1. How Sharpening Works in Photoshop CS4The effects of sharpening| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to give
you a sense for the effects of Sharpening
| | 00:03 | inside of Photoshop.
| | 00:05 | So in the unlikely event that you've
never witnessed Sharpening before, you'll
| | 00:08 | see it in just a few seconds. And for
those of you who have seen Sharpening
| | 00:13 | inside of Photoshop, you'll get a
sense for why it is so essential to the
| | 00:18 | imaging workflow,
| | 00:19 | why every image you work with
requires some degree of Sharpening inside of
| | 00:24 | Photoshop, not to compensate for it's
focus, but to support it's inherent focus.
| | 00:31 | So I'm working with this image
called Star eyes12x8.jpg. And it comes to us
| | 00:37 | from photographer Alexandra Alexis of
my istockphoto.com. And it's available to
| | 00:42 | those of you who are premium members of
the lynda.com Online Training Library,
| | 00:47 | or if you have access to the DVD
version of this series, then you have this
| | 00:52 | sample file as well.
| | 00:53 | And you can see that it is impeccably
focused, that is to say the portions of
| | 00:57 | the image that should be in focus are
in focus, and those portions that the
| | 01:01 | photographer has chosen to leave out of
focus, are out of focus, just the way the
| | 01:06 | photographer wants the image to look.
| | 01:09 | Now the whole point of Sharpening is
to make sure that that inherently sharp
| | 01:14 | focus remains intact throughout the
entire lifetime of the image, from the
| | 01:18 | moment of capture, through and
including all of the resampling and resizing
| | 01:23 | that we might do to the image, and then
of course, finally, outputting the image,
| | 01:27 | which introduces a little
bit of softness as well.
| | 01:30 | So, here's what I am going to do.
| | 01:31 | I am going to zoom in a little bit
so that we can take in those eyes.
| | 01:34 | And notice that this eye on the right,
her left eye, is in sharp focus. So sharp
| | 01:40 | that we can see this star shaped
strobe pattern right here in the iris.
| | 01:44 | Meanwhile the left-hand eye, her right,
is out of focus and this is of course a
| | 01:49 | choice that the photographer has made.
| | 01:51 | While the hairs in front of that are
sharply focused and then other details
| | 01:56 | inside of the image like these
background hairs are out of focus.
| | 01:59 | Everything that's out of focus
is going to remain out of focus.
| | 02:02 | I can't suddenly switch the depth of
field inside the image. I can take details
| | 02:06 | inside Photoshop and make them blurry,
but I cannot take blurry details and
| | 02:10 | make them sharp.
| | 02:11 | So, if the image is out of focus,
it's going to stay out of focus.
| | 02:14 | I hope that at least is understood.
| | 02:16 | All right.
| | 02:17 | So, let's say we want to sharpen this image.
| | 02:19 | We want to make it more tactile.
| | 02:21 | Then, I'll go to the Filter menu.
| | 02:23 | I'll choose the Sharpen command.
| | 02:24 | And then I'll choose a command
that I never ever use, Sharpen More.
| | 02:28 | And the whole reason I'm using it for
demonstrational purposes here, is just
| | 02:32 | because it will produce an effect and
we'll see what that effect is, and we
| | 02:34 | don't have to discuss any of the
underlying options or how anything works.
| | 02:39 | We will be discussing the much better
commands: Smart Sharpen, Unsharp Mask and
| | 02:44 | others in future portions of this
series, so never fear, we will get to the
| | 02:47 | good stuff.
| | 02:48 | But right now, I am just going to apply
Sharpen More. And you'll notice, perhaps,
| | 02:53 | the image changing here inside of the video.
| | 02:57 | Now, we downsample our videos here at
lynda.com in order to compress them,
| | 03:00 | so they are a nice size for online
delivery, so that they start playing
| | 03:04 | almost immediately.
| | 03:06 | And that's a good thing, however we do
lose a little bit of detail inside of
| | 03:10 | our images sometimes.
| | 03:12 | So what I'm going to do is zoom way in
on this eye and I am going to take it up
| | 03:16 | to the 200% view size right here, so
that we can really see the difference.
| | 03:21 | Now this is the before version of the image.
| | 03:24 | Notice the sharpness of the detail right now.
| | 03:27 | We can see every single one of these eyelashes.
| | 03:30 | So it's not like we are hurting for detail.
| | 03:31 | We can see everything just fine.
| | 03:33 | We can see these lights inside of her iris.
| | 03:36 | I mean how much more could we
ask for than to see reflections in
| | 03:38 | somebody's iris.
| | 03:40 | But after I apply the Sharpen More
command, and this is the after version of
| | 03:44 | the image right here,
| | 03:45 | you can see that things
are really super-tactile.
| | 03:49 | And we are seeing not only all of
these eyelashes, but we were seeing slight
| | 03:53 | halos around those
eyelashes, slight light halos.
| | 03:56 | And I'll tell you about those and why
those are contributing to our perception
| | 04:00 | of sharpness in the very next exercise.
| | 04:03 | But for now just know that they are.
| | 04:05 | You sometimes hear an image like
this called 'Over-sharpened,' because we've
| | 04:08 | gone too far with it.
| | 04:10 | It's gotten crunchy or brittle.
| | 04:12 | We have jagged little sort
of edge transitions going on.
| | 04:15 | The thing is, you have to bear in
mind that we are ultimately going to be
| | 04:18 | printing that image.
| | 04:19 | And as we print it, we are
compressing more and more pixels into a
| | 04:23 | smaller amount of space, and we
need that crunchiness in order for the
| | 04:28 | details to survive here.
| | 04:30 | All right, I'll go ahead and check
out a couple of other details inside
| | 04:32 | this image.
| | 04:33 | For example, let's take a
look at the nose right here.
| | 04:36 | Now before, we've got this nose.
| | 04:39 | And we're awfully darn close to this
woman's nostril at this point, but for
| | 04:42 | a good reason.
| | 04:43 | You can see a little bit of hair and a
little bit of pore detail, but as soon as
| | 04:48 | you sharpen, the after version right here,
we can see a lot of pores. We can see
| | 04:53 | fine hairs all over the place, on
top of the nostril, inside the nostril.
| | 04:57 | We all have hairs all over the place
and the reason I'm bringing this up is
| | 05:01 | because sharpening not only brings out,
not only what we would term to be good
| | 05:05 | details like the eyelashes, but also
bad details like body hair that we might
| | 05:09 | not want to have seen.
| | 05:11 | So you have to be aware of
sharpness from a cosmetic vantage point.
| | 05:16 | Then again, we are going to see great
details, for example, on the top of the
| | 05:18 | lip here.
| | 05:19 | We are not seeing much detail inside of
the mouth. We are seeing that there are
| | 05:23 | teeth there, but they are softly focused.
| | 05:29 | I'll go ahead and press
Ctrl+Z or Command+Z on the Mac.
| | 05:31 | So, this is the before version of the teeth.
| | 05:34 | They are blurry. And this is the
after version, after I apply Sharpening.
| | 05:38 | Are they any more focused?
| | 05:40 | No, they aren't.
| | 05:41 | What are we sharpening?
| | 05:41 | We are sharpening noise
detail, inside of the image.
| | 05:44 | And this is the same for any of these
softly focused areas inside the image.
| | 05:50 | Now, we are looking at those hairs
that are out of focus in the background.
| | 05:53 | This is the before version of them.
| | 05:55 | This is the after version.
| | 05:57 | I'll go ahead and zoom in even farther here.
| | 06:00 | All we are doing is bringing out the
noise detail in the JPEG compression
| | 06:03 | artifacts and the artificial information.
| | 06:06 | This is not information that was
really part of the scene, when it
| | 06:09 | was captured.
| | 06:10 | It's inherent in the capture process,
and that's the kind of bad detail that you
| | 06:15 | also bring out with
Sharpening inside of Photoshop.
| | 06:18 | All right, so now we have seen the
effects of Sharpening on an image. On an
| | 06:22 | impeccably focused image.
| | 06:24 | Wonderful contribution it can make.
| | 06:26 | It can really make sure that
image in print or on screen looks its
| | 06:29 | absolute best.
| | 06:30 | In the next exercise, I'll walk you
through the mechanics of Sharpening.
| | 06:34 | In other words, I'll show
you how Sharpening works.
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| The mechanics of sharpening| 00:00 | In this exercise, we are going to
take a little tour of the mechanics of
| | 00:04 | Sharpening, which probably sounds
hideously dull, but it's actually really
| | 00:08 | great, because you are going to see how
sharpening is ultimately just a little
| | 00:11 | parlor trick that makes us think
we're seeing more sharply focused details.
| | 00:16 | And we'll also see how it compares to
other parlor tricks: Height and Contrast,
| | 00:21 | jagged edges, stuff like that.
| | 00:23 | I'm working inside of an image
called 'Sharp shapes.psd,' and it's a
| | 00:27 | layered image.
| | 00:28 | So, if you were to bring up the layers
palette, you could tour through those
| | 00:31 | layers if you wanted to.
| | 00:32 | Not really necessary, but I say that
because I'm going to be touring you through
| | 00:35 | Layer Comps, which are
different layered states of an image.
| | 00:39 | And we have got this thick dark
serpentine line here, with a bunch of white
| | 00:44 | circle set inside of it or
light circles I should say.
| | 00:46 | It's set against a light background.
And then we have a Texture Pattern at
| | 00:50 | work throughout everything. And
that will give us a sense for where the
| | 00:54 | sharpening is occurring, because
when Photoshop sharpens an image, it's
| | 00:58 | elevating the degree of
contrast around edges.
| | 01:02 | And edges are areas of
rapid luminance variation.
| | 01:06 | That is, we go from light to dark very
suddenly. Like this thing right here is
| | 01:11 | an edge. And the perimeters of the
circles, those are edges as well.
| | 01:16 | And even these little bumps
have edges associated with them.
| | 01:20 | So the more contrast that's going on at
that edge, the bigger the edge is, the
| | 01:26 | bigger the precipice. And Photoshop's
job is to increase that edge to make it
| | 01:32 | even more of a cliff, as we'll see.
| | 01:34 | All right, so I am going to go ahead
and bring up the Layer Comps palette, I'll
| | 01:38 | go to the Window menu and choose Layer Comps.
| | 01:41 | And as I say, Layer Comps, they allow
you to save layered states inside of the image.
| | 01:45 | So in our case, we are just touring
the layers that I have setup in advance for you.
| | 01:48 | So here's the standard version of the image.
| | 01:50 | Let's go ahead and actually zoom in,
so that we're really close to the image.
| | 01:54 | Again 200%, so that these details
survive the downsampling inherent in our
| | 01:58 | video process. And I am going to
switch from Standard to Sharpened, and these
| | 02:04 | are the sharpened edges.
| | 02:05 | Now you can sharpen an
image to any degree you want to.
| | 02:09 | You have all kinds of control
over the sharpening process,
| | 02:11 | so I don't want you to think,
"This is this image sharpened."
| | 02:14 | "This the only way it could be sharpened."
| | 02:16 | It could to be sharpened in any number
of ways. But no matter how we were to
| | 02:19 | sharpen it, we would get this kind of
effect where we would go from having -
| | 02:23 | notice this - we have a dark edge set
against the light background, if you will.
| | 02:28 | It doesn't really matter who is the
background and who is the foreground, but
| | 02:31 | that's what we've got. And as soon as I
sharpen, I go ahead and trace an even
| | 02:36 | darker halo on the dark side and
a lighter halo on the light side.
| | 02:41 | So we have halos around everything
at this point, and they're always
| | 02:46 | exaggerating the information that was
already there, the luminance that it
| | 02:49 | was already there are.
| | 02:50 | So dark details, dark edges tend to go
nearly black when we have really steep
| | 02:55 | edges like this. And they go
nearly white on the light side.
| | 02:59 | Now we are also elevating the degree of
contrasts associated with this texture
| | 03:04 | pattern here. And it's all in the
name of attracting the eye's attention.
| | 03:09 | So, our eyes respond to areas of rapid
contrasts, and the more rapid that area
| | 03:16 | of contrast, the more that
seems like a tactile detail.
| | 03:19 | The more our eyes read that
detail as being sharply focused.
| | 03:23 | Even to the point of painfully sharply focused.
| | 03:27 | And that's kind of what we are looking for here.
| | 03:29 | We want some nice, sharp details, where
we want sharpness inside of our images.
| | 03:34 | All right, so that's the sharpened version.
| | 03:37 | And I was saying, we were basically
elevating contrasts throughout the image,
| | 03:40 | but we are not doing a
general contrast enhancement.
| | 03:43 | This is what a general
contrast enhancement looks like.
| | 03:46 | So we go from the standard image,
which has a fair amount of amount of
| | 03:50 | contrast associated with it in the
first place, and then we enhance that
| | 03:53 | contrast like so.
| | 03:54 | So the dark areas become darker,
the light areas become lighter.
| | 03:58 | That has nothing to do with the edges though.
| | 04:01 | It's not favoring the edges at all.
| | 04:03 | It's simply increasing the
contrast across the board.
| | 04:05 | That does not produce the
effect of height and contrast.
| | 04:08 | This does. When we start to attack the
edges, that's when we get sharpness.
| | 04:13 | Now, you'll sometimes hear folks refer to
these sharp edges as 'jagged' and I want to
| | 04:19 | clarify, they aren't jagged.
| | 04:21 | This right here is jagged.
| | 04:23 | These are jagged transitions, and
I'll go ahead and zoom in and so you can
| | 04:26 | really see how jagged they are.
| | 04:28 | We have all the stair stepping occurring there.
| | 04:31 | That also is not read by
our eyes as being sharp.
| | 04:35 | That is rather read by our eyes
as being bad detail inside of a
| | 04:41 | pixel-based image.
| | 04:42 | I mean that's not going to get us anywhere.
| | 04:43 | Whereas Sharpening looks like this.
| | 04:46 | We have a high degree of contrast.
| | 04:47 | We do have some stair stepping, but
we've also got some natural anti-aliasing
| | 04:52 | built into that so that our
edges remain nice and organic.
| | 04:57 | So we have what ultimately appear
to be naturally focused photographs.
| | 05:02 | So that gives you a sense
of how Sharpening works.
| | 05:05 | In the next exercise, we are going to
see how Sharpening affects more gradually
| | 05:10 | transitioning edges.
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| Sharpening and gradual transitions| 00:00 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you what happens to those dark and light
| | 00:03 | halos that are produced by Photoshop
Sharpening Filters, when we are working
| | 00:07 | with an image that contains gradual transitions.
| | 00:10 | I still have open sharpshapes.psd
found inside the how_it_works folder.
| | 00:14 | I've got my Layer Comps palette open.
| | 00:16 | I'm looking at the Standard version,
the original version of this image.
| | 00:20 | I am going to switch over here to
Gradients. And what we now have is a gradient
| | 00:25 | version of this image.
| | 00:26 | So in other words, we've got a dark to
light serpentine line here, this thick
| | 00:33 | serpentine line, against a
light to dark background.
| | 00:36 | So there is a point at which, right
here in the middle, where things start to
| | 00:40 | get awfully similar. And we are
starting to lose the steepness of the edge.
| | 00:44 | And again, when I say steepness of the
edge, imagine that light is very high,
| | 00:49 | like a mountain, and dark is very low,
and then right at that point between the
| | 00:54 | two you have a ginormous cliff right there.
| | 00:57 | And of course, the job of sharpness is
to create these halos that elevate or
| | 01:03 | carve into that cliff,
| | 01:05 | so that we're increasing the
size of that cliff at that location.
| | 01:09 | So let's take a look at what that means.
| | 01:11 | Let's go ahead and zoom in, actually at
the top of the image for a moment here.
| | 01:14 | And then I'll show you what these
gradients would look like if they were sharp.
| | 01:18 | So when we sharpen the
gradients, we get this effect here.
| | 01:21 | So Photoshop has gone ahead and
drawn a dark halo on the dark side of this
| | 01:26 | edge, and a light halo on
the light side of the edge.
| | 01:29 | And notice as we scroll down here,
that the halo grows thinner and thinner and
| | 01:35 | thinner and just sort of drifts away.
| | 01:38 | As you can see, it's almost like a
calligraphic line that you're drawing with a
| | 01:42 | pressure sensitive stylus.
| | 01:44 | And we're letting go off the stylus and
the line is getting thinner and thinner
| | 01:49 | as we get to this area of midtones,
where we really don't have an edge anymore.
| | 01:53 | There's not much of an edge
for Photoshop to lock onto.
| | 01:56 | So the dark edge goes away.
| | 01:58 | The dark halo starts going away.
| | 01:59 | It tapers off.
| | 02:00 | The light halo tapers off as well and
then what happens is they switch places.
| | 02:06 | Notice that, now we're having a
tapering white halo on the inside edge, on
| | 02:10 | the light edge still, and a
tapering dark line, dark halo here, on the
| | 02:15 | dark edge still.
| | 02:17 | So again, Photoshop is smart enough to
elevate the contrast according to whether
| | 02:21 | it's finding a dark edge or a
light edge inside of the image.
| | 02:26 | And then the line grows nice and thick
and stays as thick as it's going to be
| | 02:30 | anyway, and that's something you can control.
| | 02:32 | You can make ultra thick halos or very,
very thin halos and these are pretty
| | 02:36 | thin halos actually.
| | 02:37 | But notice that it's growing darker,
and darker, and darker, as we descend
| | 02:42 | toward the bottom portion of the image.
| | 02:44 | So again, where Photoshop has something
to lock onto, that's where it's going to
| | 02:49 | sharpen those details.
| | 02:50 | Where it can't find anything, it's not
going to produce any Sharpening effect.
| | 02:54 | So as a result, if we zoom out from this
image to take in more of the image at a
| | 02:59 | time, we can see a lot of
sharpness up here at the top.
| | 03:02 | We can see a lot of
sharpness down here at the bottom.
| | 03:04 | We're not seeing much sharpness, not
nearly as much sharpness here in the
| | 03:08 | middle of the image, because there
wasn't enough contrast in the first place to
| | 03:12 | pull it off.
| | 03:13 | So, just for the sake of comparison,
this is the before version of the image,
| | 03:17 | and this is the after version.
| | 03:19 | Where edges occur inside the image,
they appear to be edgier than ever.
| | 03:24 | In the next exercise, I am going
to show you the effects of combining
| | 03:27 | Sharpening with Noise Removal.
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| Sharpening and noise reduction| 00:00 | In this exercise, we are going to
see the effects of combining sharpening
| | 00:03 | with noise removal.
| | 00:05 | So noise removal first,
and then sharpening second.
| | 00:08 | And I think you'll find this to be
utterly fascinating, even though we are
| | 00:12 | working in this non-photographic
diagram here, because it really does show you
| | 00:16 | how important noise removal
is to the sharpening process.
| | 00:20 | So I am still working inside
sharpshapes.psd, found inside the
| | 00:24 | 01_how_it_works folder.
| | 00:25 | And I'm going to switch from the Standard
view to this view right here, Noise Removal.
| | 00:30 | But first, let's go ahead and
zoom in, so we can see the effect.
| | 00:33 | Before I even do anything here,
| | 00:34 | let's say that we are trying to get rid
of this texture in the background, because
| | 00:39 | we don't want to enhance that texture.
| | 00:42 | And this texture is a stand-in for any kind
of bad detail that we don't want to enhance.
| | 00:47 | It could be digital noise captured by
a digital camera, or it could be noise
| | 00:51 | captured by a scanner, or it could be
dust and scratches, or it could be film
| | 00:56 | grain in a film
transparency, or a color negative.
| | 00:59 | And so what you would do is, before you
sharpen the image, you would apply Noise Removal.
| | 01:04 | And I have this Noise Removal version
of the image here inside the Layer Comps
| | 01:07 | palette, and I'll go ahead and turn it on,
| | 01:09 | and notice that we haven't gotten rid of
all of the texture inside of the image,
| | 01:13 | but we've managed to suppress quite a bit.
| | 01:14 | So this is the original
version of the image with texture.
| | 01:18 | This is the version of the image with
less texture, And I am fortunate in that I
| | 01:22 | have been able to maintain the good
detail in the image, that is the edges of
| | 01:27 | this dark serpentine line.
| | 01:28 | In the circles and so forth. All right.
| | 01:31 | So the next step is to go ahead and Sharpen.
| | 01:33 | After Noise Removal then Sharpen.
| | 01:35 | And this is what the effect looks like.
| | 01:37 | So, this is the effect of
sharpening after noise removal on this image.
| | 01:41 | We've got our dark halos on the dark
side of the line, the light halos on the
| | 01:45 | light side of the edges, and compare
that to the sharpened version of the
| | 01:48 | image with the texture.
| | 01:49 | It's a big, huge difference.
| | 01:51 | These are the exact same
sharpening settings by the way.
| | 01:54 | The only difference is that this one
had texture before we sharpened, and this
| | 01:58 | one had the texture removed before we sharpened.
| | 02:01 | Let's run the same test with
that gradient version of the image.
| | 02:04 | I have got this Gradient Noise Removal
version right here and compare that, by
| | 02:09 | the way, to the original Gradients
version, and you are not going to see that
| | 02:13 | much of a difference.
| | 02:14 | I mean, we are zoomed in here to 200% and
yet we're only seeing a moderate amount
| | 02:19 | of texture inside the
Gradients version of the image.
| | 02:22 | And yet that moderate amount of texture
can turn into something wicked, when we
| | 02:27 | apply sharpening to it.
| | 02:28 | So, very small difference
as you can see right here.
| | 02:30 | This is the Noise Removal
version of the gradient image.
| | 02:34 | Now let's see the Sharpened version
of the gradient with Noise Removal.
| | 02:38 | It looks like this, as compared with the
sharpened version of the gradient image
| | 02:44 | with texture, which looks like this.
| | 02:47 | So big ginormous difference.
| | 02:49 | I'll go ahead and scroll up a little bit here.
| | 02:51 | Again, this is the textured version, the
noise version of the image, and this is
| | 02:55 | the noise defeated version
of the image right there.
| | 02:59 | So now, I'm not suggesting for a second
that noise removal make things perfect.
| | 03:03 | You are still going to run into some weird
transitions every once in while with Sharpening.
| | 03:07 | I don't know if you can make it out here.
| | 03:08 | I'll zoom in just a little bit.
| | 03:10 | And actually I am going to
take it even farther.
| | 03:12 | And here inside Photoshop CS4 we get that
Pixel Grid, but if you press Ctrl+H or
| | 03:17 | Command+H on the Mac, you can make
that Pixel Grid go away so that you can
| | 03:21 | see the pixels by themselves. And right along
this edge, we really shouldn't see anything.
| | 03:26 | We shouldn't see any of this
weird, jagged activity right here.
| | 03:30 | We should just see smooth lines and that's it.
| | 03:33 | But because Photoshop is finding
some strange transitions inside of the
| | 03:38 | gradient, some leftover noise patterns
as well, it's going ahead and sharpening
| | 03:42 | up that information, and
making it look fairly messy.
| | 03:45 | But of course, once we start zooming
out that messiness starts disappearing.
| | 03:50 | And so the farther we get away from the
image, the less apparent that the sharpened
| | 03:53 | noise is going to be.
| | 03:55 | So remember that, when you're working
with your own images. Noise Removal can
| | 03:59 | make a big difference when
it's applied before Sharpening.
| | 04:03 | In the next exercise, I am going to
introduce you to your primary Sharpening
| | 04:06 | settings in Photoshop: Amount and Radius.
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| Amount and Radius| 00:00 | Photoshop provides several different
filters with which you can sharpen an image.
| | 00:04 | You've got Unsharp Mask.
| | 00:05 | You've got Smart Sharpen.
| | 00:07 | You can use the High Pass filter.
| | 00:08 | You can use Emboss.
| | 00:10 | You can even use Gaussian Blur.
| | 00:12 | Most of those filters offer an
Amount value, and every one of them offers
| | 00:17 | something analogous to a Radius setting.
| | 00:19 | And we are going to be evaluating how
Amount and Radius work in this exercise.
| | 00:23 | I'm still working inside this
serpentine diagram here, sharpshapes.psd, found
| | 00:29 | inside the 01_how_it_works folder.
| | 00:31 | And in case you are worried that we are
going to be spending the entire series
| | 00:34 | inside boring diagram files, perish the thought.
| | 00:36 | We are going to see some beautiful
photography, over the course of this series,
| | 00:40 | so stay tuned for that. Most of our work
is going to be done inside of photographs.
| | 00:44 | I've switched to the first Layer Comp,
Standard, just to reset the image. And
| | 00:48 | I am going to switch from the Layer Comps
palette to the Layers palette right here.
| | 00:52 | And in fact, I am going to go ahead and
expand my palette, so that I can see the
| | 00:55 | Layers palette and the
image at the same time here.
| | 00:59 | And notice that in addition to this
group of layers called 'the ingredients,'
| | 01:03 | which is what we were seeing right now,
I also have four different comp views.
| | 01:07 | And the top one, by the way, is
the sharpened version of the image.
| | 01:12 | And then the next one down is the
sharpened version of the Gradient image.
| | 01:16 | And then next we have the sharpened
version of the Noise Removal Image.
| | 01:20 | And then finally, we have the
sharpened version of the Gradient Noise Removal image,
| | 01:25 | just so you know what's going on here.
| | 01:26 | Now, I am going to turn all of these
comps off, except for the top one, comp 1.
| | 01:32 | And this happens to be a Smart Object.
| | 01:34 | If I click this down pointing arrow, we
will see that it's a Smart Object with a
| | 01:37 | Smart Filter assigned to it, and that
Smart Filter happens to be Smart Sharpen.
| | 01:42 | How smart is that that?
| | 01:44 | Now just in case you have limited
familiarity with Smart Objects, or you've never
| | 01:47 | even used them before, don't worry.
| | 01:49 | I am going to introduce you to Smart
Objects over the course of this series
| | 01:52 | because they are integral to
understanding what's going on with sharpening.
| | 01:56 | You can really make great use of them.
| | 01:58 | The great thing about working with a
Smart Object is that I can change the
| | 02:01 | settings of the Smart Filter that's
applied to it, which happens to be Smart Sharpen,
| | 02:06 | as I was saying. So double-click on the words 'Smart
Sharpen,' if you are working along with me,
| | 02:10 | to bring up the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 02:12 | And there are the settings I was
telling you about: Amount and Radius.
| | 02:15 | Now there is a lot of other stuff
going on inside this dialog box.
| | 02:18 | Don't even look at it.
| | 02:19 | We are not interested in anything
else but Amount and Radius at this point.
| | 02:23 | Now the Amount value is
fairly easy to understand.
| | 02:25 | It's the amount by which the contrast
has been enhanced inside of the image.
| | 02:31 | So right now we're increasing the contrast,
the Edge Contrast, to the tune of 250%.
| | 02:36 | If we wanted to further increase the
Contrast and thereby add more sharpness to
| | 02:41 | the image, then we would
increase the Amount value.
| | 02:44 | Now it's very unlikely you are
going to want to go this high.
| | 02:46 | This is the maximum value, 500%.
And it ends up oversharpening the
| | 02:50 | image terrifically.
| | 02:52 | If you want less sharpness, you would
increase the contrast of the edges by a
| | 02:57 | lesser amount, such as, let's say 30%.
| | 02:59 | That still produces an effect.
| | 03:01 | If I click-and-hold on this
Preview here, this is the before version.
| | 03:05 | And this is the after version.
| | 03:07 | Not much difference, but there is a
little bit of difference going on there.
| | 03:10 | We'd be able see it more at about 100%.
| | 03:13 | So this is the before version right
there with no sharpness applied, and this
| | 03:17 | is the after version.
| | 03:18 | Now then, let's go ahead and zoom in on
the image, both in the background, which
| | 03:22 | I did by pressing Ctrl+Plus
or Command+Plus on the Mac.
| | 03:24 | I'm also going to zoom in inside of the
dialog box here a little bit, like so,
| | 03:29 | by clicking on that Plus button.
| | 03:31 | Let's go ahead and reset this Amount
value to what I had before, 250%.
| | 03:34 | And let's discuss Radius.
| | 03:35 | Now I was telling you that the
Sharpening filters inside of Photoshop, they
| | 03:39 | produce halos. And so we are drawing
dark halos around the dark side of an edge
| | 03:44 | and light halos around
the light side of the edge.
| | 03:46 | The thickness of those halos is
determined by the Radius setting right here, and
| | 03:51 | it's called Radius, because what
Photoshop is doing is scrubbing a halo around
| | 03:56 | each and every pixel.
| | 03:58 | That's not what it looks like it's
doing, because it ends up reconciling into
| | 04:01 | a full image, but it's scrubbing around each
and every pixel to the tune of this Radius value.
| | 04:07 | But for our purposes, it's the
thickness of the halo, approximately.
| | 04:11 | So notice if I increase this Radius
value, then I'm going to increase the
| | 04:15 | thickness of those halos on either side.
| | 04:18 | So, thick dark halos on the dark side,
thick light halos on the light side.
| | 04:21 | If I were to take his value up to 12
pixels, then we would have 12 pixel halos,
| | 04:26 | m?s o menos. And the reason I say that
approximately is because there is actually
| | 04:32 | a Gaussian style distribution
that's associated with this Radius value.
| | 04:35 | So it shakes out to be more like 14
pixels, but, you know, like you would notice.
| | 04:40 | It doesn't really matter that much.
| | 04:41 | It's approximately the value that you
enter in here. And you can see that it's
| | 04:45 | slowly dropping off.
| | 04:47 | So the halo starts very dark indeed and
then drops off to nothingness by about
| | 04:52 | this point here, by a little more
than 12 pixels out from that edge.
| | 04:56 | And it's a blurry halo.
| | 04:58 | It's like an outer glow, almost. And it
is in fact a Gaussian Blur, in the case
| | 05:05 | of the effect that we are seeing right here.
| | 05:07 | If you want to, you can either associate a
high Amount value with a low Radius value.
| | 05:11 | If you want to get a true sharpening
effect that's what you do. And so you can
| | 05:15 | go as low as 0.3 pixels.
| | 05:17 | Anything lower is not going to resolve,
| | 05:19 | so you need 0.3 pixels or higher. And this
is what the image looks like originally.
| | 05:24 | Notice that I am clicking
and holding inside the Preview.
| | 05:26 | And then when I release, we
see the after view right there.
| | 05:29 | And so high Amount with low Radius
produces super sharp edges. And we'll discuss
| | 05:34 | what that means in more detail over the
course of this series, because you don't
| | 05:38 | want to go this low, 0.3 pixels,
when you're printing the image,
| | 05:41 | but it's great for screen work.
| | 05:43 | By the way, you can combine a high
Radius value, such as 12 pixels, with a low
| | 05:48 | Amount value, such as 25%, and you
are going to get an edge contrast
| | 05:52 | enhancement effect.
| | 05:53 | This is before. And this is after.
| | 05:56 | So we've got some contrast going on
right around the edges and this is what's
| | 06:01 | known as clarity, as
opposed to sharpness. All right.
| | 06:04 | I am going to go ahead and click OK to
accept that modification. And just so you
| | 06:08 | can see the difference here inside of
the Image window, this is what the image
| | 06:11 | looks like without that Smart Sharpen
filter applied. And this is what it looks
| | 06:16 | like with Smart Sharpen applied, with
a low Amount and a high Radius value,
| | 06:20 | thereby producing clarity. All right.
| | 06:23 | Let's turn off the comp 1 layer and
turn on comp 2, which is the Gradient version
| | 06:28 | of the layer. And we are not going to
be taking a look at the other two comps.
| | 06:31 | This is where we are going to end. But
I do want to you to see the effect of
| | 06:34 | some of these settings when we're
working with gradual transitions.
| | 06:39 | So I am going to go ahead and click
this down-pointing arrowhead to expand
| | 06:42 | the layer so that we can see the Smart
Sharpen filter that's applied to the smart object.
| | 06:47 | I'll double-click on Smart Sharpen
here, in order to bring up the Smart
| | 06:50 | Sharpen dialog box.
| | 06:51 | Notice that I have the Amount
value cranked up to 500% now.
| | 06:55 | Let's now take the Radius value up
to 12 pixels, so that we can see what happens.
| | 07:00 | And notice now,
| | 07:01 | you can really see that halo, and you
can see how it tapers away to nothingness.
| | 07:07 | So it starts very thick indeed and
tapers gradually over the course of this
| | 07:12 | gradient to nothingness at this point
when the foreground and the background
| | 07:16 | begin to match each other.
| | 07:18 | Same with this light gradient as well.
| | 07:20 | It's tapering to nothingness. And then of
course, because the gradients switch, the
| | 07:25 | halos switch as well.
| | 07:26 | We go from a light halo right there to
a dark halo on this right side, and we go
| | 07:31 | from a dark halo on the left side
to a light halo on the left side.
| | 07:35 | And we end up tapering right at that
location where the colors begin to merge,
| | 07:41 | where the luminance levels become the same.
| | 07:43 | And I'll go ahead and click OK in order to
accept that effect, so that we can end with this.
| | 07:47 | And this gives you a real
sense of what's going on.
| | 07:50 | So the amazing thing about Photoshop
is it's producing sharpness by creating
| | 07:54 | soft blurry halos on either side of
the significant edges inside of an image.
| | 08:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Evaluating the print size| 00:00 | This exercise is by way of
preparation for the next exercise.
| | 00:04 | What we're going to do in the next
exercise, I am going to show you how to
| | 00:06 | measure the resolution of your screen.
| | 00:09 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you why in the world we would want to
| | 00:13 | do such a thing.
| | 00:14 | Now the idea is we need to accurately judge
how our sharpened image is going to print.
| | 00:21 | The thing is, our image is going to
print a lot smaller than it looks on screen,
| | 00:26 | and so things like halos are going to
start disappearing because they are going
| | 00:29 | to be packed in a smaller amount of
space, and then we stand the chance of
| | 00:34 | loosening our sharpened
effect if we are not careful.
| | 00:37 | So we want to be able to view the
image as it will look when it prints, and
| | 00:42 | you can do that by going to the View menu
and choosing the print Size command right here.
| | 00:46 | That will simulate the size at
which the image prints.
| | 00:50 | Under the right circumstances, by default,
| | 00:52 | it's not going to work right.
| | 00:53 | So I'll just tell you that right now.
| | 00:55 | Don't choose the command.
| | 00:56 | We'll come back to it in a couple of exercises.
| | 00:59 | Notice it has a keyboard shortcut.
| | 01:00 | I am just bringing that up,
because yours might not.
| | 01:03 | Mine has got a keyboard shortcut of
Ctrl+Alt+0, Command+Option+0 on the Mac.
| | 01:08 | That's because I have my Deke
keys keyboard shortcuts loaded.
| | 01:12 | If you would like to load those
shortcuts, then go to my Photoshop CS4 One-on-One
| | 01:17 | Fundamental series and you will
find my Deke keys shortcuts there.
| | 01:22 | I tell you how to install
those shortcuts in the series.
| | 01:25 | Go ahead and do that.
| | 01:26 | Come on back.
| | 01:27 | That's just an FYI.
| | 01:29 | Anyway, what this print Size command is
designed to do is show you the image at
| | 01:32 | the size it will print.
| | 01:33 | But in order for it to work properly,
we have to know the screen resolution so
| | 01:37 | that Photoshop can compare the screen
resolution to the print resolution, and
| | 01:43 | show us the image properly on screen.
| | 01:45 | As I say it's not set up to do that by default.
| | 01:48 | It thinks the screen resolution is 72
pixels per inch, and I'm here to tell you, it ain't.
| | 01:52 | All right, so let me first explain
why this whole thing is so important.
| | 01:56 | Why do you care about seeing the
image at the size it's going to print?
| | 02:00 | I'm still working in sharpshapes.psd.
| | 02:02 | I have gone ahead and restored the
Standard view right here, the unsharpened
| | 02:05 | version of the image.
| | 02:07 | Let's switch over to the Sharpened View.
| | 02:08 | I'm looking at the image at the 200% zoom ratio,
| | 02:11 | so the image looks over-sharpened.
But bear in mind it's going to print
| | 02:16 | way smaller than this.
| | 02:17 | So let's say I press Ctrl+Minus
or Command+Minus on the Mac.
| | 02:20 | Now I am seeing the image at the 100%
zoom ratio, which means that I am seeing
| | 02:24 | one image pixel for every screen pixel.
| | 02:26 | Again, that's much bigger than
the image it's going to print,
| | 02:29 | but we are starting to see the
sharpening effect decline a little bit.
| | 02:33 | This is the original version
of the image, pre-sharpened.
| | 02:36 | This is the Sharpened version of the image.
| | 02:39 | So you should be able to tell
the difference there in the video.
| | 02:41 | Now imagine I zoom out even more.
| | 02:43 | I'll go ahead and take this image
out to the 50% zoom size by pressing
| | 02:47 | Ctrl+Minus a couple times in row.
| | 02:49 | That's Command+Minus on the Mac.
| | 02:50 | Now let's compare the Standard view of the image
to the Sharpened view of the image.
| | 02:56 | Much less of a difference. And the
reason is, we are losing our halos.
| | 03:00 | We are not losing the Amount value.
| | 03:01 | The Amount still stays, but
the halos go smaller and smaller,
| | 03:05 | so that Radius value is in decline,
essentially. And if our halos disappear to nothing,
| | 03:11 | there goes our sharpening effect,
because without the halos,
| | 03:14 | we have no sharpness.
| | 03:16 | Let's go ahead and take this out now to
25% view size, by pressing Ctrl+Minus a
| | 03:20 | couple of times, Command+Minus on the Mac.
| | 03:23 | There is the original version of the image.
| | 03:26 | There is the Sharpened version of the image.
| | 03:28 | Just a tiny, tiny difference at this
point. And so the moral of the story is you
| | 03:34 | need to be able to see that because
when you're zoomed into the image,
| | 03:38 | the Radius values all look just enormous.
| | 03:40 | They are magnified, and so you're
tempted to go with very small Radius values.
| | 03:44 | When you're zoomed out from an image,
You know better than that.
| | 03:46 | You know to go with larger Radius
values as I am going to show you.
| | 03:49 | So we need to know our screen resolution.
| | 03:52 | All right. Having conveyed that to you,
I need to show you how to measure your screen resolution.
| | 03:58 | And what I need you to do,
and really honestly I want you to do
| | 04:01 | this along with me.
| | 04:02 | It's this important.
| | 04:04 | Get yourself a ruler or a measuring
tape or anything you can measure with.
| | 04:08 | I also want you to grab a calculator.
| | 04:11 | So those two things:
measuring tape and calculator.
| | 04:13 | And then, not going to make it too hard,
just a little tiny bit of math,
| | 04:16 | just some division, and then
join me in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Measuring your screen resolution| 00:00 | I've opened an image that's available
to those of you who have access to these things.
| | 00:04 | It's called screenresolution.tif.
| | 00:06 | Now if you don't have access to the
image, no big deal frankly, because you are
| | 00:10 | going to be seeing it here,
big and beautiful, on the video.
| | 00:13 | So I am going to press Shift+F to switch
to the Full Screen view, so that we can
| | 00:17 | see all of this diagram.
| | 00:20 | It's telling you how to
measure your screen resolution.
| | 00:23 | Again, you'll need measuring tape or ruler or
what have you, some measuring device,
| | 00:27 | and you also need the calculator.
| | 00:29 | That's it, just those two
physical devices you need.
| | 00:31 | You can even use a calculator
included with your computer.
| | 00:34 | Fine by me.
| | 00:35 | And we also have a diagram of a MacBook Pro.
| | 00:39 | And so I'm imagining that I'm using a
MacBook Pro. That's the kind of laptop that I use.
| | 00:44 | It's sitting right here next to me.
| | 00:45 | Obviously, I'm filming on
a Windows Vista machine.
| | 00:47 | So there's just certain amount of irony
there, but we are going to pretend, for
| | 00:51 | the sake of this exercise, that
this is the computer that I'm using.
| | 00:54 | Here is how it works.
| | 00:56 | Notice it says, right here at the top,
"Screen Resolution = 1/4 to 1/2 Print Resolution."
| | 01:02 | That's just a fact.
| | 01:04 | So screen resolution varies all over the place.
| | 01:06 | A lot of folks will tell you that
screen resolution is 72 pixels per inch,
| | 01:11 | that that's the standard screen resolution.
| | 01:14 | If an expert or an authority tells you
any such thing, never listen to another
| | 01:18 | thing they say, because the fact of
the matter is that has not been the case
| | 01:23 | for roughly 20 years.
| | 01:25 | Those of you who've use Macintosh computers,
| | 01:27 | your original Macs, those little 128ks,
and 512ks, and SEs and Classics, and all
| | 01:32 | those guys, the little boxes.
| | 01:34 | Those were 72 pixels per inch.
| | 01:36 | There hasn't been a computer like that since.
| | 01:39 | So there is no such thing as a 72
pixel per inch screen, even though a lot of
| | 01:44 | applications make that
assumption, iTunes for example.
| | 01:46 | If you copy an image from
Photoshop, paste it in iTunes.
| | 01:49 | You've got a copy and past it at 72 ppi,
or it's going to get very small on you.
| | 01:53 | Same with Microsoft Word,
has a tendency to do that.
| | 01:55 | Photoshop assumes 72 pixels per inch.
| | 01:58 | So it's this myth that has just lived on and on
even though it's nowhere near true.
| | 02:03 | Anyway, I am just stipulating what it
says in this first sentence here, "The days
| | 02:06 | of 72 pixel per inch, PPI," very
important screens, "are long gone."
| | 02:11 | "Assuming default settings," that is that
you're taking full advantage of your monitor.
| | 02:15 | You're not using a lower resolution.
| | 02:17 | Then "modern monitors have
resolutions of approximately 96 to 120 ppi."
| | 02:22 | That's a heck of a lot higher than 72.
| | 02:25 | So it's 96 on the low end.
120 on the high end.
| | 02:27 | That is approximately.
| | 02:29 | There are ways to have lower
monitor resolutions from that.
| | 02:32 | You can choose a lower resolution,
for example, from your Display Settings.
| | 02:36 | And there are screens out there
with higher resolutions, potentially.
| | 02:40 | You never know what's
going to come down the pike.
| | 02:41 | This is pretty high though.
| | 02:42 | 120 is pretty high.
| | 02:44 | Now then, the MacBook Pro operates at a
default resolution of 1680x1050 pixels.
| | 02:51 | So there is some math for you.
| | 02:53 | We'll come to the math in a second,
| | 02:55 | but what you need to do with
that measuring device that you have,
| | 02:59 | you need to measure your screen.
| | 03:00 | Now the MacBook Pro is well-known. My
MacBook Pro has 17 inch LCD screen.
| | 03:05 | Well that 17 inches
isn't going to do us any good.
| | 03:09 | It's a 17 inch diagonal measurement.
| | 03:11 | Now you might be able to go to your monitor
vendor's website and look up your model
| | 03:15 | of monitor and find out exactly what
the width and height measurements are,
| | 03:18 | because that's what we need.
| | 03:19 | But that's not necessarily the case.
| | 03:22 | And if you have to spend too much
time doing that, it's easier just to
| | 03:25 | measure it yourself. And I have run
into lots of screens that I cannot find
| | 03:28 | that information about.
| | 03:29 | So here's what you do.
| | 03:30 | You measure the width of your screen.
| | 03:32 | That's where I want you
to start, with the width.
| | 03:34 | And round it off to the
nearest 10th of an inch if you can.
| | 03:38 | And you want this width right here.
| | 03:40 | You want the width of the imageable
area, which I'm tracing right there.
| | 03:43 | You don't want the black,
because that's of no use to you.
| | 03:47 | You're not seeing that area.
| | 03:48 | The image has to fit into this region
here, and you don't want the panel either.
| | 03:52 | You don't want any of that other junk.
| | 03:54 | You just want the physical
imageable area of the monitor right there.
| | 03:58 | So go ahead and measure that.
| | 03:59 | Then what you do is you take the width
in pixels of your Display settings, so
| | 04:05 | 1680, and you divide it by the inches,
because after all we are looking for a
| | 04:10 | measurement that's pixel per
inch, and per means divide.
| | 04:14 | So we need the number of pixels, and we are
going to divide that by the number of inches.
| | 04:19 | So you take, in my case,
1680 divided by 14.4, and you get the resolution
| | 04:24 | 117 pixels per inch, and I'm rounding up.
It's actually 116.67.
| | 04:30 | Don't care.
| | 04:31 | I am going to round it to the nearest pixel.
| | 04:32 | I've got to do that. And so I come up with 117.
| | 04:36 | Then just to make sure, you rerun the equation with the
height, so you measure the height of your monitor,
| | 04:42 | and then you take the height
of the screen in pixels, at the current
| | 04:46 | Display Settings, it's very important
to use the Current Display setting, the ones
| | 04:50 | that are at work at any given time, and
you divide, in this case, 1050 by 9,
| | 04:55 | and what you get, if you were to run that equation.
| | 04:57 | You'd get 116.67 pixels
per inch once again, so 117.
| | 05:03 | Now, with an LCD screen you are likely
to get exactly the same values.
| | 05:06 | You should.
| | 05:07 | If you're using a CRT screen,
meaning one of those big monitors with the tube
| | 05:11 | and everything else that
takes up a ton of room on your desk
| | 05:14 | and weighs 100 pounds.
| | 05:15 | If you're using one of those, then it's very possible
that you'll get different measurements.
| | 05:19 | And if you do get different measurements,
I want you to use the lower of the two resolution values.
| | 05:25 | So use the lower one. And armed with
that information, I want you to go ahead and
| | 05:29 | write that screen resolution down, and
then I'll tell you what to do with it.
| | 05:32 | We are going to enter it into Photoshop,
| | 05:33 | so Photoshop is aware of your screen
resolution and everything is going to be
| | 05:37 | hunky-dory from then on. And
you'll learn how in the next exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting your screen resolution| 00:00 | In the previous exercise you
discovered the resolution of your screen.
| | 00:04 | In this exercise, I am going to show
you what to do with that information,
| | 00:07 | but first I am going to tell
you a little story here.
| | 00:09 | If you go up to the file menu, and you
choose the new command or you press Ctrl+N,
| | 00:13 | Command+N on the Mac, you'll bring up a
new dialog box, at which point you can
| | 00:17 | choose from Presets.
| | 00:19 | You can say, "Hey, I want to create a
new image for the Web," in which case
| | 00:23 | Photoshop is automatically going to
set the resolution to 72 pixels per inch.
| | 00:27 | Because it thinks that's what if
other web applications need some sort of
| | 00:32 | information to show off images
properly on screen, then they are going to
| | 00:35 | need 72 pixels per inch.
| | 00:36 | That's the reason it does it that way.
| | 00:38 | Fair enough.
| | 00:39 | But if you instead choose that you
want to create a print image for US paper, let's say,
| | 00:46 | then it's going to automatically
change that resolution to 300 pixels per inch.
| | 00:49 | And this is assuming that
you're working in pixels per inch.
| | 00:53 | Those of you who are working with
pixels per centimeter, you are going to
| | 00:56 | see different results.
| | 00:57 | But those two values are the default:
72 and 300 inside the New dialog box.
| | 01:03 | I am going to press the Escape key,
because we're not creating a new document.
| | 01:06 | I am, you may recall, working inside the
screen resolution.tif file found inside
| | 01:11 | the 01_how_it_works folder.
| | 01:12 | In this file document, I
am working on a MacBook Pro.
| | 01:15 | That's what I'm pretending, which is
fairly hilarious because I'm obviously
| | 01:19 | using Windows Vista
right here, but bear with me.
| | 01:22 | So here I am tootling away on my MacBook Pro.
| | 01:24 | I did the measurements and everything
and whipped out my calculator, and I found
| | 01:28 | out my screen
resolution is 117 pixels per inch.
| | 01:31 | Ok. What do I do with that information?
Well, let me show you.
| | 01:34 | You go up to the Edit menu, you PC people.
| | 01:37 | You Macintosh people, you
go to the Photoshop menu.
| | 01:39 | Then you go way down here to
Preferences, unless you are a Mac user and then you
| | 01:44 | just go slightly down the list, and
choose Preferences. And then you choose this
| | 01:48 | command, Units and Rulers.
| | 01:50 | It also has a keyboard shortcut,
curiously enough, of Ctrl+K and then Ctrl+7.
| | 01:56 | Command+K, Command+7 on the Mac.
| | 01:58 | I know terribly memorable, but that's it.
| | 02:01 | Now BTW, if you don't have
Rulers set to Pixels, you'll probably want to do that.
| | 02:06 | That's the better way to work and
it's going to match what I'm up to,
| | 02:09 | so if you don't, you might have
some confusion later on down the line.
| | 02:13 | It is really a better way to work than
inches or centimeters or any of those
| | 02:16 | because when you're working with an
image file, you really care about the pixels
| | 02:20 | more than anything else.
| | 02:21 | You could be outputting to any of
7,000 worlds with different resolutions,
| | 02:26 | so the pixels are what really matter.
| | 02:28 | Anyway, having said that, I
will get off that soapbox.
| | 02:31 | Here's these new document preset resolutions,
of print resolution 300, and screen resolution 72.
| | 02:37 | This is where those default settings come from.
| | 02:39 | Now you might figure you've got
to know your printer resolution, right?
| | 02:42 | You've got to set that right there,
but it's not printer resolution.
| | 02:46 | Photoshop does not care about
the resolution of your printer.
| | 02:49 | That's all handled automatically.
| | 02:50 | Your printer itself, the
physical device deals with that.
| | 02:54 | This is print resolution.
| | 02:56 | So the resolution at which
the image is going to be output.
| | 02:59 | Well, this is just a default setting folks.
| | 03:01 | That varies at an image by image basis.
| | 03:03 | So don't worry about it.
| | 03:04 | I would do nothing here.
| | 03:06 | Screen Resolution though, that matters.
| | 03:08 | That is tracked by that Print Size command.
| | 03:11 | So go ahead and enter your
value into that Option box.
| | 03:15 | That's all you want to do, except change
Rulers to Pixels of course, and then you
| | 03:19 | click on the OK button in
order to accept that modification.
| | 03:23 | Now, if you go up to the View menu
and choose the print size command, it's
| | 03:26 | actually going to function properly.
| | 03:29 | I will show you what that means
and why it's so very important in the next exercise.
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| Using the Print Size view| 00:00 | In this exercise, I'm going to show
you how to take that Print Size command
| | 00:03 | under the View menu and use it to
gauge the best sharpening settings inside
| | 00:08 | of Photoshop.
| | 00:09 | So first things first. I'm working
inside this image called Star eyes 12 x 8.jpg,
| | 00:14 | found inside of the 01_how_it_works folder.
| | 00:18 | I'm zoomed in on a detail here at 100%.
| | 00:20 | The reason I'm zoomed in to 100% is
because 100% view size shows one image pixel
| | 00:26 | for every screen pixel, and it just
so happens to be the most accurate zoom
| | 00:30 | level in all of Photoshop.
| | 00:32 | It's showing you the pixels as they really are,
subject to color correction and so on.
| | 00:37 | Now then, inside of Photoshop CS4,
things have gotten much considerably
| | 00:43 | improved, assuming that you have a
graphics card that supports OpenGL and that
| | 00:48 | Photoshop is aware of that.
| | 00:50 | So before we go any further,
here's what I want you to do.
| | 00:52 | I want you to go the Edit menu
or the Photoshop menu on the Mac.
| | 00:55 | Choose Preferences and then choose
this command right there, Performance.
| | 01:00 | What I want you to look at is
these GPU Settings right there.
| | 01:04 | It should tell you it's detected a video card.
| | 01:07 | It should tell you what that video card is.
| | 01:09 | And it should give you the option
of turning on Enable OpenGL Drawing.
| | 01:14 | So this option should be available
to you, and it should be turned on.
| | 01:17 | So go ahead and check it if it's not checked.
| | 01:19 | Now if it's dimmed, you've got yourself a problem.
| | 01:22 | What it means is that Photoshop is not
aware that your card supports OpenGL,
| | 01:27 | and your zoom levels are not going to
work out right for purposes of sharpening your images.
| | 01:32 | What you need to do is
potentially a couple of things.
| | 01:34 | You need to go to your graphic card
vendor's website and you need to download
| | 01:38 | the most recent video drivers and
then install them on your machine.
| | 01:42 | That will probably require you to
restart your machine and restart Photoshop.
| | 01:46 | Then start Photoshop back up and
see if that took care of the problem.
| | 01:49 | If it didn't, you need to quit
Photoshop, restart the application, and
| | 01:53 | immediately, upon restarting, press
and hold Ctrl+Shift+Alt on a PC or
| | 01:59 | Command+Shift+Option on the Mac,
and then throw away the Preferences.
| | 02:03 | You'll be prompted.
| | 02:04 | Just keep those keys down
until you see a prompt come up.
| | 02:07 | When prompted, say that you want to
throw away the Preferences file, and
| | 02:10 | Photoshop will open completely from scratch.
| | 02:14 | So you'll have to reenter that
Screen Resolution value as well.
| | 02:17 | The Screen Resolution value will get reset.
| | 02:20 | Rulers will get reset.
| | 02:21 | All of that stuff will get reset, but
what should happen then is that you do see
| | 02:26 | that you have OpenGL support.
| | 02:28 | If you still don't see it, it's
possibly because your graphics card
| | 02:31 | doesn't support it.
| | 02:32 | There are graphics cards out there that
do not support OpenGL. All right, but we need it in
| | 02:36 | order to get super accurate zoom
levels inside of Photoshop CS4.
| | 02:42 | I'm going to cancel out,
because my stuff is just fine.
| | 02:45 | Then what you do is you make sure
you've entered your Screen Resolution value.
| | 02:49 | Then you go to the View menu,
and you choose Print Size.
| | 02:53 | And you're going to zoom out to the
print size of your image, to the size
| | 02:57 | at which the image will print, which will probably
take up less room on your monitor.
| | 03:01 | I'm working in a very small space on my
monitor so that we can keep these videos
| | 03:06 | small for you guys so that
they are nice and portable.
| | 03:08 | You can view them online.
| | 03:10 | But you'll see it take up more room on
your screen, but you will zoom out to
| | 03:13 | some wacky screen ratio, and you
don't know what it's going to be.
| | 03:16 | It's just basically a calculation of
117, in my case, for the screen resolution,
| | 03:21 | and 267 pixels per inch
for the image resolution.
| | 03:25 | Photoshop ends up, when it divides
those values out, it comes up with a zoom ratio
| | 03:30 | of 43.8% for me.
| | 03:32 | For you, it's going to be totally different.
| | 03:35 | The nice thing though is inside
Photoshop CS4, thanks to OpenGL support,
| | 03:40 | this happens to be a pretty darn accurate zoom level.
| | 03:43 | It's not as accurate as 100%, but
it is very good, whereas inside of
| | 03:48 | Photoshop CS3 and earlier,
It was awful.
| | 03:51 | It was not something you could
trust for purposes of sharpening.
| | 03:54 | Having done that, I am now going to
show you how to use this print Size view here
| | 03:58 | to gauge the best sharpness settings.
| | 04:01 | Then we're going to turn around and
confirm that those sharpness settings are
| | 04:03 | working for us, and we're going
to do that in the next exercise.
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| Gauging the ideal sharpening settings| 00:00 | Now everything we've done so far
over the course of the last several
| | 00:03 | exercises has been about establishing
a system with which we can accurately
| | 00:08 | soft proof output sharpening.
| | 00:10 | We've done that, of course, by entering
the Screen Resolution value, confirming
| | 00:14 | that we have an OpenGL video card, and
then going to the View menu and choosing
| | 00:19 | the Print Size command.
| | 00:20 | You can be working inside a
different image if you want to.
| | 00:22 | You don't have to have this
gorgeous, luscious image open.
| | 00:26 | If you want to, though, it's called
Star eyes 12 x 8.jpg, found inside of the
| | 00:31 | 01_how_it_works folder.
| | 00:32 | Now if you never want to have to enter
that Screen Resolution value again, or
| | 00:37 | confirm OpenGL support, you want
Photoshop to be good to go from now on,
| | 00:41 | then go ahead and quit out of
Photoshop, which I can do by clicking on this
| | 00:45 | Close box here under Windows or by going
to the File menu, choosing the Exit command.
| | 00:49 | That would be File>Quit on the Mac.
| | 00:51 | And the reason you would do that and
then restart Photoshop is because Photoshop
| | 00:55 | saves Preference settings when it quits.
| | 00:58 | If you crash inside of Photoshop after
entering a preference setting,
| | 01:03 | then when you restart Photoshop, you'll
have your old preference settings again,
| | 01:06 | because they're not saved on the
fly, they're saved during the quit.
| | 01:09 | Anyway, now we've got everything good
to go. We don't have to do that stuff
| | 01:12 | over and over again.
| | 01:13 | What we do now is we gauge the
settings on the fly and we assume that we're
| | 01:18 | going to be seeing things correctly,
and then by the end of this exercise, I'll
| | 01:22 | show you whether or not
our assumptions are correct.
| | 01:24 | So here's what I want you to do.
| | 01:26 | I don't care what image you're in.
| | 01:27 | Just make sure it's beautiful.
| | 01:28 | Make sure you've gone to the View
menu and chose the Print Size command.
| | 01:32 | Then, go to the Filter menu, choose
Sharpen, and then choose Smart Sharpen.
| | 01:37 | If you've loaded my DekeKeys in the
Photoshop CS4 One-on-One Fundamental Series,
| | 01:42 | then you have a keyboard shortcut of Shift+F6.
| | 01:45 | That will serve you well,
because it's such an awesome filter.
| | 01:48 | All right, I don't want you to look at
the preview inside of the dialog box at all,
| | 01:53 | but I am going to go ahead and bring
the eye over, just so that we can keep
| | 01:56 | track of it. And when you're sharpening
portrait shots, by the way, the eye is
| | 02:00 | the most important thing.
| | 02:02 | We only have one eye that's in focus,
but we want to make sure that one eye
| | 02:05 | stays nice and sharp.
| | 02:07 | However, because we're viewing it at
100%, we're not really concerned with it
| | 02:12 | where output sharpening is concerned.
| | 02:14 | So I'm going to do this.
| | 02:15 | I'm going to move it off screen, out of
the way, so that we can see the output
| | 02:19 | size version of the image on screen,
because that's the one that we're going
| | 02:23 | to really care about.
| | 02:24 | If you've been working along with me,
you might see some ridiculous settings
| | 02:27 | like 500% and 12 pixels and so on,
but here's what you want to do.
| | 02:32 | Make sure More Accurate is turned off.
| | 02:33 | I'll tell you more about that one
in a later chapter. Remove, for now.
| | 02:37 | Just leave it set to Gaussian Blur.
| | 02:39 | You can leave Amount set to this
excessive value right now, but we're going to
| | 02:43 | take the Radius value down
to something more reasonable.
| | 02:46 | So I'm going to have you change the
Radius value to two pixels right now.
| | 02:49 | Look at the image on screen.
| | 02:52 | Are our edges thick
enough, or are we seeing halos?
| | 02:55 | What we want is halos
that pretty much disappear.
| | 02:58 | We don't want to see the halos, but we
want to see the effects of the halos.
| | 03:01 | So in other words, the halos resolve
down to the point that they become just
| | 03:06 | barely visible, so that our end user,
the consumer of our image,
| | 03:11 | does not notice their existence.
| | 03:14 | So we don't want big,
whopping thick halos like this.
| | 03:17 | I just change the Radius value to four pixels,
| | 03:19 | so we see halos around the eyelashes,
for example, and around the lips and
| | 03:23 | around the bottom of the lip. That's terrible.
| | 03:24 | That's exactly what we don't want to see.
| | 03:26 | So we'll start at two, and then I'm
going to have you press the Down Arrow key
| | 03:30 | to reduce that Radius value in
increments of 0.1 pixel at a time.
| | 03:36 | When I get this Radius value down
to about 1.6 pixels, I'm feeling pretty good about it.
| | 03:41 | Now you could go lower if you want to or higher.
| | 03:43 | It's really up to you.
| | 03:44 | But 1.6, where this image is
concerned, it's looking good to me.
| | 03:48 | Then I'm going to change this
Amount value to something reasonable.
| | 03:51 | Let's go ahead and take it down to 100%.
| | 03:54 | That ends up producing a pretty good result.
| | 03:56 | So let's go ahead and turn off Preview for
a moment, so we can see the original image.
| | 03:59 | This is the image as it looked before
we enter the Smart Sharpen dialog box.
| | 04:03 | This is the image the way it looks after
we apply the Smart Sharpen settings,
| | 04:08 | so just a little bit sharper.
| | 04:10 | That's what we're looking for.
| | 04:11 | We just want it to survive the natural
softening of the print process, after all.
| | 04:16 | The image was already
sharply focused in the first place.
| | 04:19 | So come up with an Amount value,
a combination of Amount and Radius
| | 04:23 | that seems to do a good job for the image, and
then I want you to add 50% to the Amount value.
| | 04:29 | That's because there's going to be
more softening associated with that print
| | 04:33 | process, then you can
reasonably anticipate on the screen.
| | 04:37 | And it doesn't do the image any harm.
| | 04:39 | We're not over-sharpening the
image with an additional 50%.
| | 04:42 | So let's go ahead and turn off Preview.
| | 04:44 | There is the un-sharp version of the image,
that is, the image as shot ostensibly.
| | 04:49 | I don't know exactly what photographer
Alexandra Alexis has done to this image
| | 04:53 | in advance, but it doesn't look to
me like she did any output sharpening.
| | 04:56 | Then I'll turn on the Preview to
see the Sharpening settings in force.
| | 05:01 | So this looks good to me.
| | 05:02 | Now, I'm going to move the dialog box
over so you can see what happened to the
| | 05:06 | image at 100% view size. This is before.
| | 05:10 | Nice. It looks good.
| | 05:11 | This is after. It looks crunchy.
| | 05:13 | It looks brittle.
| | 05:14 | It looks over-sharpened. But it's not.
| | 05:16 | If we're sharpening it for output, it
sharpened exactly to the right extent. All right.
| | 05:21 | Let's go ahead and click OK.
| | 05:23 | I'm telling you that in
Photoshop CS4, things are so much better.
| | 05:26 | In the old days, you could not
trust the Print Size command for output
| | 05:30 | sharpening because the Print
Size command threw away pixels.
| | 05:34 | It didn't really throw them away, but it
threw away pixels for purposes of screen display.
| | 05:39 | So the image looked a lot sharper
than it actually was going to output.
| | 05:43 | It looked more jagged,
really, is the way it looked.
| | 05:45 | I'm telling you now that if you have OpenGL
support that Photoshop CS4 behaves way better.
| | 05:50 | I'm going to demonstrate to you, at 100%
view size, that this is truly a believable view.
| | 05:57 | I'm going to prove that to you
in the next and final exercise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Viewing the image at the actual print size| 00:00 | Now, I've gone ahead and saved my
progress so far as Sharper image.jpg.
| | 00:05 | This is the image that I just
sharpened a moment ago, using the Smart Sharpen filter.
| | 00:10 | And we set the Amount value to
150% and the Radius value to 1.6.
| | 00:15 | Now we are viewing the image at print size.
| | 00:17 | So I've gone up to the View menu
and chosen the Print Size command.
| | 00:21 | And I'm telling you that what
we're seeing is a view we can trust.
| | 00:24 | Now it's still not quite
as accurate as the 100% view.
| | 00:28 | It's just ever so slightly
softer as it just so happens.
| | 00:32 | So what we're going to do is we're
going to compare it to the 100% view size.
| | 00:36 | Add a resolution of 117 pixels per inch.
| | 00:40 | So here's how we're going to proceed:
| | 00:42 | Go to the Image menu and
choose the Duplicate command.
| | 00:46 | Then I'm going to go ahead and call this
image 'Actual print size' because we're
| | 00:49 | going to create an image that adheres
to the actual print size, because that's
| | 00:53 | what we're going to do.
| | 00:54 | We're going to create an image that
adheres to the actual print size that
| | 00:57 | appears at print size at 100% view size.
| | 01:01 | Click OK.
| | 01:02 | Just going to get a duplicate
of the image we already had open.
| | 01:05 | It's a 25% view size for me.
| | 01:07 | I don't really care at this point.
| | 01:09 | I'm going to go up to the Image menu,
choose the Image Size command, or press
| | 01:12 | Ctrl+Alt+I, Command+Option+I on the Mac.
| | 01:16 | I want you to make sure
Resample Image is turned on.
| | 01:18 | Constrain Proportions
should be turned on as well.
| | 01:21 | Scale Styles doesn't matter, but I
recommend you leave it on when in doubt.
| | 01:25 | But in the case of this image, this is a flat image,
so it doesn't have any layer styles.
| | 01:29 | Then make sure that the Interpolation
method, right here,
| | 01:31 | is set to Bicubic (best for smooth gradients).
| | 01:34 | That's very important for
accurately gauging our settings.
| | 01:37 | That is also, by the way, the default
setting. So if you haven't changed it,
| | 01:41 | it should be fine.
| | 01:43 | Then I want you to change the
Resolution value to whatever your
| | 01:46 | Screen Resolution is.
| | 01:48 | I'm changing mine to 117 pixels per
inch, because that's what I specified for
| | 01:52 | my screen resolution.
| | 01:54 | Then I'll click OK.
| | 01:56 | Now what I want you to do is zoom
this image to 100% by pressing Ctrl+1 or
| | 02:01 | Command+1 on the Mac.
| | 02:03 | Then I'm going to return to my Sharper
image.jpg photograph, and it may not be
| | 02:09 | registered properly with the other one.
| | 02:10 | So you might have to press Ctrl+Minus
or Command+Minus a few times in order to
| | 02:15 | center it inside the image window
so that it's zoomed out and centered.
| | 02:19 | Then go to the View menu and choose the
Print Size command, and you will see the
| | 02:24 | two images registered together.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to press now Ctrl+Tab here on the PC.
| | 02:29 | That would be Command+Tilde on the
Mac to switch to the other image.
| | 02:34 | Look very carefully.
| | 02:35 | Did you notice that it grew slightly
sharper in the actual print size version?
| | 02:39 | So this version that we're seeing right
now, actual print size, that is the most
| | 02:44 | accurate view of the sharpness of our image.
| | 02:47 | So this is the most accurate soft proof,
but it's a lot of work to go through to
| | 02:52 | have to scale every image to the screen
resolution and then make sure you don't
| | 02:55 | save over it, undo, come back
to your big resolution image.
| | 02:58 | That's what you'd have to do and that's
what I advise you do, back in Photoshop
| | 03:02 | CS3, if you were to watch that series.
| | 03:04 | That's what you have to do for the
image in order to gauge its print size.
| | 03:07 | And it's just a lot of extra legwork.
| | 03:10 | And if you can get away with not
doing it, you want to get away with not doing it.
| | 03:13 | And, if I Ctrl+Tab or Command+Tilde
back to Sharper image.jpg, watch that eye.
| | 03:19 | It grows ever so slightly softer.
| | 03:23 | That's okay.
| | 03:24 | So, if anything, you're going to be
tempted to add a little too much sharpening
| | 03:28 | to your image.
| | 03:29 | That might be what you're thinking.
| | 03:30 | "Well, gosh, if I print this image,
it's going to grow slightly sharper than I thought,
| | 03:34 | and I'm going to accidentally over-sharpen."
| | 03:36 | No, I assure you, this extra 10%
sharpening, which is about what we're
| | 03:40 | getting here, that we're seeing on
screen, is going to resolve itself when
| | 03:44 | you print the image.
| | 03:45 | What we're getting is more Amount out of this.
| | 03:47 | And Amount you don't have to
worry about nearly as much as Radius.
| | 03:51 | We're still seeing the same Radius value.
| | 03:53 | Our sharpening halos are barely
visible, so we're in good shape.
| | 03:57 | I just want you to see that, for all
intensive purposes, this view right here,
| | 04:01 | which is just ever so slightly softer,
is as accurate as we need it to be.
| | 04:07 | So there you have it, the mechanics
of sharpening revealed before you.
| | 04:11 | This is all the nuts and
bolts of sharpening now, folks.
| | 04:14 | What we're going to learn in subsequent
chapters is how we go about sharpening
| | 04:18 | our images, starting with the next
chapter in which I answer the question:
| | 04:22 | When do you sharpen?
| | 04:23 | Is it a capture?
| | 04:24 | Is it an output?
| | 04:25 | Is it someplace in between?
| | 04:27 | And as it just so happens, the
answer to all of those questions is 'yes.'
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