to the Filter menu, choose the Noise command,
01:49 and I am going to choose this guy right here, Reduce Noise, and I am going to apply the same settings I applied
01:56 to this image several exercises ago now, which are these settings right here: Strength of 8, Preserve Details set to 20%, Reduce Color Noise 45%,
02:04 Sharpen Details 0%. And if you want to see how that effects that area of noise in her neck you can go ahead and drag down to that location.
02:12 You will see that it smoothes it out very nicely and it does this by the way
02:15 without ruining the detail inside the image, just ruins it over a little bit but not too much.
02:20 So I will go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification and notice what happens, Photoshop goes ahead and assigns the Smart Filter
02:26 and applies the selection outline as the filter mask in one operation and there it is right there.
02:34 So that's kind of handy I think.
02:35 Now lets go about modifying that mask and we are going to click on the mask in order select it and I am actually going to Alt-click
02:42 or Option-click on the mask so we can view the mask by itself.
02:45 Step number one is still that same step we applied with the edge mask.
02:48 You want to go up to the Filter menu, choose the Noise command and then choose Median. I will say that some folks use Gaussian Blur
02:55 at this state instead of Median but I find Median to be the better filter for smoothing over digital noise.
03:01 So I am going to go ahead and choose the Median command and I am going to apply that same Radius value that I applied
03:06 in the previous exercise, which is 10 pixels and then I am going to click OK.
03:11 The second step is exactly the same as well. You go up to the Filter menu, you choose Stylize,
03:16 and you choose Find Edges, which gives you those black edges against a white background.
03:21 Now we want to select the non-edges inside the image and protect the edges.
03:25 So we are not going to invert the mask this time around, we are going to leave it Not Inverted, but I am going to go ahead
03:31 and increase the levels so that we have more contrast going on here.
03:34 I am going to go ahead and zoom in on her face a little bit so that we can see her neck as well and I am going to press Ctrl+L or Command+L on the Mac
03:41 and I am going to drag this black triangle over to the right until it hits the beginning of the slope.
03:47 Notice our Histogram is kind of the opposite of what we were seeing before, which figures because we didn't invert.
03:53 So if we had inverted the image, this histogram would be flipped over to the left side of the dialog box.
03:58 I am going to go ahead and move that black slider triangle over to the value of 210 there so that its hitting the beginning of the slope,
04:05 but now that leaves sort of this topographical map effects behind on her cheeks and so on.
04:10 I am going to get rid of that topography by moving the white slider triangle over to the left, just a 10 luminance level,
04:18 so that we get a value of 245 in the right hand position here and then I am going to click OK to accept that modification.
04:26 Finally, notice we are not protecting much inside this image at this point and the reason that we are not protecting much is
04:33 because as I was saying Reduce Noise function is a more subtle command than Smart Sharpen,
04:38 so we don't need to protect that much information inside the file, just the most obvious edges.
04:43 But I do want to avoid having this sort of scalloped relief sort of effect going on here.
04:49 So I am going to blur this mask.
04:50 Actually let me zoom in to 50% so we can view this mask accurately.
04:54 I am going to go to the Filter menu and I will choose Blur and Gaussian Blur, and I am going to go ahead and match the Median value this time,
05:02 so I will enter a Radius value of 10 pixels and I will click OK in order to accept that modification and now lets see what we have done here.
05:09 I will Alt-click or Option-click on that Filter Mask in order to check out the full-colored version of the image.
05:16 Lets go ahead and zoom in on her eyes so that we can see them very closely here.
05:21 So if I was to turn off the Mask, which I will do by Shift-clicking on it.
05:26 So Shift-clicking on a filter mask turns it off, puts a big X to it as you can see there.
05:31 So this is the smooth version of the eye and then I will Shift-click again to reveal the protected version of the eye.
05:36 So it's not that much difference. In fact, you would have to have a very keen eye indeed in order to see that difference,
05:42 but while you can't see it very much, Photoshop can and it is going to make it difference in terms of the sharpening operation.
05:49 Alright. So that's the non-edge mask and we have used non-edge mask to mitigate to a slight extent the Reduce Noise filter.
05:56 We are now done working with the nested Smart Object.
05:59 I am going to go up to the File menu and choose the Close command.
06:03 Photoshop is going to ask me if I want to save my changes. Yes, I do, that will save my changes into the larger composition,
06:09 which is that edge mask.PSD composition as you may recall, and here it is, edge mask.PSD.
06:14 We can see the original model Smart Object with the Smart Sharpen, Smart Filter applied as mitigated by the edge mask of course.
06:24 Lets go ahead and move up from her bodice there so that we can check out her face and her neck and if I were to zoom in you can see
06:31 that we're not bringing out much in the way of noise in the neck still. In fact we have defeated a lot of that noise using the Reduce Noise Filter.
06:38 So this is a perfect sharpening of this image.
06:41 It does take a little bit of extra time, but it's going to deliver some amazing results.
06:46 So if you have noisy but beautiful image like this one here and you want to treat it with tender loving care, remember that you will sharpen
06:53 with an edge mask and smooth with a non-edge mask and you will create a smooth effect inside of a nested Smart Object
07:01 and the sharpen effect inside the consuming Smart Object.
07:04 Then go ahead and save this image out as a layered PSD file and you are good to go.
07:08 In the next chapter, in Chapter 5 we are going to take a look at sharpening for the source
07:13 and we are going to focus much of our attention on Camera RAW.
07:17
07:17
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5. Sharpening for Source
Sharpening with Adobe Camera Raw
00:00 Remember the Technique Trumps Timing slide from the final exercise in Chapter 2?
00:05 That was just a photograph but here is the real thing.
00:08 Like so many of my slides, this one occurs naturally on a poster board backing in the hills above Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
00:15 As you may recall, these four headlines identify the main categories of sharpening in the general order that you apply them.
00:23 First identify by the late Bruce Fraser in his book "Real World Image Sharpening,"
00:27 Source, Details, Effects and Output will serve as your guide posts as you attempt to create an optimally focused image in Photoshop.
00:35 The second half of the series is all about making the most of each of these categories.
00:40 Starting at the top with Sharpening for Source.
00:43 Digital image capture devices, whether cameras or scanners, use softening algorithms to resolve banding, harsh transitions
00:51 and the creation of colors that the image sensor missed.
00:54 In this chapter, we will focus our attention on ways to sharpen digital photographs,
00:59 specifically those captured by your camera's RAW format inside the Adobes Camera RAW or ACR for short.
01:06 Well, sharpening for source ACR 4.1 and later let you smooth over noise, cranked chromatic aberrations and generate edge masks on the fly.
01:15 It is amazing.
01:17 Fortunately ACR lets you open JPEG and TIFF files as well, as you will see me doing in subsequent chapters.
01:25 It does get thirsty.
01:27
01:28
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Introducing Camera Raw (4.1 or later)
00:01In this chapter, we are going to be taking a look at some sharpening controls that not available inside of Photoshop proper.
00:07To get to these sharpening controls, you'll either have to open an image inside of Adobe Camera RAW, which is a plug-in that ships along
00:14with Photoshop, or you have to use this separate program that ships separately, cost more money that's called the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom also known
00:22to most folks just as Lightroom.
00:24Now the controls that we are going to be looking at are available inside of Adobe Camera RAW 4.1 or later.
00:31In Camera RAW 4 ships along with Photoshop CS3, but in order to get 4.1 or later you have to run your Updater utility.
00:39As I am filming this, most recent version of Camera RAW is Camera RAW 4.3.1 that anything after 4.1 will do just fine.
00:47If you are using Lightroom, you need the Lightroom 1.1 or later. Just you know a little bit of an FYI.
00:54Now both Camera RAW and Lightroom are specifically designed to accommodate digital images or images captured
01:01with a digital camera in that camera's RAW file format.
01:05So we will be looking at RAW images throughout this chapter, however, these options are also applicable to images that you capture as JPEG files
01:15or TIFF files or images that you scan from film, from film transparencies, lets say or color negative and save as JPEG or TIFF files.
01:24You can also use Camera RAW on those files.
01:27So before we go any farther in this exercise, I just want to show you how you open an image inside of Camera RAW and how you get
01:35to the sharpening controls, regardless of what kind of image you are working with.
01:38Now I am looking at Adobe Bridge that ships along with Photoshop and with CS3 and I have the Bridge trained on the contents
01:47of the 05_for_source folder, which is found inside the exercise_files folder, and I am looking at a modified version
01:53of a horizontal film strip view here inside the Bridge and you should see these images, if not several more images as well, inside of this folder.
02:03And you may notice that they are all DNG files. DNG is the Adobe's RAW file format and it is meant to serve as a unifying file format, sort
02:12of the TIFF essentially of RAW digital images, because every single camera has its own RAW file format.
02:18These images were captured by a variety of different cameras from vendors such as Canon and Nikon and Leica and each one
02:27of those vendors havs their own preparatory format, whether its CRW or CR2 in the case of the Canon image.
02:33Nikon, it would be NEF. This Leica photograph right here to be RAW, but I went ahead and converted them all to DNG files,
02:40using Adobes free DNG Cnverter utility, which you can get to- by the way, you do not need for the purposes of this exercise,
02:47but you can get to it if you need it in the future for whatever reasons, by going to www.adobe.com/dng.
02:56As I say that's a free converter utility.
02:59And by the way, if you are a member of the lynda.com Online Training Library, then you can check out why DNG is so great by talking a look
03:08at my Photoshop Camera RAW Series, which goes into quite a bit of details about Camera RAW and the basic sort of makeup of the utility and so on.
03:18Lets go ahead and see how you open an image inside of Camera RAW.
03:21I am going to go down here to Festive Ornaments.dng and all I am going to do is double click on it and that now only shifts you to Photoshop,
03:29you may have seen how we shifted from the Bridge into Photoshop for a moment there, and then it opens the Camera RAW plug-in inside of Photoshop.
03:36So Photoshop is hosting the plug-in at this point.
03:39Then to get the sharpening controls, you would go over here to this guy, Detail, and that looks
03:44like a couple of cones, one in focus and one out of focus.
03:47They might be not mountain peaks, what have you, and there are sharpening controls and are noise reduction controls.
03:53We will also be looking at this guy right here, which is the Lens Correction functions and the first group
03:58of Lens Correction functions are the Chromatic Aberration options and they come in very handy when adjusting sharpening as well.
04:05Now then, after you make your modifications to those and other options inside of Camera RAW, you would go ahead and click on the Open Image button
04:12down here if you wanted to open the image inside the Photoshop and further modify it, or you could just click on this Done button in order
04:18to save your changes as non-destructive metadata instructions that are applied to the image
04:25as you open it, but aren't ever applied to the original photograph.
04:29So the original photograph remains intact, which is really great.
04:33We will see more about how these options work shortly.
04:36But for Now I am just going to click on the Cancel button in order to cancel out of the Camera RAW.
04:40Now that dumps me inside of Photoshop. I am going to have to switch back to the Bridge by pressing Alt+Tab or Command+Tab on the Mac.
04:48And I should say very briefly- I will go back for a moment.
04:50I should show you that you can get to the Bridge from Photoshop by going to the File menu and choosing the Browse command
04:56or there is also this little Bridge folder icon right up here in the Options bar.
05:00So either of those options will take you back to the Bridge.
05:03Alright. So here I am inside of the Bridge and we saw how we can just double click on a DNG file for example or any other RAW Digital camera file
05:12in order to open it inside of Photoshop inside Camera RAW.
05:15What if we want to run Camera RAW directly inside the Bridge? Well we would go up here to the File menu.
05:20Instead of choosing the Open command up here, we would choose Open in Camera RAW or you can press Ctrl+R or Command+R on the make.
05:27The advantage to this way is that you are hosting Camera RAW inside of the Bridge.
05:31So notice we didn't switch to Photoshop that time, we are just working directly inside of the Bridge,
05:35which means that I can still use Photoshop for other activities.
05:39If I Alt+Tab or Command+Tab over here to Photoshop, I can open a different image, work inside of it and it is free.
05:45In another words I am not occupying Photoshop with the Camera RAW plug-in, which is actually a really nice thing.
05:51Alright. So I can still make the exact same modifications. I can switch over to here there is a sharpening control, make my modifications
05:57and click on Done button in order to update the image inside of the Bridge.
06:01I will go and click on Done and we can see by the way that all of these images
06:05that we are seeing here along the bottom area here inside of the Content panel.
06:10Your Content panel may be arranged differently, but all the thumbnails feature these settings options,
06:15there is little sort of settings icon right there in the upper right hand corner and that shows you that some form
06:22of Camera RAW modifications have been applied to all these images. And had these images been modified in Lightroom,
06:29they would also have these little settings since both Camera RAW
06:32and Lightroom will support each others modifications, which is a really great thing.
06:36So as I say all these modifications are applied non-destructively just as metadata instructions
06:41that you can see over here in the Metadata panel if you want to.
06:44There is the Camera Data, if I go ahead and scroll down I will see the Camera RAW Data right here,
06:49which is telling me the setting set have been applied for example to Festive Ornaments.dng.
06:54Those are the ways that you get to the Camera RAW when you are working with the RAW digital photograph.
06:57What if you are working with a JPEG file or a TIFF file? I am going to switch over here
07:01to this 04_support_staff folder that we worked with in the previous chapter.
07:05I am going to scroll until I find this guy Shaggy behemoth.jpeg.
07:10He is a standard JPEG file as you all know from the previous chapter.
07:14Now if I double click on this file, if I double click on the thumbnail here, I will just open the file normally inside of Photoshop.
07:20If you want to open the image in Camera RAW instead in order to sharpen with the source in mind, that is either the digital camera or the scanner
07:29in mind, then you would go up to the File menu and you would choose Open in Camera RAW
07:34that way you are forcing the image to open inside the Camera RAW utility.
07:38Once again you can press Ctrl+R or Command+R in the Mac as a shortcut and that will bring up the Camera RAW utility.
07:45You have got your sharpening controls, you make your modifications, you click on the Done button.
07:50I am going to go ahead and click on Cancel because I am not doing anything. Had I done something then I would see a little settings modifier up here
07:56in the upper right hand corner of the thumbnail and I would also be able to see my Camera RAW modifications over here in the Metadata panel.
08:03So that's how you get the Camera RAW.
08:06In the next exercise, I am going to introduce you to Camera RAW specialized sharpening controls.
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Understanding why to sharpen for source
00:00Now before I explain how Camera RAW Sharpening functions work, I want to give you a sense of why they exist in the first place.
00:07They are not designed to sharpen the perceived focus of the image; they are not designed to make the image pop on the printed page.
00:13They are rather designed to compensate for the photographic process, specifically for the conversion of the analog world to the digital world.
00:22When you convert an analog image or the real world, which is analog after all, to a massive digital pixels, you are introducing anti-alias thing,
00:31and interpolation and all sorts of varieties of softening.
00:35So I am just going to give you a sense of one conversion that introduces softness to the image,
00:41so you just have a sense of what is going on and than we'll dive into the functions.
00:45Now I am looking at this image its called Sensor grid.PSD, that's found if you want to open it up, it's found inside the 05_For_Source folder
00:55and this is a diagram,. Obviously it's not a real photograph. This is a diagram of a detail
01:01from an image sensor, that chip that's inside of a digital camera.
01:05And the image sensor, this would be a really super magnified version.
01:08The image sensor contains a bunch of little sensors. So the word sensor has double meaning here.
01:14In the case of a 10 mega pixel camera for example there would be 10 million sensors on the chip, each of which is capturing a pixel of data.
01:24The problem is that each of the sensors can only in a typical camera, each one of the sensors can only record luminance information,
01:33just the lightness information. It can't record their over all color information.
01:37So there needs to be some kind of filtering applied over it, in order to capture just the color and if I go over here to the Layer Comps palette
01:45and I switch over to Color Filter Array, we can see the striping that is applied.
01:50This is called striping, where each one of the sensors gets a little drop of colored resin on it essentially, that acts as a light filter.
02:00So this way, even though we are just recording the luminance information, we have this common Bayer pattern and what I mean by that is,
02:07what we are seeing here is a Bayer pattern and that is the most common solutions where digital cameras are concerned,
02:13just like something like 99% of the cameras out there use a Bayer pattern.
02:18This Bayer pattern favors green.
02:20So what we are seeing is in any block of 2x2 sensors and bear in mind, this is just a detail of the overall chip.
02:27The overall chip would have 10 million sensors on it, lets say, this one just has a handful.
02:32We are in any group of four of these sensors, two wide by two tall, we have two sensors that are filtered with green
02:41and than one is filtered with red and one is filtered with blue.
02:44And there is two reasons for this. One is that our eyes naturally respond to green light more than red light and way more than blue light.
02:51And the other reason is that the green resin does less to filter the light than the red or the blue resin.
02:58So we are doing less light filtering and that way we are capturing more light information, more detail information.
03:03So that is why we are doubling up on the green, half as many reds and blues.
03:08Now the problem is of course is that all we are getting, all the digital camera is capturing and this is the case with the RAW image by the way,
03:15this is what is coughed up with the RAW file format image.
03:18Although, we are getting is a pixel that's a green pixel followed by a pixel that's a blue pixel and then a row of those and then next row
03:25of red pixel followed by a green pixel and a row of those.
03:27Then we are back to green and blue.
03:29So we never have a full color pixel anywhere inside the RAW image.
03:33What Camera RAW is responsible for doing is de-mosaicing this image so it is converting it
03:39from this mosaic sensor pattern that we are seeing right here.
03:42It's de-mosaicing, which is to say, it is averaging; it is applying the weighted average in order to find out what the exact color of the pixel is.
03:51So for the example in the case of, lets say this pixel right there, Camera RAW has to figure out what the real color of that pixel is. So it weighs
04:00in the fact that this happens to be a green pixel on the first place and then it surrounded by eight other pixels,
04:06it goes ahead and creates an average of these nine pixels together, taking into consideration what each of the original colors
04:14of the pixels is, and then it manufactures the correct color.
04:19I say correct in big quote fingers because it's not after all exactly the correct color, it's an averaged pixel.
04:25But this averaging is known generally as interpolation and so it introduces softening into the image.
04:32Imagine for example that you have a detail inside your photograph that really only measures one pixel wide. What happens? It ends up sloughing
04:41over into the other pixel shifts a little bit and that creates the appearance of softness.
04:45It's a very slight appearance of softness and that's why you have to take it easy with your sharpening inside of Camera RAW as we'll see.
04:53You are also applying a little bit of noise reduction, a few other adjustments as well and that is all designed
05:00in order to compensate for the photographic experience.
05:02So once again don't try to sharpen the over all condition of the photograph, just try to sharpen for the source
05:09and that's what we will be doing in subsequent exercises.
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Using Camera Raw’s sharpening control
00:01 In this exercise I am going to introduce you to the sharpening controls that are available
00:04 to you inside of Camera RAW as well as inside of Llightroom.
00:08 Now I have got the Bridge trained on the 05_for_source folder that's available to you inside the exercise files folder
00:14 and I have selected the Festive ornaments.dng file.
00:18 I'd like you select it as well and then you can open this file inside the Camera RAW either by going up to the File menu
00:23 and choosing opening Camera RAW or pressing Ctrl+R or Command+R on the Mac or you can right click on the image's thumbnail there inside
00:31 of the Content panel and you can choose Open in Camera RAW from the shortcut menu.
00:36 Any of those techniques is going to work.
00:38 That's going to open the Camera RAW inside of the Bridge, so the Bridge is hosting Camera RAW at this point.
00:43 Now I am going to go ahead and enlarge the Camera RAW window so that fills up the entire screen,
00:47 which I can do by clicking on this icon here or pressing the F key.
00:51 F cycles you back and forth, in that way I am maximizing my space on screen here.
00:57 Now as you may know if you have any experience with Camera RAW, you know that it's mostly-
01:01 most of it's controls are dedicated to the task of adjusting colors inside of an image.
01:07 So you may very well wonder while you are sharpening the image for the source, should you also go ahead and accommodate its colors?
01:13 Should you also go ahead and apply color adjustments and color corrections that kind of thing? And the answer is definitely yes.
01:21 This a general rule of thumb when working inside of any Photoshop dialog box.
01:25 As long as you have that dialog box upon screen, try to get as much work done inside the dialog box as you can.
01:30 That's the way that you are going to apply the most nondestructive modifications possible.
01:36 In fact when working with sharpening you want to go ahead and apply your color adjustments first, not because it effects the order
01:42 in which Camera RAW applied its adjustments, but because of the fact your ability to gauge your sharpening adjustments.
01:49 So in the case of this image I have applied a variety of settings here inside of the Basic panel.
01:53 I will just go ahead, just to give you a sense of what kind of changes I have applied.
01:57 I am going to click on this little menu icon to the right of that word Basic and I am going to choose Camera RAW Defaults.
02:03 This is the way the image looks when I have first opened it up inside of Camera RAW.
02:07 I am going to go ahead and zoom in a little bit by pressing Ctrl+plus or Command+plus on the Mac.
02:12 So this is the original version, the colors that are a little bit muted and they are also a little bit too cool.
02:18 So I went ahead warmed things up and increased the Vibrance and Saturation values and I will just go ahead and show you
02:24 by choosing Image Settings so I can bring those settings back.
02:28 The settings, the metadata instructions that are saved along with this file.
02:32 So these are all nondestructive modifications, as I was saying in the previous exercise.
02:36 And a variety of these values change when I chose that command.
02:39 The exact settings aren't important. I just want to make the case that you want to go ahead and apply your color adjustments first.
02:45 Then you'll want to switch over to this guy right here, Detail.
02:48 Notice, its called Detail, not Focus, which is rightly so. These are not really focus adjustments. You can only adjust the focus technically
02:56 speaking, when you are taking the shot.
02:59 But I don't want you to be thinking that we're sharpening for detail at this point.
03:03 We'll be sharpening for detail in the next Chapter.
03:05 Right now we are sharpening for source.
03:07 We are sharpening in order to adjust for the anti-aliasing and noise and other artifacts of the photography process.
03:15 So anyway I am going to go ahead and switch over to this Ddetail tab right here,
03:19 or I could press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+3 or Command+Option+3 on the Mac.
03:24 Notice that we have a total of four different Sharpening options and two Noise Reduction options available to us.
03:30 The order in which you apply these is not important because Camera RAW goes ahead and applies them in a most sensible order possible.
03:38 So even though you apply your Sharpening first and then your Noise Reduction and then your color adjustments,
03:43 Cameral RAW is going to apply the color adjustments and then the Noise Reduction and then the Sharpening.
03:47 So it does its own thing in own order, no matter what.
03:50 So you go feel free to work in whether of the order you want.
03:53 Just make sure its a best order in which to gauge your changes.
03:56 Now briefly I am just going to run through this very fast.
03:59 Then we will spend more time with them in future exercises.
04:01 The Amount value changes the amount of sharpening you apply.
04:04 Radius value affects the size of your halo, so that's very much the same as it is with Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen and so on.
04:11 But the way that these values are calculated is very different.
04:15 This amount setting and the amount setting goes as high as a 150.
04:18 I will tell you right now.
04:19 I am not going to change it right now but it goes as high as a 150.
04:23 A 150% amount is very, very high inside of Camera RAW.
04:29 It makes a big modification, much bigger than what you get with Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen.
04:33 Next, we have a Detail option, which is going to smooth or sharpen the contours and then we have masking, which is going to apply edge masking
04:42 and as I say we will come to each one of these options in our future exercise.
04:46 We have got Noise Reduction. Luminance affects the luminance noise that is the arbitrary changes in brightness values, and then we have Color
04:55 which effects the arbitrary variation in hue and saturation values.
04:59 In addition to these Detail options right here we have a couple of other sharpening controls that are available to us inside
05:05 of this tab. Lens Corrections. And you can get to this tab either by clicking on it or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+6 or Command+Option+6 on the Mac.
05:15 Now the settings that we are concerned with are these Chromatic Aberration settings toward the top of the panel here.
05:20 We have got these two slider bars, which allow us to align colors with each other around the edges of the image.
05:27 We will see how those work and then we have this Defringe setting as well.
05:31 These all contribute to the overall sharpening, the appearance of sharpening inside the image.
05:37 That's it for this exercise.
05:38 Just an overall, just to give you a sense of what's going on here with the sharpening controls inside of Camera RAW.
05:43 In the next exercise I will show you how to preview the results of your sharpening accurately so you can gauge the ideal settings.
05:51
05:51
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Previewing limitations and tricks
00:00In this exercise, I am going to show you how to preview your sharpening settings inside of Camera RAW.
00:06Now this may seem like a pretty straightforward topic.
00:08You would think, you turn on the Preview check box and there you go, you start to preview things.
00:12Actually, it doesn't work that way. It's not quite that simple.
00:14There are some limitations that are thrown up in your way and then there are some cool previewing tricks that you might want to take advantage of.
00:21Now I have opened up this image Festive Ornaments.dng that was shot, by the way, with a Nikon D80.
00:29It's found inside the 05_For_Source folder that is inside your exercise files folder.
00:33I have gone ahead and opened it up inside of Camera RAW.
00:35Lets go ahead and switch over to the Detail tab, which I was telling you, you can get to it by pressing Ctrl+Alt+3 or Command+Option+3 if you like.
00:44Now I am looking at the 33.3% zoom ratio, you might be seeing the image larger or smaller on screen and I do have the Preview check box turned on,
00:54so I should be able to preview the settings that were applied inside of this panel.
00:59Note, by the way that the Preview check box turns off the previewing of the settings inside the visible panel only,
01:06so other modifications that you have applied are not affected.
01:09Notice what I am going to do is, I am going to go ahead and crank the Amount value all the way up to 150 and you would think based
01:17especially on what I told you in the previous exercise that the Amount value is very strong modifier inside of Camera RAW.
01:23Much more pronounced than the Amount values inside the Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen dialog boxes.
01:28You would think that you would see a big difference here on screen. You don't, you should see out absolutely no difference whatsoever.
01:34The reason is explained by this warning down here in the bottom right corner of the dialog box, notice that it says that you have
01:39to zoom the preview to a 100% or larger to see the effect of the controls from this panel.
01:44Now that is just bizarre. It really is. And the Camera RAW has come under a lot of criticism, rightly so I believe, for this limitation because it means
01:54that you cant preview how your sharpening settings are going to affect the printed version of the image.
02:00So you cant anti-alias the sharpening settings down.
02:03In defense, and its hard to defend this limitation, but in its defense I will say this, the good news is that it makes a big case for the fact,
02:13it highlights the fact that we're only sharpening for the source.
02:16How these modifications affect a final printed image is not important at this point.
02:21We are just sharpening for the effects of the photographic process.
02:24So I am going to go ahead and zoom the image just by clicking in it with this Zoom tool right here, you can press Ctrl+plus or Command +plus,
02:31to zoom in or if you just want to go straight for a 100%, you can press Ctrl+Alt+0
02:36or Command+Option+0 on the Mac and that does takes me to 100%.
02:41Notice, my little warning disappears because I am now accurately previewing the setting.
02:45So if I were to turn the Preview check box off, you would see that this is the way the image looks unsharpened without any sharpening modifications.
02:52This is the way it looks with sharpening modifications.
02:55I am going to go ahead and zoom in another click here and by the way, the reason I am clicking on the center of this
03:02a ball right here that we are zoomed it on, is that shows me. It's actually kind of a self portrait there,
03:08it's me shooting the photo from a million miles away there.
03:11I have got the focal length set to a 135mm sort of thing.
03:14So I have got this tele-photoed way to heck in.
03:16Alright, so just for the sake of the comparison once again, I will turn on and off the Preview check box, but I will do it from the keyboard just
03:22by pressing the P key. P for preview. So this is before and this is after the amount modifications.
03:29So that's one way to preview. You have to be zoomed in to a 100% and that goes, by the way, for the lens correction options
03:36as well, the Chromatic Aberrations setting right here.
03:39You don't get a warning for these settings, but they only display properly at the 100% or higher zoom ratio as well.
03:46Lets go back to Detail then, that's a limitation that's not good in my opinion.
03:51These guys and I am about to show you these preview tricks are really, really wonderful.
03:56You can Alt or Option-drag the slider triangles that are associated with any of the four sharpening slider bars right here
04:03and if you do, you will get a special kind of preview.
04:06So notice if I Alt or Option-drag the Amount slider, I am seeing a grayscale version of the sharpened image.
04:14Why is that useful? because that is all your sharpening inside of Camera RAW.
04:18You are only sharpening the luminance information always.
04:21So you don't have to apply a Luminosity blend mode or you don't have to go to LAB color mode or any of that stuff.
04:28You are always sharpening only the luminance information when you are applying this Amount value.
04:33You can also Alt-drag or Option-drag the Radius value and notice as you do, you will see the size of the halos grow.
04:41So I have got the Alt key down here on the PC and as I drag it higher, as I drag that Radius value higher that is.
04:47You will see that the halos grow and imagine that we are working with the High Pass Filter so that all non-edges appear as gray
04:55and the edges are going to appear white or black, depending on whether they are on the highlight or shadow side of the edge.
05:01So this give us a really great preview of Radius.
05:04I will go ahead and max it out so that we can also gauge detail.
05:07This gives us if I am Alt-dragging or Option-dragging this detail slider triangle,
05:12I am seeing grayscale version of the detail modifications to the image.
05:17So you can see if max out detail, I am basically second pass sharpening the contours, we will come to that later.
05:24If I take it all the way down with the Alt or Option key down, you will see that we are smoothing out our contour.
05:30So its almost as if we have applied a pass of the median filter, although a little more sophisticated than that.
05:37Then finally, if I alter option drag on the masking slider triangle, I will see the edge mask.
05:43So wherever I am white, wherever the mask appear white, that's going to be an edge that gets modified where its black that is protected areas.
05:52You can see how it does a heck of a job of tracing around me right there, especially if I go ahead and increase that detail value a little bit
06:00and I will take the Radius value down, so my edges aren't quite so thick and now I will alter option drag the masking value and you can see how
06:06that edge trances very nicely around me and around the other contours inside the image.
06:12So remember those two things when you are trying to preview your sharpening settings. Remember that you have to be looking at the image at a 100%
06:19or larger and you also have the ability to Alt or Option-drag the slider triangles that are associated
06:25with the four sharpening values at the top of the Detail panel.
06:30In the next exercise, I am going to pass along one additional, little meta tip. It's a little just sort of dinky bit of information you should bear
06:36in mind and then after that we will move into how to put the sharpening modifiers to work inside of this particular image.
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Why downsampling doesn’t work
00:01In this exercise I am going to pass along something about meta tip, in other words a tip inside of a tip,
00:05but this is actually an anti-tip, meaning that I don't recommend your work this way.
00:09I have seen this tip offered a few times, it doesn't really work.
00:13So I am going to show you the tip.
00:14I am going to show you why it doesn't work, and I am going to show you the better way to work.
00:17If you are not interested in all that malarkey of course, by all means move onto the next exercise.
00:22Now I am working inside of the Camera RAW plug-in and I have gone ahead and opened up the image called Festive ornaments.dng that's found inside
00:32of the 05_For_Source folder. I am looking at the Detail panel, and I have gone ahead maxed out the Amount and Detail values.
00:39I am going to take the Radius value up to its maximum as well, just for the sake of the demonstration here.
00:43I am going to take the Masking value down to it's minimum value, zero.
00:48So by maxing out Amount, Radius and Detail and minimizing Masking, we get the most dramatic sharpening effect.
00:54Now this is a completely over-the-top effect. It is very unlikely you are going to apply these settings to any
00:59of your own images, as I say, this is just for demonstrational purposes.
01:03Now you may recall that if I zoom out further than a 100%, right now I am looking at a 100% view size, if I zoom farther out,
01:09I lose my sharpening preview and I get this little warning here.
01:13So here is the trick, as it goes.
01:15If I zoom back into 100%, great. Now I can see the sharpening effect again. The trick is you can downsample the image
01:23on the fly by clicking on this little hint down here.
01:26Notice right Now its telling me that this image measures 3872x2592 pixels, which adds up to a 10 megapixel image.
01:35If I click on this link to bring up the Workflow Options dialog box and I say, I want to downsample this image
01:41to say a 2.8 megapixel image, which would be very roughly a 28% zoom ratio.
01:49So I'll go ahead and choose that option and click OK and notice that Camera RAW goes ahead and downsamples the image on the fly
01:56and sharpens it, so that I get a downsampled preview of my image at a reduced size, very much as if I had zoomed out inside of Photoshop.
02:06I keep my preview, it's a wonderful thing, right.
02:08Well, here is the problem.
02:09The downsampling is applied before the sharpening settings, so I am not actually downsampling the sharpened version of the image,
02:17I am downsampling the unsharpened original version of the image and then applying sharpening to it,
02:22so this is not indicative of a reduced version of the larger original image.
02:28So here's what I suggest you do. First of all, click here on this link, make sure that the size value does not have a minus or a plus next to it,
02:38it should just be the standard native resolution of the image and then go ahead and click OK and stick with that native resolution
02:45and don't take advantage of any downsampling or upsampling here inside Camera RAW,
02:49leave that to when you actually open the image inside Photoshop.
02:53So I just pass that along, it just as an FYI just in case you come across that tip, just know that it really doesn't work the way it suppose to.
03:00In the next exercise, we are going to began to take a look at how to sharpen this specific image.
03:05We are going to actually start things off with some adjustments to chromatic aberration.
03:09Stay tuned.
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Reducing chromatic aberration
00:00In this exercise we are going to begin the real world task of sharpening for source and specifically, we are going to be compensating
00:08for the anti-aliasing and interpolation that our function of the demosaicing process that I explained a few exercises back.
00:15We are also going to be adjusting for the softness that's a natural phenomenon under the photographic process, especially
00:22when we are converting the analog world into the digital realm of pixels and specifically, inside of this exercise,
00:29I am going to show you how to adjust for chromatic aberrations, which are misalignment of colors
00:34as a function of the light refracting through the lens element.
00:38Now we are starting fresh here.
00:39I am looking at the Bridge and I have got the Bridge strained on this Festive ornaments.dng file inside of the 05_For_Source folder,
00:47which you will find inside the exercise files folder.
00:49I am going to go ahead and press Ctrl+R, or Command+R on the Mac in order to open that image inside of Camera RAW hosted by the Bridge.
00:57Now I could just go ahead and press Ctrl+Alt+0 or Command+ Option+0, which would zoom in on the center of the image,
01:03which happens to be me reflected on this silver ball.
01:07But that's not a very representative detail of this image.
01:10I want something that shows off the best and the worst of the image.
01:14Now the focus happens to be locked more or less on this red ball down here in the lower left corner and bear in mind that I was working with an 18/
01:23135 millimeter lengths and I have got it zoomed all the way.
01:27So the focal length is a 135 millimeters.
01:30So this is quite the telephoto shot and I let auto-focus be in charge and the auto-focus happen to lock on best to this red ball down here
01:37at the bottom portion of the image and if I was to scroll up here you would see that this gold ornament that is poking out on us.
01:44The mid-area of this image, the sort of mid-ring right there is in sharp focus.
01:51The point is in front, it's forward of the focal plane and the rest of the ornament is a little bit in back of the plane.
01:58But the portion in the image that I think is most representative, I will go ahead and zoom out here and scroll down by spacebar-dragging,
02:05the portion that I think is most representative is this gold ball right here with the texture and the reflections and so on.
02:12It's basically the best.
02:13As I say the best and the worst of all possible worlds where this image is concerned.
02:17So I am going to go ahead and click a couple of times with my Zoom tool to zoom in and I will zoom in until I see that my zoom level down here
02:24in the lower left corner is 100%, which of course allows me to preview the sharpening settings.
02:29Now I will go over to this Detail tab right there or I could press Ctrl+Alt+3 or Command option 3
02:35on the Mac and I am going to max out my Amount value.
02:38I am going to set it to its maximum which happens to be a 150%, which is lower than what you get inside Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen.
02:45They both allow you to go as high as 500%, bang in is the Amount value is much stronger here inside Camera RAW
02:51than it is inside Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen.
02:54So 150% is more than a 150% inside of those dialog boxes.
02:59I am not going to tell you there is like a 150% equals 350% in the others because that is not actually true.
03:04It's a different algorithm.
03:06But it is a very strong amount.
03:07Now I am going to go ahead and max it out.
03:09The reason being, I want to be able to gauge what to set the other settings to.
03:14So setting the Amount value to it's maximum as a temporary measure,
03:18because obviously this is going too far, it's a great way to gauge the other settings.
03:22Now I am going to go ahead and zoom in on this highlight right there and I am going to zoom as far as I can, which is 400%.
03:29Now as my magnifying glass gets empty at this point showing that I cannot go any farther.
03:32Known as these weird colors that are surrounding the highlight, they are actually, surrounding all of the highlights on this ball.
03:39They are most noticeable on this ball incidentally and we are seeing that we have a green edge along the right side of the highlight and a red,
03:49crimson, magenta edge over here on the left side of the highlight.
03:53This is a function of chromatic aberration.
03:56Now chromatic aberration is a function of the light refracting differently around the edges
04:03of the lens element than it does at the center of the lens element.
04:06So all camera lens elements are calibrated so that the light refracts its absolute best right through the center of the lens element,
04:13but around the edges depending on your focal length, you are going to end up getting different sorts of chromatic aberrations to different degrees.
04:20So that's again another reason to crank up that amount value so you can see those chromatic aberrations.
04:25They contribute to dim focus inside of an image because we have a misregistration of detail and we can clear that up
04:33by going over here to the lens corrections functions.
04:37So I'll go ahead and click on that tab or you can press Ctrl+Alt+6 or Command+Option+6 on the Mac.
04:42Here are two sliders that are available to us to fix the chromatic aberrations.
04:46We can either adjust the degree of Red/Cyan Fringe or we can adjust the degree of Blue/Yellow Fringe.
04:52Now in our case, its really neither of those.
04:54It is more like a red/green fringe, which makes me think we have got some cyan and yellow mixing up on one side
05:01and probably, some red and blue mixing up on the other side.
05:04Now what you do, notice that both values are zeroed out and zero means that the slider triangles are set right in the center.
05:11No correction is being applied.
05:13In order to apply a correction you can drag this slider either way.
05:17I am going to take it over just for the sake of figuring out what I should be doing.
05:21I am going to take it over to the left and by the way, I should say that you do have to be zoomed in to a 100%
05:27or larger to see the effects of chromatic aberration.
05:30If I were to take this out, I am just going to zoom out until we get to 66.7% notice
05:36that any signs of what we are doing have disappeared from view.
05:39Even though there is no warning, we do have to be zoomed in to a 100% or better in order to see chromatic aberration.
05:45Alright, so I am going to press Ctrl+plus a few times in a row, or Command+plus on the Mac until I am zoomed into a 400% once again.
05:52You can see that I am going in the wrong direction.
05:55Basically, I am making the problem much worse by dragging the slider triangle to the left.
05:59What does that mean? I need to drag it the right.
06:01Is basically what it comes down to and notice how it fixes the problem on the fly. So it is really great.
06:07You can really keep tabs on what is going on on screen here.
06:10I will take this value to something like 25%, lets say, which does seem to get rid
06:16of the colors we had before, that red-green scheme that we have before.
06:20Now we have something of a violet-yellow scheme going on. So lets try adjusting the other slider
06:27and if we take it positive we make the problem worse as you can see.
06:30So lets take it negative instead.
06:31Notice those details as we move around.
06:33Basically, what Camera RAW is doing, it's a wonderful thing.
06:36Camera RAW is effectively rotating the color channels independently of each other and its doing it as it figures out what those colors should be.
06:46So its both manufacturing the channels and rotating them on the fly, very sophisticated technology at work here.
06:53Now those values +25 and -10, just do wonders in order to get rid of this problem.
06:59Lets go ahead and turn off the Preview checkbox.
07:02So this is before and this is after.
07:04So obviously, we have done a great deal of good.
07:08There is still a little bit, if you look very closely there you can see that we still have a little bit of violet over here on the left hand edge
07:15and a little bit of weird saturation at any rate going on on the right hand edge of this highlight
07:22and I will show you how to fix that, very subtle, but it is fixable.
07:26Now I will show you how to do that in the next exercise.
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Using the Defringe option
00:00I am still working on the Festive ornaments.dng file, all here inside of Camera RAW.
00:06Now you may recall in the previous exercise I took the Amount value up to a 150% and then I switched over to these Lens Correction sliders
00:13and I set Red/Cyan Fringe value to +25 and the Blue/Yellow Fringe value to -10.
00:20Now we still have a little bit of color fringing going on around the highlights inside of this gold ball
00:28and just so that you can see where I am inside of this ornament.
00:32I am working on the right hand edge of this gold ornament that stand in a lower right corner of the image.
00:39So this guy is the most indicative, is basically what it comes down to.
00:42I am going to go ahead and zoom in as far as I can to a 400% and we have a little bit of purple going on here,
00:49a little bit of sort of a purplish-violet sort of weirdness. A little bit of leftover chromatic aberration
00:55and then we have some yellowness going over on the right-hand side.
00:59I am not able to compensate for that using the Chromatic Aberration sliders.
01:04No matter what I do basically this problem remains intact. And if you run
01:09into something similar, then your friend in order to fix this problem is Defringe.
01:13Now the Defringe setting its very, very subtle.
01:17I am just warning you about this up front, you're not going to see a ton of change going on, which in a way is a good thing
01:23because we don't want to mess up the integrity of the file.
01:27The other bit of good news is that even though it doesn't appear to be doing much to the image, it is correcting the photograph.
01:33It is correcting the structure of the photograph, so that our future modifications
01:37to the photo inside of Photoshop will be that much more successful.
01:42Alright. So I am going to go ahead.
01:43I want you to keep a very close eye on these edges here, because you are going to have to look at them
01:47very, very carefully in order to see the difference.
01:50I am going to switch from Off. So right now I am not applying any defringing at all.
01:55Your options are to fix just the Highlight Edges, so those edges that are around the brightest highlights inside the image.
02:02The highlights that are completely blown is basically what it comes down to and this highlight is a good example,
02:07it's ultra white or, and that's highlight edges there, or you can change the setting to All Edges,
02:14which is going to fix both the highlight and shadow edges inside the image.
02:18So keep an eye on that edge right there both the purple and the sort of hyper-saturated edge.
02:23Watch what happens when I choose Highlighted Edges.
02:25Notice that the saturation drops out of that purple line right there and the saturation also drops
02:31out of the yellow edge over here in the right-hand side.
02:34So not a terribly big difference, but there is a difference going on.
02:37If that's not enough, basically what I am going to tell you, so if that doesn't go far enough for you, then switch over to All Edges,
02:44which in the case of our photograph is going to apply a little bit more correction and even subtle correction really,
02:51but what I'd say is for this image what we want is Highlight Edges.
02:55You want to apply as little defringing as you can because it does soften the image a little as it turns out.
03:02Alright that's it.
03:02Lets go ahead and zoom out a little bit here.
03:05Maybe a couple of clicks and I am looking at the image at the 200% zoom level.
03:09This is what the image would like before I have started to apply the Lens Corrections functions here.
03:15So you can see there is some obvious Chromatic Aberration going on.
03:18This is what it looks like after.
03:20In the next exercise we are going to switch back over to a Detail options might. We will do that right now in fact
03:26and then we are going to set about adjusting the other sharpening values.
03:30Stick with me.
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Understanding high frequency, low radius
00:00In this exercise, we are going to experiment with the ideal settings. We are going to try to find the ideal settings for this particular photograph,
00:07the telephoto shot of the ornaments that I shot with a focal length of 135 mm, so I assume pretty far in here.
00:14By the way, if you werent with me for the last couple of exercises,
00:17you can catch right up by opening the Ornaments defringed.dng file, that's found inside the 05_for_source folder.
00:25Note, by the way, that this Ornaments defringed.dng file is identical to the Festive ornaments.dng file
00:32that you may have open before you, the original version of this image.
00:36The only difference is the metadata instructions, which amount to the Camera RAW settings, so the numerical Camera RAW settings; all parametric,
00:45meaning that they are just numerical parameters that are being applied on the fly to the image.
00:49The original pixels are still intact inside of both files are identical, meaning that of course Camera RAW,
00:55everything you do inside Camera RAW, is absolutely, totally nondestructive.
00:59Alright, so I have maxed out the Amount value here inside of the Detail panel,
01:04inside the Camera RAW dialog box, just so that we can gauge what we are doing.
01:07This is way too much sharpening at this point, but I want to be able to experiment with the Radius setting.
01:12So I am going to go ahead and zoom in a click here, like So and drag this ball over a little bit
01:18so that we can take in the texture and reflective detail.
01:21Now this image incidentally- actually, let me zoom out for a moment so that we can take in more
01:26of the image while I tell you sort of a little bit of a story about this image.
01:29This is what's known as a Medium Frequency Shot, meaning that it combines areas of gradual luminance transition with areas
01:39of rapid luminance transition, like inside of the texture and inside of the pine needles in the background, but these reflective areas,
01:46these smooth reflective areas, are low frequency areas, gradual transitions.
01:51So we have Low Frequency detail and High Frequency detail, combined together that gives you a Medium Frequency Shot.
01:57Also by the way, this is a still life, this is not a portrait,
02:00so we are not worried about surface imperfections the way we are with portrait shots.
02:04We are really interested in bringing out as much detail as we can inside of this image.
02:09That typically means while we are working with the Medium or High Frequency Shot, we are typically going to combine a high Amount value
02:17with a low Radius value, and a high Detail value and a low Masking value.
02:22So did you get that? Basically it goes high, low, high, low, with a High Frequency to Medium Frequency Shot like this one here.
02:29If we were working with the Low Frequency or Portrait Shot, we would go low Amount, high Radius, low Detail, and high Masking, so exactly the opposite;
02:39low, high, low, high, and we will see that in an upcoming exercise.
02:43Alright, but in this exercise we are going to focus in, hone in, on the Radius value here.
02:48So I am going to go ahead and zoom in on this detail once again, just because its by far the most reflective area of the good
02:56and bad stuff that's going on inside of this photograph.
02:59Now notice what happens when I increase the Radius value.
03:02First of all, we don't see the Preview update until after I release the slider triangle, that's important to note.
03:09If you want to see a live preview, you have to press and hold that Alt key or the Option key on the Mac as you drag that slider triangle around.
03:17That does give you real time preview, but at the same time it also gives you that High Pass preview, meaning that we are seeing gray
03:23in the non-edge areas, and we are seeing highlights and shadows in the edge areas,
03:27which isn't necessarily the most useful way to work in my opinion where Radius is concerned.
03:32I am going to go ahead and release my mouse button so that we can see the full color preview,
03:36which really helps I think to illustrate whats going on with Radius.
03:40Notice when I am working with a high Radius value that I end up getting very gummy transitions, these overly smooth transitions.
03:48So as I am expanding those halos, which I am doing as I am raising the Radius value, I am also smoothing over the corners,
03:55and that just happens to be a function of the way this particular sharpening algorithm works.
03:59that's not something you see with Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen.
04:03Now sometimes folks point at the Detail value as being the culprit. It's not really the Detail value that's at work here, it's the Radius value too;
04:10both Radius and Detail help us smooth out some of the corner detail inside of the textures.
04:17Anyway, that's great if I am working, once again, with a Low Frequency Shot or a Portrait Shot,
04:22but when I am working with rapidly transitioning luminance levels inside of this texture, for example, it's not something I want.
04:28So I would want to take this Radius value down.
04:31I am going to start by taking it all the way down to its minimum value, which is 0.5.
04:36Now at this point we get some pretty choppy detail.
04:39You can see these kind of vertical lines that are showing up here, that's because this area of the image is not
04:45in tight focus; this is slightly out of focus, this region here.
04:49So we are bringing out some artifacts, some weird edges that werent really there, but that's OK, and actually it works out well for this image,
04:57and we are bringing out other very good details inside of the image.
05:00I am going to go ahead and take that Radius value and just raise it one click.
05:03So I press the Up Arrow key to take it up to 0.6, which is a very good Radius value, albeit we are combining with too high
05:09of an Amount value, but its a very good Radius value for this image.
05:13Now we are going to compensate for Radius by adjusting Detail and Masking, and we are going to begin to do that in the next exercise.
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Raising the Detail value
00:00In this exercise we are going to take a look at how the Detail option looks here inside the Detail panel of the Camera RAW dialog box.
00:07Now you may recall I am working in this catch up document, which is called Ornaments defringed.dng that's found inside the 05_For_Source folder
00:16and the only change I have made to these files to lower the Radius value to 0.6 pixels.
00:23Now the Detail value is designed to mitigate the halos, the effects of the halos that show up when you apply a sharpening to an image.
00:33But the way that the sharpening algorithm is organized in the first place, you don't have much in the way of halos.
00:39You don't nearly have the pronounced halos that you get with Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen and High Pass and the rest.
00:45So the way I prefer to think of detail is that when you lower the detail value,
00:50you are going to smooth over some of the rougher transitions inside the image.
00:54If you want to extenuate those rough transitions then you want to raise the detail value in order
01:00to apply a something resembling a second pass sharpening effect.
01:03Alright. So here we are viewing this lower right region of the image, that gold ball with the texture across it at the 200% zoom ratio.
01:12I am going to go ahead and lower the detail value from 25 to its lowest value zero and you can see what I am talking about,
01:19I'll go ahead and zoom in, you can see that the Camera RAW is going through and smoothing over these details,
01:26it's almost as if it's applying a pass of the Median filter with a very low Radius value.
01:32Now it's a more sophisticated algorithm once again but it's analogous and this is just a ticket when you are working with a low frequency image
01:40or a portrait shot, or when you are working with a high frequency image like this one,
01:44again we were gumming up those details, just like we are when we apply a high Radius value.
01:48So instead I want to go with a high detail value and notice if I crank this guy up to a 100, which is its maximum setting,
01:55we are now applying a second pass sharpening that resembles a convolution kernel
01:59or that More Accurate check box that we saw on inside the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
02:03The difference is that its not just a check box.
02:06You don't just turn it on or off, you can vary the degree of sharpening incrementally.
02:12So what I am going to do for purposes of this image, I am going to take this fairly high.
02:16I am going to take it to about 80 and remember that you have the option, if you want to, of Alt-dragging the slider triangle or Option-dragging
02:24on the Mac, in order to get that real time preview and to see that high pass version of the preview, so that the non-edges are turning grey
02:32and this would be the areas that aren't getting sharpened inside the image were turning grey.
02:36The areas that are getting sharpened are appearing either as highlights or shadow and these would be the highlight
02:42or shadowed edges of the details inside of the image.
02:47So again, we are working a medium frequency shot, so wed want to combine a high Amount value not this high, but a high Amount value,
02:54a low Radius value as we have, a high Detail value and then I was also telling you that we want a relatively low Masking value
03:01and we will be applying that masking value in the next exercise.
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Using on-the-fly edge masking
00:00In this exercise I am going to demonstrate how to use the Masking value here inside the Detail panel of the Camera RAW dialog box.
00:07I am still working inside of that Ornaments defringed.dng file.
00:11The only changes I've made to it are to reduce the Radius value to 0.6 and to increase the Detail value to 80.
00:18Now you might look at the sharpened result and say "Deke, this is way too far.
00:24We're making these edges super-crunchy here, really crispy and we're applying too much sharpening especially given
00:31that we're just sharpening for the source.
00:33We're not trying to sharpen for output; we don't want the image to look in anyway shape or form over-sharpened
00:38because that will harm our ability to edit the image in the future.
00:42So we just want to sure up the details inside the image, not over-emphasize them."
00:46Well, bear in mind that we've got this Amount value through the roof right Now set way too high,
00:51I have it set to its maximum value so we can gauge the other values.
00:55Once were done in just a moment in fact, well reduce this Amount value.
00:58We can also constrain the effects of our sharpening by raising the Masking value.
01:04Now the Masking value applies an Edge Mask on the fly so that you don't have to build an Edge Mask yourself, it makes one for you.
01:11Its a really great function, it doesn't- you know, building your own Edge Mask is actually more versatile
01:16because you are in control of how the edges shake down.
01:19But, this is definitely much more convenient.
01:21It does help in the case of this particular slider bar.
01:24I think it helps a lot to go ahead and Alt-drag or Option-drag that slider triangle
01:29so that you can see the Edge Mask generated live before you on the fly.
01:33You can see if we take that Masking value higher, were masking away more of the details inside the image.
01:40So bear I mind, black is going to conceal and white is going to reveal.
01:44So in other words, any place that were seen black inside of the mask right now that's an area that were not going to sharpen inside the image.
01:50We're only going to sharpen the white edges.
01:53So we want to bring out more edges than that I think, but we don't want to just leave all the edges open for interpretation here.
01:59We do want to protect some areas of the image to avoid bringing out noise inside of the photograph.
02:05So I am going to take this Masking value up to something like 40; actually I think it works very well for this image.
02:12You can check out other regions of the image if you want to, I'll go ahead and drag over to this area that shows me because its an area
02:19of very high-contrast layer, me as a reflection of course, and very tiny inside this silver ball.
02:24If I alter option drag on the masking slider triangle, you can see how there is a wide edge on this neon as they're tracing around me
02:33like I am this little stick figure there, and that's exactly what we want.
02:36So as soon as I release, you can see that its protecting what were the formerly those black regions inside the mask
02:43and its revealing the white edges, it's doing a very nice job indeed.
02:47Then it helps to keep the noise from being drawn out inside of the non-edge detail of course.
02:54Alright, so as I was saying, this is a medium-frequency shot, I mean its high Amount, low Radius,
02:58high Detail and low Masking, relatively low Masking.
03:02So were staying on the south side of 50% right there.
03:06Now we've taken Amount too high, just because we want to go high with Amount, it doesn't mean we want to go this high with the Amount value.
03:13Now when I would recommend for the shot, its something in the 70-80% region.
03:18So this is 70% just to give you sense of what that's going to look like and its going to look much more subtle.
03:23Notice a lot of those edges drop out and we get a much more subtle effect than what we had before.
03:28Or 80, if you wanted to go on high side, you could take the Amount value up to 80%.
03:32that's a little subtle for our screen purposes here though because I want to demonstrate what's going on.
03:36So I am going to take the value up to 100% for this shot.
03:41Then as for the sake of comparison here, were going to switch over to Photoshop.
03:45I would like to be able to just turn on and off the Preview checkbox.
03:49But, because I am working inside of the Ornaments defringed.dng file; if I turn off Preview, then were going to see the image as it appeared
03:57when I had the Amount value set to 150% and Radius default, and Masking set to their defaults of 1.025 and 0 respectively.
04:06That doesn't do us much good.
04:07So lets go and turn Preview back on.
04:09I'll just go ahead and show you what the image would look like, were we to open them inside Photoshop.
04:13So I'll go ahead and switch over to Photoshop here.
04:15This is the original festive ornaments.dng file over here on the left-hand side, and this is the sharpened version.
04:23According to our settings of 100%, 0.6 Radius, 80 for Detail and 40 for Masking over here on the right-hand side.
04:33If you like, you can go and zoom-in.
04:35I'll go ahead and zoom-in on the shot on the right so that we can see the details here at 200%.
04:42So you can get a very good sense of the comparison between the two.
04:47But, I think even more telling, if you are doing this on screen with me is to compare them at 50%.
04:52So I am going to go ahead and zoom-out for the 50% zoom ratio for both shots, both on the left and right-hand sides.
05:00You should be able to see the difference here if you look closely.
05:02This is the unsharpened version over on the left-hand side.
05:05This is the sharpened version over here on the right-hand side.
05:07Its a little too sharp as I say because I said I crank the Amount value up to a 100%, I recommend something like 70-80 for this specific shot.
05:16But it will now hold up well.
05:18We have compensated for the photographic process, we have sharpened for this source very successfully indeed and this image will hold
05:25up to future edits, including sharpening for detail, sharpening for effect and sharpening for output as well examine in future chapters.
05:34In the next exercise, we'll see how to sharpen a portrait shot inside Camera RAW.
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Sharpening a low-frequency portrait
00:00 In this exercise we are going to take a look at how to sharpen a low frequency portrait shot with the source in mind.
00:07 I want you to go ahead and navigate to the 05_for_source folder, here inside the Bridge, find Dangerous gentleman.dng.
00:15 This image comes to us from photographer, Nick Monu of iStockphoto.com.
00:20 I am going to go ahead and open it on up by pressing Ctrl+R or Command+R in the Mac, in order to invoke Camera RAW here inside the Bridge.
00:27 Lets go ahead and press crtl+alt+0, or Command option 0 on the Mac in order to switch to the 100% zoom level.
00:34 I am going to go ahead and keep his eye on screen, that's the part of the image I want to see, that's the portion of the image you want to keep an eye
00:43 on whenever you are working with a portrait shot, because the eye is the detail that needs
00:47 to stay most sharply focused, most of the time, generally speaking.
00:51 Alright, lets go ahead and switch over to the Detail panel, which of course you can do by pressing ctrl+alt+3 or Command option 3 on the Mac.
00:58 I am going to again raise the Amount value, you know that its set to 14 for this image, I am going to raise the Amount value to 150%, once again,
01:06 maxing it out, so that we can see the effects of the other options.
01:10 Now you may recall that when we are working with a high frequency or medium frequency shots, you want to go high with amount,
01:16 low with radius, high with detail and low with masking.
01:19 Its just the opposite when you are working with a low frequency image or a portrait shot, and recall that low frequency means
01:27 that we have gradual transitions between luminous levels, and opposite would mean a low Amount value combined
01:33 with a high Radius value, low detail and high masking.
01:36 Once again, this is all relative, I am not suggesting you go way low with the Amount value or that you crank the radius through the roof.
01:43 In fact, lets see what happens to this image when we crank the radius through the roof.
01:46 I will take it up to 3.0 pixels, and you can see that we end up rounding up the contours again,
01:52 we are applying something resembling median to this image.
01:55 So we are gooping up the details.
01:57 I don't like that at all, I don't think it does the image any degree of good to go this high with radius.
02:02 Most images suffer for it.
02:04 So I am going to take the Radius value to about half that, which is 1.5, and then I am going to press the Tab key.
02:09 1.5 is actually a very high Radius value, when you are sharpening for the source, and where you are sharpening inside of Camera RAW.
02:18 So you want to keep your Radius values low in general.
02:21 With a portrait shot, we are talking about 1.5, maybe as high as two, but that's pushing, in my opinion 2.0.
02:28 When we are talking about a medium frequency or a high frequency shot at still life,
02:32 then we want to go low with the radius value and as low as the minimum value, 0.5.
02:37 Alright, anyway, what works well for this image is a Radius value of 1.5.
02:42 I am now going to go ahead and take the detail value up just so that we can see what happens if we raise that detail value.
02:49 You can see that we are getting very, very crunchy details, we are sharpening the pores, and all the other surface imperfections inside
02:57 of this image, not something we want to do when we are working with a portrait shot, so its just like we don't want
03:02 to apply the More Accurate check box when we are working with portraits.
03:05 Similarly, we don't want to go high with the detail value.
03:07 So lets go ahead and take it down.
03:09 Now if we take it all the way down to a value of zero, we are again rounding off the details,
03:15 we are smoothing off the details, smoothing off the corners, inside of the image.
03:20 Again, I feel like we are going too far, so I would take the detail value to something around 20.
03:25 20 is actually a really great value, something in the 20-30 range, it really works well with portraiture.
03:31 Then I am going to raise that masking value as well.
03:34 I encourage you to go ahead and alt+drag or option+drag on this slider triangle here, in order to see the mask generate on the fly,
03:42 so that you can keep track of exactly which portions of the image are being concealed or being protected with the black,
03:49 and which portions are being revealed or affected with the white.
03:54 Masking value for this image, a masking value of about 70 works very nicely.
03:58 Now because we started with the original shot, we can do a before and after preview here, just by turning on and off the preview check box.
04:04 So this is the image as we originally found it, a little bit soft, and this is the image as it appears Now little bit over-sharpened as you can see,
04:13 and that's because we have the Amount value set way too high.
04:16 Now for this shot I would probably take the Amount value down to about 50%, which is a fairly subtle modification.
04:24 I have seen people go even lower where portraits are concerned.
04:28 But you are not getting much done if you go below 50%, you are applying a pretty darn subtle effect,
04:34 and I am not sure its going to serve you very well.
04:36 So in an image like this I would probably take it to about 50%, but again, for the sake of detail here in this video, I am going to go ahead
04:43 and raise the Amount value to 80% for this particular image.
04:47 Alright, so again, here is what the image looked like originally, if I press the P key, I will turn off the preview check box,
04:53 and if I press P again, you got to keep your eye on the image here, if I press P again, you will see the effect of the sharpening.
05:00 So its already quite a subtle effect as it turns out, but we can begin to make out of this wonderful details, such as the hairs on --
05:08 his sideburn here, and the small growth of beard that he has going, so this is before and this is after.
05:16 You can also see that he has a little bit of a thread or a long hair or something hanging off of his ear.
05:21 You can make out a few sort of weird little things going on; the guys skin is incredibly smooth, he is absolutely a deadly handsome man,
05:29 but he does have a little green thread hanging off his chin down here, so you can make that out.
05:34 We can also make out, this is the bottom of his chin incidentally, we can also make out a ton of noise that's going on inside of his tie,
05:41 and if we were looking at the background, you could see the noise in the background as well.
05:45 So that's something we will have to take care of.
05:46 I will show you how to address this noise in a future exercise, but these are just some things to bear in mind;
05:53 this sharpening is bringing out the noise detail inside the image, as well as the good detail, of course.
05:59 Alright, so just to give you a sense, here is the lips, by the way, this is the before and this is the after version of those lips.
06:06 So we are doing a dynamite job I think of sharpening this particular image.
06:10 So again, I have got 81.5, 20, 70, low, relatively low, relatively high, low for detail, high for masking, I wouldn't go really this high
06:21 for the Amount value, I would probably take it down to more like 50%.
06:24 These are the sharpening settings I would go for, for this particular image.
06:27 In the next exercise, we are going to take a look at how to work with the noise reduction functions; luminance and color.
06:35
06:35
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Eliminating color noise
00:00 In this exercise we are going to take a look at the noise reduction functions inside Camera RAW.
00:06 I want you to navigate the Bridge to the 05_for_source folder, same place that we have been here,
00:11 and find an image called Subterranean ventilation.dng.
00:17 Then go ahead and press Ctrl+R, Command+R in the Mac, in order to open it inside of the Camera RAW dialog box.
00:23 Notice what we have here is this strange sort of ventilation silo going to the underworld.
00:30 I am not sure what's happening here, but I found it near the foothills in Colorado.
00:36 You can see these jagged rocks sticking up here, these great flat irons.
00:40 This is a pretty interesting image I think, I am going to go ahead and zoom in on it, not only because it has a lot of depth of field going on here,
00:48 but also because we have a ton of noise at work inside this image.
00:53 This image qualifies as a high frequency shot, because there is a lot of little details going on,
00:59 a lot of rapid transition between neighboring luminance levels.
01:03 But even so I have applied some pretty pepped sharpening values, if you switch over here to the Detail panel,
01:11 you can see that I have got a relatively high Amount value I suppose, a very low Radius value, but the detail and masking values are not to high
01:20 or too low actually, they are fairly even steven, as you can see here.
01:25 I am doing a lot to protect the details, the small details inside the image.
01:28 I am going to go ahead and zoom in here to the 100% zoom ratio, so that we can see that if I Alt-drag or Option-drag this Masking slider triangle,
01:39 I am protecting huge areas of non-edges inside the image.
01:43 But when I go ahead and release, you will see a lot of noise that's showing up, and noise of course are arbitrary variations between neighboring pixels;
01:54 whether they are color variations or luminance variations.
01:57 So I am going to go ahead and zoom in a little more closely here, on the side of this ventilation silo or whatever it is.
02:04 You can see that we have quite a bit of color noise going on.
02:08 Now the color noise in this image is exaggerated by the fact, if I go over to the Basic panel, by the fact that I have raised the vibrance
02:16 and saturation values; they are both set to fairly high values, 40 and 40.
02:21 What that's doing is its bringing out the vibrancy of the colors, its bringing out the saturation values,
02:27 but its also bringing out any noise that's inside the image, any color noise.
02:33 Also I have applied a little bit of clarity.
02:34 The clarity value is a way of expanding the edge contrast without effecting the sharpness of the image.
02:42 So its analogous to applying a high radius value, something like 20 pixels or higher,
02:48 and a very low Amount value with Unsharp Mask, that's what you get with clarity.
02:52 So you can see, if I raise that clarity value, I am magnifying the shadow and highlight detail around the edges, inside the image.
03:01 Alright, so I am going to set that clarity back to 20, but that ends up magnifying the luminance noise inside the image as well, just a little bit,
03:08 not so much as the color noise is getting exaggerated, but a little bit.
03:12 Alright, now lets switch back over to detail, because that's where we can compensate using these noise reduction sliders here.
03:18 The most important of the two is color.
03:20 You are almost always going to want to apply some color noise reduction, which is why this value is set to 25 by default,
03:28 and notice that that value of 25 does a heck of a job of getting rid of that color noise inside the image.
03:34 I am going to go and zoom in to 300% so that we can take this up close and personal here.
03:39 This is before, turn off the preview check box, you can see a lot of wandering color inside of what should be just kind
03:47 of a neutral brown silo here, this is drab paint that's going on.
03:52 This is after I have gone ahead and replaced the colors with their drab brown, which is what I want.
03:59 Now you don't want to go too high with this color value, because if you do you will start getting a lot of color bleeding between neighboring details,
04:05 something along the lines of what we are seeing right here.
04:08 The value of 25 is a really great value, for most images I recommend anything between 20 and 30.
04:15 Actually, even for this image which has some radical noise variations as you can see, a color value of 20 does quite nicely.
04:21 So you want this value to be as low as it can be and still get good results out of it.
04:26 So you want this value to be as low as it can be while still getting results out of it.
04:30 Now this image still suffers from a lot of luminance noise, which is random variations between luminous levels, between neighboring pixels,
04:38 and I will show you how to fix that, not only using a luminance slider, but also a few other options,
04:43 and we will fix the chromatic aberrations in the next exercise.
04:47
04:47
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Reducing luminance noise
00:01In the previous exercise we saw that it's pretty easy to eliminate color noise inside of an image.
00:06For example, in the case of the Subterranean ventilation.dng file, found inside the 05_for_source folder,
00:13all we had to do in order to fix a considerable amount of color noise, this was the before version of the image,
00:19all we had to do was raise this color value, here inside the Detail panel to 20, and that took care of everything, it took care of that problem.
00:27Luminance noise is trickier.
00:30Its not just the matter of adjusting the luminance slider,
00:33you also have to fiddle around with a few other options, but it does center on the luminance slider.
00:37Now notice what I am talking about where luminance noise is concerned, we have all this variation going on between these neighboring pixels,
00:46where the luminance levels are concerned, and this isn't because this is actual detail, this is magnified noise essentially that we are looking at,
00:53detail that was invented out of whole cloth by the camera and Camera RAW conspiring together here.
00:59To get rid of it, what we need to do is, for starters, we will raise the Luminance slider.
01:03Now I could take this, I could crank it through the roof here, I could raise that value to a 100 and that would definitely smooth
01:10over the details, but that's going to be at the expense of, of course the sharpening of those details, I would have to raise the Amount value
01:17to compensate, and even then I am still going to be left with some weird edge stuff going on.
01:23Notice right here the edges of the silo with the cone.
01:27I will go ahead and zoom out here so we can see what I am talking about; this cone at the top meets this cylindrical structure right here.
01:34We have a band of halo essentially, a sharpened halo,
01:38but that's not entirely because of the sharpening, its just the function of the image itself.
01:42If I take that Amount value down to zero, you can see that its still there, and its a certain amount of color wandering,
01:48and a certain amount of luminance wandering as well.
01:51Alright, so I will take that value back up to 70%.
01:54So there is a couple of ways to address this.
01:56First of all, we don't want to go this high with luminance, so lets temper this value a little bit, lets take it down to lets say about 65,
02:02which is pretty darn high, but happens to work well for this image.
02:06You can see that we are smoothing over the luminance transitions pretty nicely.
02:09Another thing you want to do is you want to check out the lens corrections options.
02:14So lets go ahead and switch over to lens corrections.
02:16Now of course the first option affect chromatic aberration, we do have chromatic aberration inside this image.
02:21If you scroll to the top of the silo, to this cone at the top right here, you can see that its got a ton of chromatic aberration.
02:30We have all the cyan edges and this magenta edges, and that falls totally in the cyan red territory right here.
02:37I will go ahead and drag to value negative, and you see this time it actually ends
02:40up working quite nicely, we end up getting rid of that fringing quite well.
02:45So I am going to this value down to lets say negative 45,
02:49and I am just keeping the values fairly around, you can of course enter any value you like.
02:54We don't need to adjust the blue-yellow fringe for this particular image.
02:58So if we don't need to adjust if, don't adjust it, leave it the way it is.
03:01Lets go ahead and see if that has any effect whatsoever.
03:04Notice that we are smoothing out a lot of stuff inside of this rust colored and maybe rust covered for that matter, cylinder,
03:11that's leading up to the top of the ventilation shaft there.
03:14I am going to go ahead and wander my way down to this edge.
03:16This edge still is very much in effect.
03:19We are seeing this weird sort of transitional pixels going on here.
03:24I might try defringe, and in this case I would just try all edges to see if it does any good.
03:29This is just the test to see if its going to help us or not, in some cases you may see the edge sort of trim up, it may look better.
03:36In our case it doesn't seem to make any difference where this edge is concerned, so don't apply it.
03:41If you try defringe and it doesn't work, turn it off, there is no sense de-fringing the image if its not going to serve any purpose.
03:48Its just going to gum up the details.
03:49It might be very, very slight, it might be the kind of thing that comes back to haunt you later.
03:54Alright, I am going to switch back to the Detail panel.
03:57What I would do in the case of this image is, I would back of the amount of sharpening that I have applied.
04:02So I am going to take that Amount value down to 50%, and then I am going to take the luminance value down to 40%,
04:10because as I back off amount, I can also afford to back off the luminance value.
04:14This is probably the effect that I would stick with.
04:17Just so that you can see the difference here, this is the before version of the image; lots of noise going on.
04:23I will even zoom in so that we can see the difference here, lets go ahead and switch down to this region right there, we have a lot of luminance
04:29and color noise going on, and this is the after version.
04:32Thanks to the noise reduction functions combined with chromatic aberration correction here inside of Camera RAW.
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Correcting “false sharpening”
00:00In this exercise we are going to take a look at false sharpening, which is a sharpening like effect that results
00:06from extreme color modifications inside of Camera RAW and elsewhere inside of Photoshop.
00:12As we will see, the way to address the false sharpening effect is not to use your sharpening controls,
00:18but rather to back off of your extreme color modifications.
00:21Let me show you what I mean.
00:23I have the bridge trained once again on the 05_for_source folder here inside the exercise files folder,
00:28and I have selected an image called Limestone outcropping.dng.
00:31Its very possible that this outcropping right here, this rock, comprises sandstone as opposed to limestone.
00:38I thing it's a mix, I am no geologist, but anyway it's very, very cool.
00:41I would like you to go ahead and press Ctrl+R or Command+R on the Mac in order to open this image.
00:46I captured this image using a LEICA D-LUX 3, which is essentially a point-and-shoot camera, but its great because it allows you
00:54to capture RAW images, and it offers a panoramic lens so that you can shoot very wide images, or in the case of this one here, very tall images.
01:03I captured this image right next door to the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, and this is of course another high frequency still life shot.
01:13What I would like to do, I would like to up the drama of this image by darkening the sky.
01:18So I am going to zoom into the image a little bit, I not going to take it all the way to 100%, I am looking at the image at the 33% zoom ratio.
01:27I am going to switch over to this panel, the HSL/Grayscale panel,
01:30which I can get to by pressing Ctrl+Alt+4 or Command+oOption+4 in the Mac, if I wanted to.
01:35Then I am going to switch to the Luminance subpanel right here,
01:38I am going to click on the Luminance tab, and I am going to drag the blues down to -50.
01:43You see how that ends up resulting in a deep dark sky, which is a lovely thing I think.
01:50Then I might take some of the saturation out of the sky, so its not such a brilliant blue, by switching over to Saturation.
01:56Similarly taking the blues value down to -50 once again, which ends up deepening the luminance of the sky,
02:03independently of all the other details inside of the image, but also because I have applied a big modification to one portion of an image,
02:12one group of hues inside the image, independently of all the other hues.
02:17What ends up happening as a result, if I zoom in here, you can see that's got a ton of noise that's showing up inside of the sky.
02:24Now that's the least of my problems, because its not really there, as it turns out.
02:28This noise is popping up because Camera RAW adamantly refuses to show you the results of any of the options
02:35that are found inside the Detail panel when you are at any zoom ratio other that 100%.
02:40So this information, all this noise that we are seeing here, it's already smoothed away, it's not really there to the extent that we are seeing it.
02:46I will verify that by zooming in.
02:49I will go ahead and zoom in to the 100% zoom ratio.
02:51As soon as I get there, you can see that the noise more or less disappears,
02:55there is still some luminance noise going on, but there isnt a terrible amount of color noise.
03:00I will show you what I mean.
03:00Lets go ahead and switch over to Detail.
03:03Notice that I have very little in the way of sharpening going on.
03:05These are the default sharpening settings incidentally.
03:07An Amount of 25, a Radius of 1 and a Detail of 25, those values are designed to get rid of the anti-aliasing and interpolation,
03:16that's a function of the demosaicing process, and nothing more.
03:20that's what those values are intended for, so I will just leave them alone.
03:23Notice that I have modified my luminance and color values, if I were to zero those values out,
03:27especially the color value, I will set the color value to zero and press Tab.
03:30You can see that a ton of noise is showing up here, and that was the noise that we saw at the 50% zoom ratio.
03:36So no matter what Camera RAW is just bound and determined not to show you the results of these options,
03:42quite irritating actually, especially in the case of this particular image.
03:46Alright, lets go ahead and take this values back up to 30, which serve this image very nicely.
03:49Now I was telling you about false sharpening, that's the real problem in this image.
03:54What do I mean' Well, check out that light halo that surrounds the mountain.
03:58Lets go ahead and zoom in so we can see it even more closely.
04:01You can see that sharp light halo that's surrounding the mountaintop there, if I switch back over to HSL/Grayscale,
04:08and I can see the luminance levels right there, if I switch this blues value back to 0, you can see that that light halo pretty well disappears,
04:16and that's because we are brightening the sky, essentially to match the halo.
04:21The problem with the halo is that it's a different hue value than the sky.
04:26It comprises of some reds, some oranges, and some yellows, and all kinds of other hues, as it turns out.
04:31Alright, so lets go ahead and set this value back to -50.
04:34What in the world do we do? If we want this kind of radical difference between the sky and the foreground here,
04:40if we want the sky to appear much moodier, but we don't want to have this halo, what do we do about it? Well,
04:45you are not going to get anywhere by changing your Detail settings.
04:48Certainly, at this point we can only raise the Amount value, we are not applying much sharpening at all.
04:53Lowering the value, much as we hope that it would help us out, it doesn't really do any good, so might as well leave that value set
04:59at 25% in order to correct for the demosaicing process.
05:04We are not going to really get anything out of Lens Corrections either,
05:08this isn't a function of chromatic aberrations, so you are wasting your time there.
05:11You can experiment with defringing, and actually in the case of this image, all edges doesn't really do us any good.
05:17You can see that it actually ends up exaggerating that halo, so it does us a fair amount of bad.
05:22Highlight edges does smooth out the contours in the sky a little bit, gets rid of the noise inside the sky ever so slightly,
05:29but not enough to really justify turning it on, so I would just leave defringe off.
05:34So whats the solution is the question? Well, the solution is to go back to HSL/Grayscale and see if one
05:40of the neighboring slider bars is going to help you out.
05:43I am going to go ahead and zoom out a bit so that we can take in the sky.
05:46Again, the sky is going to look noisy at this zoom ratio, because we are no longer seeing the effects of our smoothing.
05:52So its going to look more noisy than it actually is.
05:55Now what I am going to do is, I am going to take down the Purples to -50 as well and see if that helps us out, and sure enough,
06:02it does deepen the sky dramatically, and it helps to deepen those halos just a little bit.
06:08What it shows me, is not so much its doing the halos any good, but its darkening the sky considerably,
06:14so maybe we don't need so much darkening of the blue value.
06:18In fact, maybe we can have both these values; -25 and -25, and still get a deep sky without the halos, and sure enough, that's what we have got here.
06:29If I zoom in on this rock top right here, on the top of this rock structure; whether its limestone or sandstone,
06:35you can see that the halos have diminished considerably from where they were before, and if I zoom back out,
06:41so that I can take in more of the image but I am also seeing the noise and all the other artifact that's not really there,
06:47and I turn off the Preview check box, this is what the bright sky looked like, this is what the dark sky looked like.
06:53So if you get that kind of false sharpening effect, don't look to the sharpening controls to fix it, because it is false sharpening after all,
07:01try to fix it using those same controls that you messed it up with.
07:05So the adjustment, these color adjustment options, they created the false sharpening effect, they can get rid of the false sharpening effect as well.
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Reducing shadow noise
00:00Now at this point you maybe wondering, OK, this is great. All these different ways to reduce noise, address fall sharpening, and so on,
00:08but what about that original guy, that Dangerous gentleman.dng image that we saw a few exercises back? How do we get rid of the noise
00:17that was showing up in the dark shadow details inside the image? Well, it actually turns out to require yet a different approach.
00:24In order to catch up with this image, lets go ahead and scroll over here, inside the 05_for_source folder.
00:31You will see that there is this image called Sharp on sharp.dng, meaning that we have sharp focus combined with a sharp fellow.
00:38I am going to go ahead and press Ctrl+R, Command+R in the Mac, in order to open this image.
00:43This is the sharpened version of the image, so this is the after version.
00:47If you go over here to the Sharpening controls, you can see that I have applied an Amount value of 80, that was on the high side,
00:52that was for demonstrational purpose. I really recommend something more in the 50 range.
00:56Then my other recommended values, Radius of 1.5, the Detail value of 20, and a Masking value of 70%.
01:02So again, because this a low frequency portrait shot, we are going low, high, low, high with these values.
01:08I am going to go ahead and zoom in to the 100% zoom ratio so that we can see the results of our modifications.
01:14You can see that we do indeed have these very sharp details going on inside the fellows face,
01:19and we are bringing out that thread that's hanging from his chin and so on.
01:23The problem is that we would have to presumably either clone that away inside of Photoshop
01:28or we could perhaps spot retouch the image using the Retouch tool here inside of Camera RAW.
01:34But the larger problem is this noise that's showing up inside the shadow detail.
01:39Now the shadows are where you are most likely to bring out noise inside of a digital photograph, the reason being that when you are working
01:47with a linear image, there is less luminance data inside the shadows than there is inside the highlights.
01:54There is just tons of luminance information dedicated to highlights, and very little dedicated to the shadows, just a fraction as it turns out.
02:01When you start brightening the shadow region, then you bring out a ton of noise as a result.
02:07Well, what I would suggest we do in the case of this particular photograph- and notice by the way, if we go the background,
02:13you can see that what should be a nice black background is showing up as noisy as well.
02:18We will go ahead and zoom out here.
02:20If you look closely you can see the fabric, the black fabric, in the background, which really ought to be entirely black.
02:28We can get rid of the noise by making it entirely black.
02:31So once again, I am going to have to zoom into 100%, because I cant see the results of my modifications if I am not looking
02:39at the 100% view size, and so we wouldnt see the noise accurately.
02:43Now lets switch over to the Basic panel, by clicking on the Basic tab here, or you can press Ctrl+Alt+1 or Command+Option+1 since it's the first panel.
02:52I am going to go ahead and increase the Blacks value.
02:55Now you don't have to increase it very high.
02:57If I just press the up arrow key I will take it up to 1, at which point I am saying anything
03:01that has a luminance level of 1 or darker, becomes black.
03:04I will keep raising that value until my noise goes away, which happens at about 5,
03:10that noise goes entirely away and my background becomes completely black.
03:14So those folds in the fabric go away, and it looks like we just have a void of black space in the background,
03:20which is exactly what we want in the case of this image of course.
03:23Now I am going to scroll over to the tie, it still has a bunch of color noise going on inside of it.
03:29So naturally we are going to switch over to the Detail options here, and then we are going to raise
03:34that color value to something in the neighborhood of 30, lets say.
03:38By doing that, I go ahead and elominate the color noise inside of the tie, and also inside of the jacket, as you can see here.
03:46So this is the before view of the jacket, if I turn the Preview checkbox off, lots of color noise going on.
03:52This is the after view, which is nice and homogenous, so we have a uniform color going
03:57on to this fellows jacket, which is in the way it should be of course.
04:01Finally, I am going to go ahead and zoom out to take in the entire image.
04:06By virtue of the fact that I raised the black value, I have darkened the image all over the place.
04:11I have darkened all portions of the image, not only the shadows, but the mid tones as well.
04:16So lets go back to the Basic panel here, and I am going to have to change a few other values to accommodate.
04:22First of all, I am going to have to brighten the image.
04:24I am going to do that by selecting the Brightness value and pressing Shift+Up arrow in order to raise it from 35 to 45,
04:31and that goes ahead and restores some of the brightness.
04:33Now I don't need as much color saturation, because I have raised the black value, because I have darkened the shadows,
04:40I have also intensified the colors inside the image, so these high vibrance and saturation values are no longer warranted.
04:47I am going to go ahead and select the Vibrance value by clicking on the word Vibrance there, and I am going to press Shift+
04:52Down arrow three times to reduce that Vibrance value to 20.
04:56Then I am going to tab to saturation, and I am going to press Shift+Down arrow once to reduce that value to 5.
05:02So now we have a very nice image, much better than it was before, I think.
05:07This is the before version of the colors, and this is the after version of the colors, I think we have a much more striking dynamic image,
05:16not to mention we have a lot less noise inside this image as well.
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Approximating ACR sharpening in Photoshop
00:00Alright, finally for those of you who maybe thinking, hey Deke,
00:04is there anyway to simulate the Camera RAW sharpening controls using the sharpening functions that we have seen thus far inside
00:13of Photoshop? The answer is not really, but you can come close, and by examining how we come close,
00:21we can get a sense of how the Camera RAW sharpening controls work.
00:24So here is what I would like you to do.
00:25If you care for this kind of theory, what I would like you to do is to train the Bridge once again
00:30on the 05_for_source folder, inside the exercise files folder.
00:35Therein you well see an image called RAW shapes.dng.
00:37Go ahead and select the file and press Ctrl+R or Command+R in the Mac in order to open it inside of Camera RAW.
00:45Now I was able- even though this is not a digital photograph, it was not originally rendered inside of a digital camera,
00:51I did not hold the digital camera up to the screen and shoot a picture of this diagram or anything along those lines,
00:56I was still able to convert this diagram into a DNG file.
01:00You can't do that from Photoshop. You can't save an image out as a DNG file, but you can do it from Camera RAW.
01:06So I open the image as a TIFF image here inside Camera RAW by pressing Ctrl+R, Command+R in the Mac.
01:12Then I click on the Save Image button, and I chose Digital Negative as my output format.
01:18Just so you know how you can do that kind of thing, if you are interested.
01:21Anyway that has nothing to do with my demonstration here. I am going to go ahead
01:24and zoom in on this image so we can take it in at the 100% zoom ratio.
01:30Lets also switch over to the Detail options here.
01:33Notice that in Advanced, I have applied an Amount value of a 100%, a Radius of 1.0, and a Detail value of a 100%.
01:40So I have gone very high with the Amount and Detail values, fairly low to medium with the Radius value, and very low with Masking;
01:48I have it turned off essentially, I have it set to zero.
01:51Then I am not applying any noise reduction, because this isn't a digital photograph, it doesn't really have any noise inside
01:57of it. It just has texture, which I added on purpose.
02:01Alright, so now I am going to go ahead and click on the Open Image button now.
02:04I should say, by the way, that you can either click on Open Image to open the image inside Photoshop,
02:10or if you still want access to your Camera RAW settings so that you can modify them later on down the line, then you press and hold the Shift key,
02:19and notice that the Open Image button changes to Open Object, that will open the image as a Smart Object.
02:25I will go ahead and click.
02:26Now that I have got the Shift key done, I will click on that Open Object button,
02:30and now if I bring up my Layers palette, you can see that this is indeed a Smart Object.
02:37If I double click on that thumbnail, I am not going to open the image that's embedded inside of the larger composition,
02:43instead I am going to open the Camera RAW dialog box and I am going to gain access to those settings once again.
02:50Alright, anyway, whether its a Smart Object or not, its showing us what we need to see,
02:54its showing us the sharpened version of the image according to Camera RAW.
02:57I am going to go ahead and zoom the image into a 100%, and I am going to match this window size here, there is easier ways to do this,
03:04and I am going to do Shift+Tab away my Layers palette, and move this guy over, I want to get things exactly right,
03:11don't you know for whatever reason -- oh look, its a pixel too high.
03:14So I am going to go ahead and move this down a little bit, like so.
03:18Alright, so there is the sharpened version of the image according to Camera RAW.
03:22Now lets move over to the original version of the image, this one is called Test shapes.jpeg,
03:26and it is once again included inside of that 05_for_source folder.
03:32Here is what I am going to do- and again, this just an approximation, this is not an exact match,
03:37like we have seen in the past, this is an approximate match.
03:39First thing I am going to do is I am going to press Ctrl+Alt+J or Command+Option+J in the Mac in order to jump the image to a new layer.
03:45Lets just go ahead and call it sharpening effect or something like that, because that's all it is.
03:50I will click OK in order to accept that new layer.
03:53Now I am going to go up to the Filter menu, I am going to choose Other, and I am going to choose High Pass.
03:58I am going to apply a Radius value of 3 pixels, so about 3 times the Radius value that we saw inside of the Camera RAW dialog box.
04:07So basically everything; all those sharpening controls inside of Camera RAW are magnified through the roof, as you will see.
04:14Alright, so I am going to go ahead and click OK to accept that modification.
04:18Then I want to get rid of the color variation inside of the image.
04:21Camera RAW is very careful about sharpening just the luminance data and not the color data, so we need to get rid of any color shifting inside
04:31of this layer by going up to the Image menu, choosing Adjustments, and choosing this command right there, Desaturate.
04:38Now we have a gray scale only version of this High Pass image.
04:42I am going to change the blend mode now from Normal to Overlay, standard stuff, when we are working with High Pass of course.
04:48We have a standard High Pass sharpened version of the image,
04:53doesn't look anything like the Camera RAW version of the sharpened image over here on the right.
04:58I am going to go ahead and get rid of my palettes for a moment, so we are done with the Layers palette, we are just working on the High Pass layer
05:05after this point, so that we can keep track of both images at once on screen here.
05:09Now I am going to go up to the Filter menu, I am going to choose Noise and I am going to choose Reduce Noise.
05:14The idea being that Camera RAW, no matter what, even if you don't have the noise reduction functions turned on at all, as we didn't you may recall,
05:22both luminance and color were set to zero, so we weren't applying any noise reduction.
05:27The sharpening controls actually go through and smooth out contours no matter what.
05:32So I am going to go ahead and choose Reduce Noise, and I am going
05:36to apply the settings you see right here, Strength of 3, so a pretty low Strength value.
05:40Turn Preserve Details and Reduce Color Noise off, because they are not going to help us
05:44in this case, and then raise that sharpen details value to 100%.
05:48We are going to max out the sharpen details value.
05:51don't turn on this check box, leave it off, and then click OK.
05:55We are starting to get more of a match as you can see here between these two images, still not enough, thanks to the fact that I raised
06:01that Detail value, you may recall, inside the Camera RAW dialog box to a 100%.
06:07We need to go ahead and apply the More Accurate check box inside the Smart Sharpen dialog box, we need to apply it.
06:13So we are going to do that by going up to the Filter menu again, choosing Sharpen and choosing Smart Sharpen, and these are the settings I am going
06:22to apply: an Amount value of a 100%, a Radius value of 2.0, Remove set to Lens Blur, and More Accurate turned on,
06:29that gives us the closest equivalent. Again, it's not an exact match, but it's close.
06:34Then I will click OK in order to accept that modification.
06:37Notice we are closing in on the effect. The biggest difference I am seeing at this point, there is some difference in the texture,
06:43an overall difference, to the quality of the texture, and I am not going to do anything to match that, that's beyond my control at this point.
06:51But I am noticing something I can control is the fact that I have very bright highlights and very dark shadows, so I am clipping shadows
06:59and clipping highlights inside the image on the left, whereas Camera RAW is working very hard to make sure it does not clip either.
07:06So what we are going to do back here inside the Test shapes.jpg image, bring back up my Layers palette,
07:11I am going to double click on that Layer in order to bring up the Layer Style dialog box.
07:16I am going to Alt-drag the halves of these triangles apart, both in the This Layer slider and the Underlying Layer slider, like so.
07:25Try to say that three times fast.
07:27I am being fairly arbitrary in terms of my modifications here.
07:31Here are the values I am applying, it doesn't really matter, I am just making sure that I have a big amount
07:36of space between both the black halves and the white halves.
07:40Then I will click OK in order to accept that modification, but Shift+Tab that palette away once again, and here is my closest match between the two.
07:51That's how much work it takes in order to match what happened so quickly
07:56and so effortlessly inside the Camera RAW dialogue box, but it means there are some tradeoffs too.
08:00That sharpening smoothing action that occurs inside of Camera RAW, I am not the biggest fan of that actually,
08:05and there is really no way to turn it off, its at work all the time, so you really have the kind of noise reduction going on,
08:11no matter what you do, when you are sharpening an image.
08:14On the plus side, it's always very careful to apply its sharpening just at the luminance data,
08:20and its careful to clip neither the shadow or highlight information inside of the image.
08:27Alright, so there you have it.
08:28In the next chapter we are going to take a look at how to sharpen for detail inside of an image.
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6. Sharpening for Detail
Gauging and exploiting luminance frequency
00:00 Now that you have finished sharpening for the source- or not, up to you.
00:03 It's time to move on to the second and I think more important phase of the sharpening process, sharpening for detail. Rather
00:10 than compensating for anti-aliasing or interpolation or the like,
00:13 we are interested in bolstering the most essential and pervasive detail inside the image all in the name
00:19 of increasing the impact of a photograph or composition.
00:22 The character of that detail is measured in terms of frequency. In a low frequency image, highlights transition gradually into mid-tones
00:30 and then shadows. Think of a smooth sphere or a person's face.
00:34 In a high frequency image, highlights change the shadows frequently and abruptly. Imagine a thicket of branches, a crowded street scene
00:41 or any wide angle shot that contains multiple points of interest.
00:45 If an image falls somewhere in the middle, as most do, then it probably has a predominant frequency
00:50 that determines the kind of sharpening that you should apply.
00:53 Like me, against this rock wall. I'm low frequency, the wall is high, but I'm more important than a bunch of rocks.
00:59 So we sharpen for low frequency.
01:01 Incidentally, do you like this rock wall? I hope you do because if you are a premium member,
01:06 you have this rock wall. It's included in your sample files.
01:10 I know. You are welcome. It's a gift from me to you. Yes you're welcome, I said that.
01:15 Low frequency, high frequency, medium frequency. What is the frequency, Kenneth? that's what you have to ask yourself when you are sharpening
01:22 for detail, and your name is Kenneth, inside Photoshop.
01:26
01:26
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Using low-frequency source sharpening
00:00Lets start things up by taking a look at how to sharpen a low frequency image.
00:04By low frequency, I mean gradual transitions between luminance levels, between highlights and mid-tones and shadows inside of the image.
00:14Now you typically want to treat any portrait shot as a low frequency image, even if it has a busy background with a lot of rapid transitions.
00:22Lot of rapid luminance transitions in it or if the person is wearing busy clothing with a lot of tight fabric patterns and so on.
00:30Even So you want to go ahead and treat it as a low frequency image because that is the most forgiving kind of sharpening that you can apply
00:37and after all we do want to be forgiving even with beautiful people like this one, right here.
00:42Now I should tell you that we are going to start things up from the very beginning.
00:45So we are going to sharpen for the source.
00:48Bring the image in the Photoshop as a Smart Object and then we are going to sharpen for detail inside of Photoshop and sort of mix
00:57and match our source sharpening and our detail sharpening.
01:00You will see, it's a fairly elaborate process when done properly.
01:04Now I have the Bridge showing down the 06_for_detail folder, that's inside the exercise files folder and I have gone ahead
01:11and selected this image right here, that's called Coffee to go.jpg.
01:14Don't fret about the fact we are only seeing couple of thumbnails on screen right now.
01:18You are going to see more thumbnails inside of your folder because I am building the images up still as I am talking to you.
01:24Anyway, this image, this wonderful image here comes to us from photographer Quavondo Nguyen.
01:30I just love that first name, Quavondo, of iStockphoto.com once again and lets go ahead and start by sharpening the image for the source, as I was saying.
01:40So I am going to bring the image in Camera RAW.
01:42It's my favorite way to work, not necessarily the only way to work but I think its the best and most effective way to work
01:48and so I go up to the File menu and choose Open in Camera RAW, and I do want to mention something to you at the outset here.
01:54I have noticed in this particular version of the bridge just may it be fixed by time you are working inside the bridge
02:00but every so often this command will appear inexplicably dimmed as if you can't apply it to JPEG images or TIFF images which you can.
02:09You should be able to do that on a regular basis, no matter what and the only kinds
02:13of files you really cant effect are layered files like, made of PSD documents.
02:17You cant open that inside Camera RAW but JPEGs and TIFFs, are just fine.
02:22If the Open in Camera RAW Command appears dimmed, here is a little trick.
02:27You go to the Tools menu.
02:28This is mostly works 95% of the time.
02:32I have had it failed couple of times but it mostly works.
02:34Go up to the Tools menu choose Cache and choose Purge Cache or Folder, blah, blah, blah.
02:39Essentially purge the thumbnails, that's what you are doing for this particular folder, and that should take care of your problem.
02:46Then you should be able to click on this file and all should be well.
02:48If not you may need to sort of click between folders and just fool around a little bit.
02:52It's weird.
02:53I don't know why the bridge does this.
02:54But anyway, probably a bug.
02:56I am going to go up to the File menu choose Open in Camera RAW, Ctrl+R or Command+R in Mac in order to Open the Camera RAW dialog box.
03:05Lets go ahead and zoom in on her eyes here and I am going to make sure that I am seeing the image at the 100% zoom ratio.
03:10Right now it's a 117 or whatever, that's what I am saying.
03:13I will go ahead and press Ctrl+minus or Command+minus on the Mac in order to zoom out a little bit.
03:18Now lets switch over to the Detail panel right here.
03:22Now I should warn you just because we are seeing the Amount value of zero for sharpening doesn't mean
03:28that some sharpening hasn't been applied before to this image.
03:31It's very possible that the original photographer sharpened this image to some extent.
03:36Either when they originally opened the image in Camera RAW and saved it out as a JPEG or during the editing cycle.
03:42It's very possible this image is already been sharpened in advance.
03:45It doesn't look like it to me, that's why I am going ahead and treating it as a completely unsharpened image.
03:52Alright. So I am going to go ahead and take this amount value up to 150% just so that I can gauge the proper values.
03:58Obviously this is way too much and then I might take the Radius value up to 1.5 since this is a low frequency image.
04:05We saw on the previous chapter that when you are working with a low frequency inside of Camera RAW,
04:09you want a low amount which we don't have so far but we will.
04:12A low amount, a high radius, a low detail value and a high masking value.
04:16So lets leave the detail value where it is, at 25 and then I am going
04:20to Alt or Option-drag the masking value over here to about 17, looks pretty good to me.
04:25That's going to protect most of the skin and reveal the real edges around the eyes and the mouth and the nose and the ears and so on.
04:32Now that we have done that, lets go ahead and backup the Amount value, and I am going to take it down to lets say something along lines of 50%,
04:39maybe a little higher just so that we can see the effects of our sharpening very easily on screen.
04:44Lets go and take it a 60% here.
04:46So just so that you can see the difference.
04:48This is before and this is after and just in case that isnt reading super well on the video,
04:53lets go ahead and zoom in and click here to the 200% view size.
04:57This is the before view and this is the after view.
05:00So a fair amount of sharpening that we are applying.
05:02Next what I want you do, I want you to press and hold the Shift key, then I want you to click on this button down here, that says, Open Object.
05:09Go ahead and click, while the Shift key is down, then you can release Shift.
05:12So you just want to Shift+click on that button.
05:15In order to open the image in Photoshop as we have done and of course, we have also gone ahead and opened the image as the Smart Object,
05:22as you can see over here, inside the Layers palette, we gave little Smart Object icon down in lower right hand corner of the thumbnail.
05:30Alright, so this is good.
05:31We have now sharpened for source and we have taken the detail into account.
05:36In the next exercise, we are going to apply a second pass of sharpening.
05:40Sounds a little dangerous but it works beautifully actually.
05:43We are going to apply a second pass of sharpening in order to take into account just the detail not the source.
05:49Just the detail inside this image.
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Using High Pass for portraits
00:00In this exercise we are going to sharpen the detail inside the image, this is low frequency image,
00:05so we are going to sharpen accordingly, here inside Photoshop.
00:08Now bear in mind, we just gone through sharpening the image in the previous exercises inside Camera RAW
00:13for the source, for the digital photography process.
00:17Now we are about to heap more sharpening on top of this image, here inside Photoshop.
00:22Now conventional wisdom says that you are not supposed to do that,
00:25you are not supposed to sharpen an image multiple times, sequentially let alone in a row.
00:30I am going to tell you that done properly it produces fantastic effects, as you will see over the course of next few exercises.
00:38Alright. So if you just joining me, you can catch right up by opening this image called Base Smart Object.PSD,
00:44that's found inside the 06_For_Detail folder and it contains a Smart Object notice that in this is a Camera RAW Smart Object,
00:51so if you were to double click on this Smart Object thumbnail here inside the Layers palette, you would bring up the Camera RAW dialog box,
00:57then you can switch over to your Detail panel and you could adjust to settings to taste.
01:02I am going to go ahead and cancel out off this dialog box, so I can return to Photoshop here.
01:08Now since I have already got this Smart Object, I can apply a filter to it and it automatically becomes a Smart Filter,
01:13but before I do that I want to make that I have a filter mask ready to go to convert in to an edge mask,
01:22so I am going to go over to the Channels palette and lets take a look at our channels here.
01:26This is the red channel very, very bright inside of this portrait shot, as portrait shots are wanted to all
01:32of us resonate most brightly inside the red channel.
01:35The green channel contains the widest variety of luminance levels, so it contains a lot of detail and then the blue channel is going
01:44to be your darkest channel, often times it's your noisiest channel as well.
01:47So what I am going to recommend, where standard portraits are concerned, is that you want to go ahead low the green channel
01:53as a selection and convert that into your base filter mask.
01:58So heres how we will do it.
01:59go ahead and press in order to Control key or the Command key and the Mac and click on that green thumbnail there to load it as a selection outline,
02:07then go ahead and switch back to the RGB view of the image.
02:11Go to the Layers palette and now lets go up to the Filter menu choose other and choose High Pass.
02:17Now the reason I like High Pass, it's two reasons I use High Pass for sharpening, for detail where low frequency images are concerned.
02:25First of all its a very simple filter to use, very straightforward, just has one value that you have to worry about and that's the Radius value.
02:31Also its good at protecting the highlights and shadows, it doesn't clip highlights
02:36and shadows inside of the image unlike Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen.
02:40So I am going to go ahead and choose the High Pass Command.
02:43I will tell you that you want to keep the radius fairly high, something in the neighborhood, depending on the resolution of the image,
02:50something in the neighborhood of three to six pixels.
02:54So if you are working on a very high resolution image such as 10 or 12 megapixel image, you probably want to bump this guy up to
03:00about 6 pixels possibly that high, that's the high end.
03:04But in our cases, this is just a 5 megapixel image, I am going to take this value down to 4.5, which is still pretty darn high,
03:10you might want to take it down to 3, but for now we will go with 4.5 pixels.
03:15I'll click ok in order to accept that modification.
03:18Now I have a quite High Pass, which grays out the non-edges inside the image, so we need to drop out those non-edges,
03:26so that we have a sharpening effect, not a weird gray effect going on inside the flesh.
03:31So you want to double click on the blending options. And by the way, notice very briefly, that Photoshop went ahead
03:36and automatically converted the selection from the green channel to a filter mask right there,
03:42that looks exactly like the green channel of course.
03:44Alright. So we have got the green channel filter mask intact.
03:47Now lets go over to the little settings icon right there.
03:50Double click on it, in order to bring up the blending options and we'll change the mode from Normal to Overlay.
03:58Then I'm going to go ahead and accept that by clicking OK.
04:01Now we have successfully applied the High Pass filter.
04:04We have a filter mask intact.
04:06We need to modify that mask, of course, so that its not merely a luminance mask, which is what it is now a green luminance mask,
04:13but rather an edge mask and well do that in the very next exercise.
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Actioning a low-frequency edge mask
00:00In this exercise we are going to take that filter mask
00:02that we lifted from the green channel that's currently limiting the effect of the High Pass filter
00:07and we are going to convert that mask into a proper edge mask.
00:10Now there are a lot of steps involved here.
00:12We saw how to create an edge mask a couple of chapters back.
00:15At this point, I figure we might as well go ahead and record the creation of this edge mask as an action.
00:22So lets go ahead and do that together.
00:24I have got an entire series by the way.
00:26If you are a subscriber to the lynda.com Online Training Library you can gain access
00:33to my Photoshop CS2, it actually goes by the name Photoshop CS2 Actions and Automation.
00:39It's just that Actions and Automation hasn't changes that terribly much inside Photoshop CS3 and you can learn everything you ever wanted to know
00:47about recording actions. But right now lets just go ahead and bring up the Actions palette, which you can get to by the way by going
00:53to the Window menu and choosing Actions if you like.
00:56We are going to create a new folder, a New Action Set as it's known, by clicking on the little folder icon.
01:02So go ahead and click on the folder icon at the bottom of the applet and we will call this one Sharpening actions
01:07or something along those lines then click OK and next, I want you to start off a new action and to make a new action,
01:15record a new action inside Photoshop, you click on this page icon at the bottom of the Action palette and it allows you to name the action.
01:23Lets call this one edge mask and I will go ahead and click on the Record button.
01:28Now you may recall, a couple of chapters ago when I told you back, creating image mask in the first place that this steps are always the same.
01:34We always run through the basic same steps especially where a portraits edge mask is concern, but the values may end up varying.
01:41I am just going to show you the values that I use in the when in doubt.
01:46So these are when in doubt values you can changes here values if you want to do for the specific resolution of images
01:51that you are using on the regular basis, but here we go.
01:53The first thing is we are going to go ahead and click on the Smart Filter mask and that goes ahead and records that operation.
01:59I am not sure that's an operation that you want recorded, we'll go ahead and delete that just in moment, but I will go ahead
02:05and click on the filter mask in order to make it active, and I am going to even Alt+Click or Option+Click on the filter mask
02:11so that we can see the mask here inside the image window.
02:14That added another step to the action.
02:17Again, we will comeback and we will delete those in the moment.
02:19Now here are the real steps that we want to record.
02:21Go up to the Filter menu choose Noise and choose Median.
02:26Now the value that you are going to enter will depend.
02:29It depends on the resolution of the image typically, but again a good sort of when in doubt values about 10 pixels.
02:35You could go higher with the high resolution image, you could go lower with the lower resolution image.
02:40I will go ahead and click OK to accept that modification.
02:43Now I am going to go up to the Filter menu.
02:45I am going to go choose Stylize and I am going to choose Find Edges and that's going to find the edges inside the image and tracing with black.
02:53Now I want to invert that of course because I want the edges to be white.
02:56So I will press Ctrl+I or Command+I on the Mac in order to invert the image.
03:01You can see that step right there.
03:03Then I want to go ahead and bolster those light edges using Levels command.
03:06So I will press Ctrl+L or Command+L on the Mac to bring up the Levels dialog box.
03:12I will go ahead and drag this white slider triangle over to about 60.
03:17Now this might end up varying from one image to another.
03:21The other image I showed to you a couple of chapters ago, when I was introducing the edge mask.
03:25We ended up dragging this white point value down to 40.
03:29So we were more aggressI've with our modification.
03:31This image would be harmed, if we went down the 40.
03:34We would end up getting too many edges.
03:36So I am going to leave its set to something that's a little more moderate about 60 and go ahead and click OK
03:43at this point and that records Levels operation of course.
03:47Now we want to thicken our edges up a little bit, so I am going to go the Filter menu.
03:53I am going to choose Other and I am going to choose Maximum,
03:56which expands the maximum brightness value, which of course is white and I want to radius of 4.
04:02Again this is a value you might want to vary depending on the resolution of your image, 4 is a good when in doubt in my experience.
04:08I will go ahead and click OK to accept that modification.
04:12Now we want to round off those squares that have been formed by the Maximum filters.
04:16So I will go up to the Filter menu.
04:18I will choose Noise and I will choose Median and I will enter the exact same value I entered for Maximum.
04:24We definitely want to match the maximum value.
04:27So on the radius of 4, click OK and then I want to blur the edges inside the mask and I want all these harsh edges.
04:34So I will go to the Filter menu and I will choose Blur and I will choose Gaussian Blur and I am going
04:40to double the value that I applied for both Median and Maximum.
04:45So instead of 4, I will do 8 and then I will click OK in order to accept that modification and now we are done.
04:50We have now created the edge mask.
04:52So you stop recoding the action by clicking on the square Stop button right there and that stops the recoding.
04:58Now I was telling you we have a couple of cluttered steps up front here.
05:01So lets go ahead and drag those down throw them in the trashcan here and that's all it takes.
05:07Now we want to leave Median through Gaussian Blur and that's Edge Mask and I am actually get to rename this action a little bit I am going
05:14to call this LF edge mask meaning that's its a Low Frequency edge mask because this kind
05:19of edge mask does work very well for low frequency images.
05:22We would change the steps up a little bit, if we are working high frequency.
05:26We now have an action that will go ahead and automatically convert our luminance mask into an edge mask.
05:32To test it out, lets go back to the History palette here and notice this point at which we applied the Median filter,
05:39the first time around that's what we want to get rid of.
05:42Lets go ahead and click on Edit Filter Blending Options which takes us back
05:46to the original luminance mask, it is right there so that you can see it.
05:50Now go ahead and switch back over to the Actions palette, make sure that your mask is active that it has a double outline around it
05:58and you may also want to go ahead and Alt+Click or Option+Click on that thumbnail so that you are viewing the mask on screen.
06:04Then click on the LF edge mask action and press the Play button there.
06:08Go ahead and click on the Play button and it will go ahead and convert that luminous mask into an edge mask look at the spit, very quickly indeed.
06:15Lets go ahead and Alt+Click or Option+Click once again on the filter mask in order to view the affected image.
06:22So this is what the image looks like without the application of the High Pass filter, subject of course to its filter mask to the edge mask
06:31and this is what it looks like with the High Pass filter.
06:33Let me go ahead and zoom in so that we can see this a little more closely inside the video, this is without and this is with.
06:40So we have a double pass sharpening effect going on here.
06:44We sharpened inside of Camera RAW for the source and of course taking into account that this was a low frequency image and then we brought it
06:51into Photoshop and sharpened again for detail taking into account that this is a low frequency image,
06:57but I will tell you what, doesn't really add up to well at this point.
07:01It looks pretty good its over-sharpened actually I have to say,
07:04but what we are doing is we are basically double sharpening the exact same stuff inside the image and what I am going to suggest you is,
07:12if you are going to do multi-pass sharpening like what we have seen here then you want to switch out your source sharpening.
07:18You don't want to take the low frequency content into a effect.
07:22You just want to go ahead and do a standard source sharpen and then take a low frequency details into account here inside Photoshop.
07:29I will show you exactly what I mean by that, because we have set this up as a very flexible image.
07:35We can modify our sharpening settings to our harsh content.
07:38I will show you how in the next exercise.
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Modifying the source sharpening
00:00Alright, just to recap, we have taken this image from photographer, Quavondo Nguyen of iStockphoto.com, and we have sharpened it inside
00:08of Camera RAW, and then we have applied a second pass of sharpening inside of Photoshop.
00:13Now the image looks pretty darn good. It looks a little over sharpened on screen, but if we were to flatten the image
00:18and downsample it using the Image Size command, our edits would hold up quite nicely.
00:23Thing is, we have attacked the same detail twice.
00:27So when we sharpen the image with a source in mind inside of Camera RAW, we took into account that this was a low frequency portrait image,
00:33and then when we sharpened for detail here inside Photoshop, we took into account that this was a low frequency image as well.
00:40I don't really recommend you work that way.
00:43Again, its not a bad way to work, but it's not the ideal approach.
00:46The ideal approach is if, and just bear with me here, but if you are going to apply second pass of sharpening for detail here inside of Photoshop,
00:56then you want to make sure that your first pass of sharpening inside of Camera RAW is strictly sharpening for the digital photography process;
01:04you are not taking into account whether its high frequency, low frequency, or any frequency.
01:10So thanks to the fact that we have kept our modifications 100% nondestructive,
01:16we can go back and change the sharpening that we applied inside Camera RAW.
01:21Now if you want to catch up with me, I have got a document here called High Pass portrait.PSD, its found inside of the O6_for_detail folder.
01:31You can see that we have got a Smart Object, that's a Camera RAW object, that has a Smart Filter applied to it, subject to an edge mask.
01:39I am going to go ahead now and double click on the Smart Object thumbnail in order to return to Camera RAW.
01:46I will go and drag around her eyes in order to zoom in on her face there.
01:49I will go ahead and actually step back to the 100% zoom ratio, so that I can see the results of my sharpening here.
01:56Then I am going to switch over to the Detail panel, and I am going to reduce the Radius value; this is the key thing you need to do,
02:04is reduce the Radius value to something in the neighborhood of 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, so some low value.
02:11I am going to go with 0.6.
02:13I am also going to take the Detail down as low as it will go, so we are avoiding any potential for over sharpening inside of this image,
02:22since we do have that second pass of High Pass sharpening eagerly awaiting.
02:27I am going to go ahead and take the Masking value down too.
02:30I am going to Alt drag or Option drag this slider triangle, and of course, you don't have to Alt or Option-drag,
02:36I am just doing that so I can see the mask on the fly here.
02:40I am going to take the Masking value down to 30; not a pretty mask as you can see, but its a very functional mask for our purposes here.
02:47So I am going to take that down to 30.
02:49Then I am going to increase the Amount value to a 100%.
02:53Now that's pretty high, but I want to make sure that we can see the results of our sharpening.
02:58If you were really applying this, and all you were trying do is correct for the digital photography process, you would probably want an Amount value
03:05around 50%, but I am going to double it just so that we can see the effects of our sharpening very easily once we go back into Photoshop.
03:13So just to give you a sense, this is how sharp the image used to be sharpened with the fact that its a low frequency image in mind,
03:20and this is how sharp the image is Now so crisper sharpening, less sharpening, going on as well.
03:26Lets go ahead and zoom in a click here, so that we can see her eye and a little bit of her hair as well,
03:32so this is before lots of diffuse sharpening going on here, meaning that we have a high Radius value at this point.
03:40This is after less sharpening, tighter sharpening, as well, so we are sharpening in on the finer details inside the image.
03:46Then I will go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification, and Photoshop will go ahead and reapply all of the sharpening, sequentially;
03:55so it recalculated the Camera RAW sharpening and then it reapplied the High Pass sharpening on top of it.
04:02Lets go ahead and zoom in actually a click so we can see those same details that we saw before.
04:07This is before and this is after, so its a subtle difference that we are seeing, but its a very meaningful difference.
04:14Now we have two passes of sharpening that are taking different things into account.
04:19With the first pass we are exclusI'vely taking the source into account, the digital photography process into account,
04:26and with the second pass of sharpening, we are exclusively taking the low frequency detail into account.
04:32This is what I consider to be a very successful and very flexible. By the way, I will go ahead and zoom out here to 50%, a very successful
04:39and very flexible two pass sharpening effect here inside Photoshop.
04:44Just to give you a sense, this is what the image looks like without the High Pass layer, and this is what the image looks
04:50like with the High Pass layer, so a subtle effect of 50%, but again,
04:55an effect that's going to serve us well when we finally go to print with this image.
05:00Now when we go to print, I should warn you, there will be one more pass of sharpening I would apply, and that's sharpening for Output,
05:06as we will see in a couple of chapters, but so far so good, and everything is flexible as can be.
05:12In the next exercise, I will show you how to approach a high frequency image, where sharpening for detail is concerned inside Photoshop.
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Using high-frequency source sharpening
00:00Alright, now lets talk about sharpening a high frequency image, and once again we are going to take the image into Camera RAW to sharpen
00:07for the source, and then we are going to take it into Photoshop to sharpen for the detail.
00:12Now I have got the Bridge once again trained on the 06_for_detail folder, that's inside the exercise files folder.
00:17I would like you to go ahead and select the Cabs and buildings.jpg image.
00:22This image comes to us from Damir Spanic, once again of iStockphoto.com.
00:27By the way, if you scroll down your list a little bit here, you will see the original Coffee to go.jpg image that we opened a few exercises back,
00:36notice it has a little settings icon in the upper right hand corner of the thumbnail. That indicates that now the Bridge considers this
00:43to be a Camera RAW file, and it has some Camera RAW settings saved along with it.
00:48If you don't want those Camera RAW settings to be assigned to the JPEG file anymore, which I suggest you don't,
00:54then go ahead and right click on the thumbnail, choose Develop Settings.
00:59Then choose Clear Settings, like so and that will get rid of those settings, and now that will open as a normal JPEG file in the future,
01:07because after all you have already got some PSD versions of the file, if you want to revisit those Camera RAW settings.
01:13Aright, I am going to go ahead and select Cabs and buildings.jpg once again, and I am going to go to the File menu and choose Open in Camera RAW
01:20or press Crtl+R, Command+R in the Mac, in order to open up the Camera RAW interface here.
01:26I will go ahead and fill the screen with the interface once again.
01:30Now this is a high frequency image, meaning that there are a lot of rapid luminance variations inside the image.
01:38So we are switching from highlights to shadows, back to highlights very quickly, all over the place.
01:43There are all kinds of fine details inside of the image as well, and a cityscape is a very typical kind of high frequency image,
01:51just as things likes trees and plants and landscapes end up being high frequency images as well;
01:56basically distant shots which are taking in a lot of objects at once.
02:00Now I am going to go ahead and switch over to the Detail panel.
02:04I want to be able to see the grill of this taxi cab here at the 100% zoom ratio.
02:09I am going to crank up that Amount value once again, so I can keep track of what's going on.
02:14Now I know in advance this time, I know that in a second pass I am going to be sharpening the detail inside the image inside Photoshop,
02:22so as long as I am in Camera RAW, I just want to sharpen for the digital photography process and nothing more.
02:28So I am going to enter those same settings I showed you in a previous exercise, which are 0.6 for the Radius,
02:34lets go ahead and take the Detail value down to 0, so that we are not bringing up much noise inside the image.
02:40I am going to take the Masking value up to 30 once again.
02:45Now this image does actually have some weird stuff going on inside of it.
02:49If I zoom in very closely on the windshield, for example, you can see that we have some weird colors that are showing up around the edges
02:58of the windshield, and this is happening in other places inside of the image as well.
03:03Part of what I think might have happened here is that when this image was originally either converted from the RAW file format to JPEG,
03:10or when it was photographed as a JPEG file, the converter didnt end up running any kind of color noise reductions.
03:17So I am going ahead and apply the standard 25 value here, the standard 25 color value.
03:22That does take some of the color out of that windshield.
03:26Now I am going to go ahead and scroll upward towards the top of the image.
03:32You can see in the top right corner of the image, let me go ahead and move up here, we don't have scrollbars inside of Camera RAW,
03:39so it does takes some time to get to different locations when we are working at the 400% zoom ratio.
03:45You might be able to make out that we have a little bit of magenta going along the top of these windows, and once again,
03:50we are in the upper right hand corner of the image, and we have some cyan that's outlining the other portion of the windows as well.
03:57We can get rid of that by switching over to the Lens Corrections panel, and I could fool around with the Chromatic Aberrations slider bars,
04:04they don't turn out to do that much good where this image is concerned. What does a fair amount of good,
04:10it's subtle once again, but it does work,
04:12is to switch Defringe from Off to All Edges. And did you see that? We just got rid of a lot of coloring that's going on inside of those windows.
04:21If we zoom out a little bit, I think that's a better idea to zoom out and then scroll down here to the cab, and then of course zoom back in,
04:28you will see that we have taken some of the color out of the edges of that windshield as well.
04:32Its not completely remedied, we still have a few color artifacts going on, but its much better than it was before.
04:38Alright, so those are the settings I am going to apply.
04:40Once again, set defringe to all edges, and then inside of the Detail panel we have got Radius-0.6, Detail-0, Masking-30, Color-25.
04:51One change that I do suggest you make, I think the Amount value is a little too high here, lets go ahead and knock that down to about 60,
04:58its going to do better where this image is concerned.
05:00Then I want you to press the Shift key and click on the Open Object button, down there at the bottom of the dialog box,
05:07in order to open the image as a Camera RAW Smart Object inside Photoshop.
05:13Alright, so we have now successfully sharpened for the source, I believe anyway, and we are now going to move on to sharpening
05:21for the detail inside of this high frequency image in the next exercise.
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Using Smart Sharpen for cityscapes
00:00In this exercise I am going to show how to sharpen a high frequency image using the Smart Sharpen filter.
00:05So whereas High Pass is best for low frequency portraits,
00:09Smart Sharpen is best for your high frequency cityscapes and your high frequency landscapes and so on.
00:16Now if you want to catch up with me, I am working inside of a document called High freq cityscape.PSD,
00:21that's found inside of the 06_For_Detail folder and I have zoomed the image in to the 100% zoom ratio,
00:28so that we are not seeing any weird jagged edges, which we would see at 66.7 and 33.3 and so on and you can see
00:35that I have got a Smart Object here inside of the Layers palette.
00:39Lets go ahead and start things up.
00:41Before we apply the Smart Sharpen filter as a Smart Filter, lets go ahead and load a selection outline that will serve as the base filter mask.
00:49I am going to go over to Channels palette here and I am just going to load the green channels, without looking at these channels I am just going
00:55to go ahead and load the green channel because that is going to be our detail channel.
00:58So Ctrl+click or Command+click on that green thumbnail there inside the Channels palette.
01:04Now switch back to the Layers palette and I want you to go up to the Filter menu, choose Sharpen and then choose Smart Sharpen and you will bring
01:13up the Smart Sharpen dialog box. And these are the settings that I want you to apply, believe it or not, they seem like they are completely
01:20over the top settings, but I want you to apply an Amount value of 250%. That is a good setting.
01:26All these settings are in fact are good settings for high frequency images across the board.
01:31So you may want to vary them to taste, but these are some good day settings for you.
01:35An Amount value of 250%, a radius of 1.0 pixel, Remove set to Lens Blur and More Accurate turned On.
01:43So that we are basically double sharpening the image right here inside of Smart Sharpen.
01:50Alright. Then go ahead and click OK. Don't worry about switching over to Advanced and don't save your settings, no sense in doing any of that stuff,
01:56just go ahead and click OK, in order to accept those modifications and bear in mind that we are going
02:02to be subjecting these Smart Sharpen settings to a filter mask right there.
02:08So this is what the image looks like without that Smart Sharpen filter.
02:14This is what the image looks like with the application of the Smart Sharpen filter, so a lot of stuff going on here.
02:19I am going to go ahead and zoom in, now notice that we are sharpening the heck out the noise inside the image.
02:26We are bringing out a ton of noise inside, what ought to be the super smooth areas, for example, along the sides of the cabs.
02:33We should not see detail, popping out of those areas and that is the function of this aggressive application of the Smart Sharpen filter.
02:41It is bringing out this noise.
02:43What we need to do now is convert our mask, our green luminance mask, we need to convert it into an edge mask, so we are protecting these regions
02:51and I am going to show you, how to create such a mask and how to action the creation of the mask,
02:56so that you can apply it very easily in the future, in the next exercise.
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Actioning a high-frequency edge mask
00:00In this exercise I am going to show you how to create a high frequency edge mask here inside Photoshop and we are going
00:06to save the creation the edge mask is in action so that you can play it back very easily in the future.
00:12Now I am still working inside that same High freq cityscape.PSD image that I opened and modified using the Smart Sharpen filter in a previous exercise
00:21and in this exercise what we are going to do is, we are going to Alt+click or Option+click on the filter mask in order
00:28to display the filter mask on screen here, so that we can keep track about modifications.
00:33Notice that I am way zoomed in on this left hand cab, I will go ahead and zoom out a little bit to the 100% zoom ratio.
00:40Lets go over to the actions palette once again you should still be working, if you have been working along
00:44with me you should have a sharpening actions folders and action set that you created
00:49and you should have an action already made that's called LF edge mask, I am actually going to call that LoF edge mask
00:56so that I can keep track of it a little bit more easily.
00:59Alright. Lets create another action this time by clicking on the sharpening action set to make sure that were adding this new action
01:06to the sharpening action set, then I will click on a little new page icon, and I will call this one HiF edge mask,
01:13so that I know its a high frequency edge mask and I will click record in order to begin the recording of this action.
01:19Now we've already got the filter mask selected and displayed on screen, so I am not going to have a problem
01:23with recording the selection of that mask as a step.
01:28I am just going to I'mmediately set about modifying it now because this is a high frequency image we don't need
01:35to apply the median filter first in order to thicken up or goo up those edges.
01:40We are just going to dig right in with the Find Edges functions.
01:44So go up to the Filter menu, choose Stylize and choose Find Edges and the reason by the way that we are not applying the median filter is
01:51because we have so many tiny details nested right next to each other median would end up destroying those transitions.
01:58Alright. So lets go ahead and apply Find Edges and that's going to of course find all the edges inside of the image.
02:04We need to invert our mask, so that the edges are white and non-edges are black you do that by pressing Ctrl+I or Command+I on the Mac.
02:14Now again we do not have to visit the levels Command because if you were to bring up levels, so I'll go ahead and press Ctrl+L or Command+L
02:21on the Mac, you'll see that you have tapering group of colors here inside this histogram that goes all the way to white
02:28and we have some very strong whites over here on the right hand side of the histogram as well.
02:33So theres no reason to modify the histogram at this point because we didnt apply the median filter in advance.
02:39So just go and cancel out it there and because you clicked the cancel button, levels is not reordered as a step inside the action.
02:46The only other modification we need to apply is a little bit of blur, I just want to slightly blur our edge mask at this point.
02:54We don't thicken up the edges, because again we have very tight details inside this image.
02:58So lets go up to the Filter menu, choose Blur and then choose Gaussian Blur and I want you to apply a low Radius value just one pixel,
03:06will do the trick and then click OK and that's all there is to it.
03:10Now just go ahead and click on the stop button so these far fewer steps involved
03:14in creating a high frequency edge mask than a low frequency edge mask and we are now done.
03:21There is our high frequency edge mask action.
03:23Now you can go ahead and back step, if you want to bring to, lets bring up the History palette and we'll back step to before Find Edges
03:29to this step that says, Enable all Smart Filters right there.
03:32Now lets switch back to actions and lets go ahead and apply our HiF Edge mask action by Alt+clicking. First of all we need to make sure
03:41that we are editing the right portion of the document.
03:43So Alt+Click or Option+Click on the filter mask here inside the Layers palette and then select your action and click on the Play button
03:52in order to play it and you should have this nice filter mask right there.
03:56Alright. Lets go ahead and hide the action palette Alt+Click or Option+Click once again on this filter mask in order
04:03to display the full color RGB image and you can see that we have smooth the way much of the noise that were bringing out using Smart Sharpen.
04:12So this is what the Smart Sharpen effect looks like. Before I Shift+click on that edge mask, I'll turn it off and you can see
04:19that were bringing out all kinds of noise inside the image.
04:21So lets zoom in even farther so you can see how much noise is brought out, its just terrible actually
04:27and I'll Shift+click again it turned the layer mask on and all that the noise goes away,
04:31as a function of that the high frequency edge mask, its a wonderful thing.
04:34Now lets see what the image looks like with and without the Smart Sharpen Filter, this is without and this is with.
04:41So you can see you are not harming the smooth edges of the cab at all, we are just bringing out the actual edge detail.
04:48Now we are bringing in out too much because we have bunch of clipped highlights and shadows that were also bringing out a lot of color noise.
04:55Now we are going to take care of both of those problems with a very simple blending modification in the next exercise.
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Downplaying color artifacts and clipping
00:00Alright. So here we are looking at the obnoxiously sharpened image at this point and in case you want
00:05to bring that obnoxiously sharpened image up on your screen.
00:09I've saved a catch up document called Smart Sharpen and edge mask.PSD which is found inside of the 06_For_Detail folder.
00:17Now it's an over the top sharpening effect.
00:20It looks pretty nasty on screen at this point.
00:23Despite the fact that we have this wonderful edge mask in play.
00:27Some of the reasons are, if we zoom in on the cab here, you can see that we have got some pretty nasty edges going on.
00:34For one thing, we have a lot of color artifacts showing up.
00:37For example, along the side of this shadow that's being cast by the mirror, the rear view mirror here.
00:44It's got a very harsh edge, as you can see, and we've red going along one side of the edge and sort of blue going on,
00:51a little bit of blue going on the left side of the edge.
00:54So we have that color artifact.
00:56We also have some clipped highlights and some clipped shadows so some very nasty halos going on inside of the image.
01:04We can temper both of those problems to a certain extent. We don't want to completely get rid off our halos, we just want to down play them
01:11and we will do that by changing the blending options.
01:14So go over to the Layers palette and you'll see that you have in the case this image anyway, I've got the cabs and the city Smart Object,
01:22then I've the Smart Sharpen filter applied to it as the Smart Filter of course, and I've got the Filter Mask.
01:28Next to the word Smart Sharpen, it's a little blending icon, go ahead and double click on it to bring up the Blending Options dialog box
01:35and it may take a moment and you may get this progress bar because there's a lot going on inside of this image,
01:40aggressive application of the Smart Sharpen filter with the More Accurate check box on, which takes more time to apply.
01:47Now I want you to change mode from Normal to, of course, Luminosity. Right, that's the first step in order to get rid of the color artifacting
01:56and notice how that just went away. We got rid of that weird red edge there and we down played the blue edge as well.
02:02So we still have a little bit of coloring going on but not nearly what we've before.
02:06Next, I want you to change the Opacity value to 66%.
02:10This is going to workout beautifully for us and you can see how those clipped wide edges, go back into the visual range.
02:17So they are no longer cliped, they are no longer absolute white.
02:20They are now obvious highlights, but they are visible highlights.
02:23Alright. AlSo by the way, we have down played the shadows, so that helps and I'll click OK in order to accept that modification.
02:30So just to give you a sense of what a big difference that very simple change made, this is before- see how we have got those edges going on.
02:38I'll zoom in even farther so you can really check it out there.
02:41You can see those brightly colored edges and you can see those blown highlights as well and this is after much more tempered,
02:49I shouldn't say much because it is a fairly subtle effect, but it makes a big difference.
02:53I'm going to press Ctrl+Alt+0 or Command+Option+0 to zoom out to the 100% view size and just so we have a sense of what we have accomplished here,
03:01this is the image as it appears without all of the Smart Sharpen stuff going on and this is the image after applying Smart Sharpen.
03:10So even though we've applied these very aggressive settings its a fairly subtle modification even at a 100%
03:18and if you zoom out a 50% its a subtle modification indeed.
03:22This is before and this is after, but it does make a difference.
03:26It does sharpen up those tiny little details inside of the image.
03:30I'm going to go ahead and Shift+Tab away my palettes and zoom out to 25% so we can take in the entire sharpened cityscape and you can see
03:38at this sides here, this is not an over-sharpened image at all and in fact, it will print very well, especially
03:45after we add an application of output sharpening in a couple of chapters.
03:49In the next exercise, we are going to take a quick look at a medium frequency image and then after that we are going
03:55to see how we can balance multiple images sharpened for details and multiple images on multiple layers at the same time.
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Sharpening a medium-frequency image
00:00In this exercise, we are going to take a quick look at how you go about sharpening a medium-frequency image which can mean one or two things.
00:07Either you have an image that contains a lot of high-frequency details and a lot of low-frequency details, and you are trying to strike a balance
00:14between the two; or the image contains really neither rapidly transitioning luminance levels nor gradually transitioning luminance levels
00:23but something in between.
00:26Now before we venture into our medium-frequency image, I want you to go back to the bridge and find that cabs
00:32and buildings.jpg file that's inside the 06 for detail folder and notice that it now has some Camera RAW settings associated with it.
00:39That's not necessarily a bad thing but if you want to clear them out, because after all you ostensibly went ahead and saved your modifications
00:46as a native .PSD document and you have access to those Camera RAW settings inside of the Camera RAW Smart Object.
00:53Then you can go ahead and clear out these settings, and I am going to go ahead and do that by right-clicking on the cabs and buildings.jpg thumbnail
01:01and choosing Develop Settings and then choosing the Clear Settings command, and those settings go away.
01:07Now if I were to double-click on this jpeg file, I would open it normally inside Photoshop without going through Camera RAW.
01:14Alright, I am going to scroll down the list here until I come to this image right here called Mars machine.jpg.
01:20Now this image does have some high-frequency details such as the gravel in the foreground there and it has some low-frequency details
01:29such as these rocks; these gradually transitioning rocks and of course, this gradient sort of fog in the background,
01:36but most of whats going on here inside this image is medium-frequency details.
01:41So we have neither rapidly transitioning luminance levels nor gradually transitioning luminance levels, but something in between.
01:48Now I am going to tell you two things about this image; first of all, it comes to us from this guy named Andre Volodin
01:54with iStockphoto.com. It's an amazing image as you can see here.
01:58Now I am going to make no attempt to sharpen for source where this image is concerned because I have no idea what the source is.
02:06Presumably, this image was not shot with a digital camera, although I don't know that for sure;
02:11it could be a model setup, it could be a 3D rendering; I really don't know.
02:15Alright, so what I am going to do is just go ahead and double-click on Mars machine.jpg to open it up inside Photoshop.
02:21The next thing I am going to do is I am going to bring up my Layers palette and I am going to convert this layer to a Smart Object.
02:28Because I didn't bring it through Camera RAW, it's not a Smart Object to begin with, so lets go and convert it to a Smart Object by clicking
02:34on little palette menu icon and choosing Convert to Smart Object, and then I am going to go ahead and name it something along the lines
02:41of vehicle, something like that, then press the Enter key.
02:44Alright, next, I am going to go to the Channels palette and I am going to Ctrl+Click or Command+Click
02:50on the green channel in order to load it as a selection outline.
02:54Now lets move back to the Layers palette, I'll go on to the Filter menu and I am going
02:59to choose Sharpen and once again I am going to choose Smart Sharpen.
03:02Smart Sharpen is the better Command for not only high-frequency images, but medium-frequency images as well.
03:09The reason is because I want to leave that More Accurate checkbox on; in fact, I am only going to making a couple of minor modifications I am going
03:15to take the Amount value down from 250% down to 200% and I am going to raise the Radius value from 1.0 to 1.5 pixels.
03:24I am going to leave Remove set to Lens Blur; otherwise, no other modifications, so just those two values slightly altered.
03:31Then I am going to go ahead and click on OK in order to accept that application of the Smart Sharpen filter.
03:38Now I am going to Alt+Click or Option+Click on the filter mask right there, and I am going to bring up my Actions palette.
03:47Now I have gone ahead and created a HiF edge mask, a high-frequency edge mask action, and I did that a couple of exercises back.
03:55If you also created such an action, then all you need to do is go ahead and select it and play it,
04:00because that high-frequency edge mask action is going to work very well for a medium-frequency action as well.
04:05So go ahead and play that action and you'll see this edge mask right there.
04:09Alright, now Alt+Click or Option+Click on the Filter Mask thumbnail again in order to return to the full color RGB image.
04:17Now lets zoom-in on the image, so that we're seeing it at the 100% zoom ratio.
04:21I am going to double-click on the little blend icon to the right of the word "Smart Sharpen" in order to display the Blending Options dialog box.
04:30I am going to change Mode to Luminosity and I am going to change the Opacity value to 66%, just like we saw with high-frequency.
04:38So almost all the steps are exactly the same as they were before;
04:41the only modification is we're to take the Amount value down and bring the Radius value up.
04:47Now I'll go ahead and click OK to accept that change and this is the sharpened version of this Mars vehicle.
04:55So this is what it looked like before, the unsharpened version of the vehicle as you can see here, I'll go ahead and zoom-in a little bit
05:01so we can see it more clearly, and this is the sharpened version of the vehicle right there.
05:06So an examination of how to sharpen a medium-frequency image inside a Photoshop.
05:13In the next exercise, we will take a look at how to sharpen an image that contains multiple layers
05:19with both low-frequency and high-frequency elements.
05:22Stay tuned!
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Sharpening a layered composition
00:00In this exercise, I am going to show you how to sharpen a layered composition
00:03that contains both low-frequency and high-frequency imagery mixed together.
00:09One such file as this one right here. It's called Album cover.PSD.
00:12Its found inside of the 06 for detail folder and i'ts the cover art for an imaginary album from an imaginary group called
00:21"Outrage by June" right here, and notice what we've got.
00:26We have a handful of layers as well as these vector objects up top.
00:30So if you were to turn off this top group, you could see that it contains the bar that's sort of greenish yellowish bar down the center,
00:38and it also contains all the text elements and incidentally, you might get a warning.
00:42You might get a warning that's telling you that you don't have the fonts required to work with this document.
00:46Don't worry about that.
00:47As long as you are not editing the text, it won't make any difference.
00:50So just go ahead and click OK or Ignore or whatever it wants you to click.
00:54Anyway, I am going to go ahead and turn those objects back on.
00:56Obviously, were not going to be sharpening the objects inside of that vector objects group.
01:00Because you don't want to sharpen highly-graphic objects such as rectangles for example nor do you want to sharpen text.
01:06You just want to stick with the imagery itself -- the photographic imagery.
01:10In that case, the photographic imagery includes these guys right here - yowo, which is short for young woman of course, and then rock
01:19and the rock image is colorized using a gradient map layer right there.
01:25Both of these layers are Smart Objects that are processed inside of Camera RAW.
01:30Now it might be tempting to go ahead and sharpen each one of these Smart Objects independently of each other.
01:37For example, you could sharpen the portrait using the High-Pass filter and you could sharpen the rocks using the Smart Sharpen filter.
01:44The reason I am not going to recommend you work that way is because I have already accounted for the fact that one image is low-frequency
01:51and one image is high-frequency inside of Camera RAW.
01:54The old school way that I showed you in the previous chapter.
01:57That is to say, I'll go ahead and double-click on yowo here in order to open Camera RAW and we'll switch over to the Detail panel.
02:05By the way, I should tell you this beautiful image here comes to us from photographer, Gabriel Estey, iStockphoto.com.
02:13Notice I followed my advice from the previous chapter which is when sharpening low-frequency images you want to combine a low Amount value 40
02:21in this case with a relatively high Radius value 1.5, a low Detail value, in this case 25 and a relatively high masking value.
02:30Actually its kind of a medium-masking value of 35.
02:33So I have already accounted for the fact that this is a portrait shot, that it's a low-frequency portrait shot.
02:40If you want to see what that means, I'll go ahead and zoom-in at the image so we can see it
02:44at the 100% zoom size and we can see the sharpening that's applied.
02:48So if I were to crank the Amount value down to 0, this is what the unsharpened version of the image looks like.
02:53Take it back up to 40%, this is the sharpened version of the portrait.
02:59Alright, I am just going to cancel out because I didn't make any changes inside of this dialog box.
03:04Meanwhile, the rock image, if you double-click on it in order to bring up the Camera RAW dialog box here; lets go ahead and press Ctrl+Alt+0
03:11or Command+Option+0 on the Mac in order to zoom the image to the 100% zoom ratio.
03:15I'll switch over to my Detail panel, and you notice again I am following my advice, I am combining --
03:21well with one exception, I am combining a fairly low Amount value,
03:24I'll come back to that in a moment,
03:25with a low Radius value, a high Detail value and a low Masking value.
03:30So we are doing the opposite number that we do with the low-frequency image.
03:33Now the reason I am keeping the Amount value pretty low is because of that gradient map layer.
03:38That gradient map layer has a penchant for actually increasing the sharpness of the image.
03:45So you'll notice- lets go ahead and find a detail actually that's visible inside of the layered composition.
03:51This rock right here once its embedded in your memory for just a moment; remember what it looks like.
03:56Oh, and by the way, I want to show you one other thing about this image.
03:59I do have some chromatic aberration modifications going on, that make a big difference in terms of the perceived sharpness of the image.
04:07So lets go ahead scroll over to the upper left image for a moment.
04:12Notice what happens if I change this value to 0 and press Tab, we get a fuzzier looking rock,
04:19and especially after I apply the colorization using the gradient map layer, it ends up just translating to a little bit of fuzziness.
04:26Here of course were seeing separate colors, but once we colorize it, we wont see those colors anymore.
04:31So it does a world of good to adjust your chromatic aberration settings.
04:36Make sure that you have all your colors in alignment, I want to make sure that you do that on a regular basis.
04:42Alright, anyway I am going to go ahead and scroll over to the right, once again to find out one rock, where is it? Oh heck,
04:49lets go ahead and zoom at, forgive me here, every once in a while.
04:51There it is.
04:52Alright, that's the rock that I am thinking of because this is the rock that were going to be able to see over inside the layered image.
05:00Alright So kind of burn this in your mind, it's a little bit sharp looking, not super-shape.
05:05Lets go back to my Detail settings.
05:07If I take this value down to 0, you can see that is definitely softer than this right here.
05:12But normally, I would sharpen it to about this level, to about a 100%.
05:16So we get that kind of sharpening with her high-frequency details, right? But in this case, I am not going to go that high.
05:21As I say, well kind of keep it medium, just a little bit tempered and when I click Cancel to go back to the layered image,
05:28take a look at how sharp that rock appears on screen here.
05:32It's a much sharper looking rock than what we saw before.
05:35Again, that's a function of this gradient map layer because we are squishing the luminance levels essentially and I am modifying them fairly radically.
05:42That ends up creating the perception of sharpness as well.
05:46Alright, so anyway we've got these two different styles of images that we need to accommodate in one sharpening operation.
05:54I've already taken care of sharpening her as a low-frequency image and the rocks as a high-frequency image.
05:59So the detail sharpening that we are applying here inside Photoshop can be applied to all of these images at once.
06:05So I am going to click on one, I am going to Shift+click on gradmap in order to select this entire group of objects right there.
06:13Do not select the vector objects group.
06:15Leave it out but select everything else.
06:17Then go ahead and convert this to a Smart Object.
06:21So group them all into one-layer Smart Object, and you can of course do that by choosing the command from the Layers palette menu and I am going
06:27to go ahead and rename this Smart Object Frequencies here like so.
06:31Notice if I go ahead and double-click on this frequencies Smart Object here, on that Smart Object thumbnail,
06:37I will see the actual images that are involved in the Smart Object, all of the layers and they are appearing un-cropped as well.
06:45So this is the un-cropped original version of these layers.
06:48So a Smart Object- the point I am trying to make here is that Smart Object can contain multiple layers including adjustment layers and so on.
06:54Alright, I am going to go ahead and close out of this Smart Object so that we are looking at the album cover.
07:01In the next exercise, now that we've created the Smart Object and I've shown you the settings
07:05that are going on in the background inside of Camera RAW.
07:08In the next exercise, we are going to set about sharpening the detail inside of these layers.
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Sharpening for multiple frequencies
00:00 In this final exercise of the chapter I am going to show you how to sharpen for multiple frequencies in a single operation here inside Photoshop.
00:10 Now you may recall on the previous exercise we went ahead and opened this image its called Album cover.PSD.
00:14 Its found inside the 06 for detail folder, and I selected the bottom three layers in the stack,
00:20 combined them into a single Smart Object that I renamed "frequencies".
00:23 Now the image on the left is already been sharpened inside of Camera RAW as a low-frequency image,
00:29 and the image on right has been sharpened inside of Camera RAW as a high-frequency image.
00:34 We're now going to sharpen both of these images inside of a single Smart Object
00:37 with a single Smart Filter, and that Smart Filter is going to be High-Pass.
00:42 Here is the reason. I am not going to apply Smart Sharpen.
00:45 I am definitely not going to apply the More Accurate checkbox. Why? Because we have a portrait shot here.
00:51 Anytime you have a face shot you do not want to use the More Accurate checkbox.
00:56 You better bet is to use high-frequency.
00:58 So regardless of the fact that a low-frequency image plus a high-frequency image really gives you medium-frequency,
01:04 because we have a head shot in here because we have a portrait, we are going to stick with High Pass.
01:10 But before I apply any filter, I am going to go ahead and load a channel as a selection outline so that we have a base filter mask.
01:18 I am going to go over to the Channels palette and I am going to go ahead and load green actually, but before I do that - whoops!
01:24 One thing I need to get rid of is the text.
01:26 Because notice that all of the channels show up is composite.
01:30 If I switch over to green channel it is a composite of all of the layers mixed together.
01:34 So what I need to do is show only those layers I want to see.
01:37 So I am going to turn off the vector objects for the meantime here,
01:41 that vector objects groups so that were not seeing the text or the bar through the center of the album cover.
01:47 Then I am going to go over to the Channels palette and I am going to Control+click or Command+click
01:52 on that green channel in order to load it as a selection outline.
01:56 Now lets go back to Layers, make sure that frequencies object is selected, go up to the Filter menu, choose Other and choose High-Pass.
02:05 This time around I am going to go ahead and take the Radius value down to 3 pixels because we are trying
02:10 to sharpen not only portrait shot but also these high-frequency rocks here.
02:14 I need something of a medium, sort of a middle-ground Radius value, 3, will suit my needs quite nicely.
02:21 Now I'll go ahead and click OK.
02:23 I will of course at this point go ahead and double-click on the Blending option right there and I'll change the Mode from Normal
02:29 to Overlay, in order to get this effect right there.
02:33 Alright, now I am going to click OK in order accept that modification.
02:37 Now go to the filter mask, you might as well go ahead and Alt+click or Option+click on that filter mask in order
02:42 to view the filter mask independently of the rest of the image.
02:45 I am going to bring up my Actions palette; you may have recorded a few actions in advance according to my instructions in the previous exercises.
02:52 If you have your low-frequency edge mask action ready and waiting there then go ahead and select it and click on the play button.
03:00 Now you might well wonder, why are we using the low-frequency edge mask instead
03:04 of the high-frequency edge mask? Once again because we have the portrait.
03:08 We're going to favor the low-frequency portrait.
03:10 I always tend to favor the portrait over the high-frequency details if there is a portrait in the shot.
03:16 Alright, now I'll go ahead and close the Actions palette, lets go ahead and alt+click or option+click on that filter mask
03:23 in order to restore the full color version of the image.
03:26 Lets go ahead and zoom-in actually to the 100% of the zoom ratio.
03:31 This is what the image looks like without the High Pass filter, and this is what it looks like with the High Pass filter.
03:38 So it does make a difference, it is going in there and sharpening both the low frequency and high-frequency details inside of this album cover art.
03:46 I am going to go ahead and zoom-out in order to take in the entire image, so lets go ahead and turn back on the vector objects group.
03:52 Here is the final album cover, the final sharpened album cover.
03:56 Thanks to the combination of sharpening the images, the independent images inside of Camera RAW, combining the layers into a single Smart Object
04:04 and then sharpening those Smart Objects together using the High-Pass filter.
04:09
04:10
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7. Sharpening for Effect
Who needs dull when you have sharp?
00:00Quick true story. On the way over here to this location, we don't live here, so we have to drive over, we got rear-ended.
00:07This guy hit us pretty hard, and I got a sharp pain in my neck. Seriously, which seems only fitting really.
00:14I mean if I am going to have pain, it ought to be sharp. I mean what's the point of dull pain.
00:19It is like a dull photograph.
00:20It's too easy to ignore.
00:23See how I did that, I brought it back to the topic at hand: sharpening images.
00:27Don't try like kind of tricky stuff on your own. It's too dangerous and I should know.
00:32I was just in an automobile accident with a real policeman and everything.
00:36Play it safe.
00:37Try the following creative techniques, designed to accentuate the details in your photos that need accentuating most, and you should be just fine.
00:45I have got a sharp pain in my neck.
00:48The following exercises are my chance to return a favor and be a sharp pain in your neck.
00:53Enjoy.
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Focusing in on a person’s eyes
00:00We are going to start things off with one of the most common effects that you can create using the sharpening filters inside Photoshop
00:08and that is focusing in on the eyes inside of a portrait shot.
00:13For example, consider this image right here.
00:15We are going to start with the photograph that you see before you, here inside the video,
00:19and we are going to end up with this effect, in which we are highlighting the eyes.
00:23Let me go ahead and zoom in a little bit more so that we can see this effect a little more clearly.
00:29So this is the original version of the image right here and this is the effect that we are going for.
00:34You can see not only are we are focusing on those eyes, but we are also blurring away much of the detail around the eyes
00:41and it's a pretty significant blur, but my guess is most folks are not going to see that blur very much.
00:47They are mostly going to be seeing the focus that you have applied to the eyes and the advantage here is that you are steering the viewer.
00:55You are showing the viewer exactly what you want them to look at.
00:58You are forcing them to look at those eyes and this piercing gaze that we are getting from this image.
01:03So you are in charge of the photographic experience, which of course, is very important.
01:08Alright! So I am going to go ahead and return to the original here and by the way, the original version of this image is known as Piercing gaze.PSD.
01:15Its found inside of the 07 For Effect folder and it comes to us from Redondo Beach, California-based photographer, Tom Young of iStockphoto.com.
01:26And I am going to bring up my Layers palette so we can take a look at what's going on. Notice here inside the Layers palette,
01:31I have a layer called gypsy and this happens to be a Smart Object and as you might guess, it's a Camera RAW Smart Object. And I should admit
01:38to you something. As I am working on this image, I have only been taking this very disciplined approach to opening my jpeg files inside
01:46of Camera RAW and then transferring them to Photoshop as Smart Objects for about, I say about, six months now I have been doing this.
01:54I cannot tell you what a difference that has made in my creative experience.
01:58I have to tell you something I very, very much recommend and let me show you why.
02:02Not only am I making some sharpening modifications to this image, I am making some color modifications as well.
02:08So I am going to go ahead and double click on this Smart Object here inside the Layers palette, so bring up the Camera RAW dialog box
02:13and you can see she has got this old Star Trek-type quality to her, doesn't she? I think she does. And you can see that in addition
02:21to the detail modifications that I have applied, now go ahead and zoom in on her eyes here at the 100% zoom level,
02:27and we are just applying some slight sharpening modifications.
02:31This is the original version of the image, just slightly softer and this is the sharpened version,
02:36just 25% sharpening, a Radius of 0.6, Detail 25, Masking 0.
02:41It is just enough to accommodate the digital photography experience, that demosaicing process. And then I also went ahead
02:47and applied Color noise reduction of 25 right here, but the larger thing that I did to this image, the larger modification was to the color.
02:56I am going to go and switch back to the Basic panel.
02:58Now when you opening JPEG image inside Camera RAW for the first time, you are going to see, for any JPEG image,
03:03you are going to see all of these values here inside the Basic panels, zero-d out; they are all going to say zero.
03:08So you can see, I have made several modifications here.
03:11I am going to go ahead and zoom my way back out so that we can take in the entire image.
03:15The reason I did this was because the original image looked like this; let me show you, that was the original version of the image.
03:22More or less, there are some other modifications going on that I am leaving in place here, but the temperature and the tint were just way off.
03:29The image is too yellow, its too greenish. It's a very powerful image but the colors were kind of a mess actually and Camera RAW allowed me
03:37to modify those colors more easily than any other functions inside Photoshop.
03:41In fact, I have to say, there really aren't any temperature and tint controls inside Photoshop other
03:46than those have become available to you inside the LAB mode.
03:49Otherwise, you are pretty much out of luck, except here inside Camera RAW. It does a brilliant job.
03:54So just to give you sense of what a difference is made, this is the change I was able to make just
03:59by modifying a couple of values here at the top of the Basic panel.
04:02Alright! Anyway I am going to go ahead and cancel out of the Camera RAW dialog box.
04:06In the next exercise, I am going to show you how to apply the Gaussian Blur effect and then after that,
04:12I am going to show you how to sharpen the eyes using a combination of a High Pass filter
04:16and believe or not, a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer.
04:20Stay tuned.
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Blurring the area outside the eyes
00:00Alright, gang this is what we've got.
00:02This is what we are going for.
00:04So lets get started here.
00:05We are going to start things off by applying the Gaussian Blur filter to a limited portion of the image to the area around the eyes.
00:12So I am going to restore the original version of the image which is called Piercing gaze.PSD from photographer, Tom Young,
00:19and you will find this image inside the 07 for_effect folder.
00:23I have a Smart Object already waiting for me here.
00:26So I am bound to create a nondestructive modification using a Smart Filter and the Smart Filter that I am going to apply is Gaussian Blur.
00:33I am going to up to the Filter menu, choose Blur and by the way note that only one filter, only one Blur filter,
00:40is not available to you and that is the Lens Blur filter.
00:43You cannot apply Lens Blur as a Smart Filter.
00:46So our next best bet for blurring is Gaussian Blur.
00:50I am going to go ahead and choose that command and I am going to raise the Gaussian Blur value to 8 pixels,
00:55so I am applying quite a bit of Gaussian Blur as you can see here.
00:59Then I am going to go ahead and click OK and Photoshop automatically assigns Gaussian Blur as a Smart Filter and provides me
01:06with the Filter Mask, so that I can limit the effect if I want to and of course, I do want to.
01:10I am going to go ahead and switch to the Elliptical Marquee tool right here, and then I am going to draw a general ellipse around pretty much
01:19to this portion of the image here, almost as if I were giving her something like a snorkel mask or scuba mask if you will.
01:26So this area is the portion of the area that I am going to select.
01:29It is more or less centered on the eyes as you can see and lets go ahead and switch over to the Filter Mask by clicking on it,
01:36here inside the Layers palette, and then I am going to check my foreground and background colors.
01:41My background color is currently set to black that is just fine by me.
01:44So I'll press Ctrl+Backspace or Command+Delete in order to fill my selection with black like so and that rules out Gaussian Blur
01:53from the area inside of the ellipse and you can see that I now have a black ellipse inside of my Filter Mask
01:59over here in the thumbnail inside the Layers palette.
02:02Alright, now press Ctrl+D or Command+D in the Mac in order to deselect the image, and we have something of a naturally sharp transition
02:10between the blurry and unblurry portions of the image.
02:14We need to go ahead and fuzz that up, create a gradual transition and we are going to do that using Gaussian Blur,
02:19but this time we are applying Gaussian Blur as a static adjustment to the Filter Mask.
02:24So what I want you to do is press Ctrl+Alt+F or Command+Option+F on the Mac to bring up the Gaussian Blur filter,
02:29and I am going to enter a Radius value of 120, so a very high Radius value.
02:34Now you should know at this point just a little bit of an aside here, notice how it a gradual transition between the blurry
02:41and unblurry portions of the image; that's a good thing.
02:44You may wonder why didn't I create the selection before I applied Gaussian Blur? Why didn't I select the elliptical area
02:51and then apply Gaussian Blur, so that Photoshop would automatically generate a black on white mask for me in advance?
02:58The reason I didn't work that way is because if I did, then the area outside of the canvass would have been treated as black and now would be blurring
03:06in on the edges and you would know what I mean, if you would gone ahead and applied things in a wrong order; it is a big mask actually.
03:13So this way we avoid that problem.
03:15I will go ahead and click OK in order to accept that modification and here is the blur outside of the blurry mask,
03:24applied very nicely; the eyes are still in very nice shape.
03:27Now I don't want all of her details out here to be completely blurry like this.
03:32I just want a heavy duty coating of blur, but I want the original unblurry details to show through just a little bit in the background.
03:40So I am going to double click on this little blending icon right there next to the where is Gaussian Blur in order to bring
03:45up the Blending Options dialog box, and I am going to change the Opacity to 70%; nothing more,
03:50I don't want you to apply a special blend mode, leave Mode set as Normal.
03:53We are just going to reduce the Opacity to 70% that allows some details to show through.
03:58So we just have a little bit of balance to the details just a little bit of blurry balance going
04:02on here, then click OK in order to accept that modification.
04:06Now just to give you a sense of what we have managed to accomplish inside of this exercise, this is the original version of the image
04:12and this is the modified Gaussian Blur version of the image.
04:16In the next exercise, we are going to go in and sharpen the eyes using the High Pass filter.
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Sharpening eyes and other details
00:00Now that we have blurred the general area around the eyes, we're going to focus in on the eyes.
00:05We're going to use the High Pass filter in order to improve the focus of the eyes and make them sizzle a little more inside the image.
00:12We are also going to sharpen the eyebrows and the lips, as it just so happens and recall this is the effect we are going for.
00:19By the way, this is the final version of the image, and you can see that the lips and the eyes and the eyebrows are lot stronger,
00:27but notice that we are just affecting the eyebrows, the eyes, and the lips, we're not affecting any of the other details.
00:32We're not going into the hair or any of the other stuffs.
00:34We're not going to use that generalized mask that we used for blur; that's not going to be good enough.
00:39We're going to have to create a different mask for this effect.
00:42Alright! So lets go ahead and reinstate the blurry parameter image right here, which happens to go by that name,
00:49if you are just joining me and you want to catch up.
00:51I've got an image called blurry parameter.PSD that's found inside of the 07 for effect folder.
00:57Alright! I am going to bring back my Layera palette here and what I want to do is I want to apply the High Pass filter, but if I am applying HighPass,
01:05it's going to become another Smart Filter that uses the exact same Filter Mask and that's no good.
01:10I cant use that Filter Mask for this next effect, so I need to create a nested Smart Object.
01:14So that this current Smart Object resides inside of another one, and I am going to do that by going over to the Layers palette,
01:20making sure that the Gypsy layer is active, which it is.
01:23Then, I'll go the Palette menu and I'll choose Convert to Smart Object.
01:26Now it already is a Smart Object, but when I choose Convert to Smart Object rather than getting mad at me, it'll just put this image inside
01:33of another Smart Object. And it might take a few moments to do it, but there we go, and its still going to be called "Gypsy".
01:39I am going to go ahead and call this one "gypsy 2" or something, just so that I know that there is another Smart Object inside of it.
01:45Now lets go up to the Filter menu and I want you to choose the Other command and I want you to choose High Pass.
01:52I am going to apply a fairly high Radius value, not this high. I am going to apply Radius value of 6-pixels, which is pretty high
02:01for this particular image because this image is something like a 4-megapixel image,
02:05I believe, four to five, something in that neighborhood.
02:07So it's not super high res, but its big enough that I'll go ahead and apply a fairly high Radius value because I really want
02:14to strengthen the detail inside of those eyes and eyebrows and so on.
02:18Then I'll click OK, and of course I am using High Pass because this is a portrait shot and High Pass is going to do the best work for me.
02:25Now obviously, I am going to go ahead and double-click on the little Blend icon in order to bring up the Blending Options dialog box
02:31and then I am going to change the Mode option from Normal to Overlay, as it is our want when we are using the High Pass filter,
02:38so that we're strengthening the details and blending the gray non-edges into the original flesh tones and so on.
02:45Then I'll click OK in order to accept that modification, so just you can see what we've done here.
02:50This is the before version of the image, this is the after version.
02:54So a fairly slight effect at this point, but this is pretty good looking I think.
02:59Now we are sharpening the entire image not just the eyes, you can see that if I turn it off and then back on again.
03:06So everything is getting sharpened including her pores, and her nose, and the nose hairs, and all that other junk that I don't want to sharpen.
03:12The various slight wrinkles under her eyes and over her eyes, as well the creases, I guess I would call them.
03:18So I just want to brush in the eyes.
03:20I am actually going to use the Paint Brush to pull this off, but for starters, I am going to click inside of the Filter Mask to make it active
03:26and then I am going to fill that Filter Mask with black, so that everything is hidden.
03:30So the entire effect is hidden for starters because most of the image should not be affected by the High Pass filter.
03:36Black is currently my background color, so I'll press Ctrl+Backspace or Command+Delete on the Mac in order
03:42to fill the Filter Mask with black, as you can see right here.
03:45Now lets go ahead and grab the Brush tool, which you can get by pressing the B key if you like, and I want a fairly large very soft brush.
03:53I'll go ahead and click to show you.
03:55I've got a master diameter currently of 150 pixels, that may not be a big enough actually,
03:59but the hardness, very important that the hardness is set to 0% right now.
04:02We want very soft transitions.
04:04Your mode should be set to Normal, Opacity should be a 100%, Flow is a 100% as well, and your Foreground color should be set to White, as it is for me.
04:12Now I am just going to set about painting over the eyes, just like that.
04:17That is all there is to it really and then, I might reduce the size of the paintbrush a little bit
04:21by pressing the left bracket key a couple of times and then I'll brush over the eyebrow.
04:26You really need to only brush over it once because the Opacity is set to a 100%.
04:31Now if you wanted to gradually paint in the details, you would lower the Opacity value and paint multiple times, but in our case,
04:37we might as well get the work done quickly with a single pass here of the Paint Brush and that takes care of that.
04:43Now if you go too far in any point in time, you can press the X key to swap the foreground and background colors and I might reduce the size
04:50of my brush a little bit, and then paint a way the effect like so by painting in black to paint over this crease here,
04:56so that I am not sharpening the crease, and then I'll also go down to lips.
04:59I will press the X key again in order to paint with white of course, to switch the foreground color to white,
05:04and then I'll just go ahead and paint over the lips and that's about it.
05:08If you want to emphasize this little sort of beauty mark right there, you could give it a click, whatever you want to do,
05:13and these are the sharpened versions of the eyes and the eyebrows and the mouth.
05:18Now I want to take this effect just a little bit farther.
05:21I want to really punch up the details here, particularly where the eyelashes and the eyebrows and the pupils area concerned here,
05:28and I am going to do that by darkening those details using a special application
05:33of an adjustment layer and well see how that works in the next exercise.
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Darkening the lashes and eyebrows
00:00 Alright gang, by now we have gone ahead and blurred the area outside of this womans eyes using the Gaussian Blur filter.
00:07 Then we went ahead and created another Smart Object, so that we that we had a Smart Object inside of a Smart Object, and we focused in on her eyes.
00:15 We went ahead sharpened her eyes and her eyebrows and her lips using the high pass filter, but that's not quite enough.
00:22 I want to really sell this effect by punching up the contrast that is associated with the eyelashes and the pupils and the eyebrows,
00:30 so that they become the darkest portion of the image.
00:33 Here's what I am talking about.
00:34</