From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

693 Sharpening molecules with High Pass

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

693 Sharpening molecules with High Pass

- [Instructor] In this movie we're going to take our very colorful as well as very softly transitioning molecules, and we're going to give them more tactile edges with the help of a couple of high pass layers. Now something I want you to note about this image is its file size in memory, and so take a look at the doc value down here in the bottom left corner of the image. Notice that it shows up as 16.3 megabytes before the slash, and zero bytes afterward. Now typically what this is telling you is the size of the image flat in memory if it were expressed as a flat image file, and then the size after the slash is the size of the image in memory including all of its layers. So why is the image so big when flat and so little when you take into account all the layers? Well we can see the reason by twirling open one of these groups here, and then twirling open one of the groups inside of it, and then notice, each and every one of these circles is a vector base shape layer, which takes up very little room in memory. Also worth nothing is when you save this file as a layered PSD document, it takes up just one and a half megs on disk. So this is a very lean file. All right, so one way to sharpen the edges would be to select both of these groups by clicking on one and then shift clicking on the other, and then switching to the rectangular marquee tool, which you can get by pressing the M key, and then right clicking inside the image window and choosing convert to smart object, at which point the file size after the slash, notice it goes from zero bytes to 63.9 megabytes. So that is a pretty enormous jump. All right, then if I wanted to sharpen the image, presumably I'd go up to the filter menu, choose sharpen, and then choose the command with the lowest overhead, which is unsharp mask, and now notice that I've gone ahead and cranked the amount value up to 500%, and I've set the radius value to 20 pixels, at which point I'll click okay, and then I'll double click on the little slider icon to the right of the words unsharp mask in order to bring out the blending options dialogue box, and I'll change the mode to luminosity. And notice that's going to take some of the weird aberrant colors out of the image. And so if I were to turn off the preview checkbox, this is what the image looks like when you sharpen the luminance and the color detail. So we're seeing all these weird blue edges around the purple molecules, whereas, if I turn the preview checkbox back on, those highly saturated blue edges disappear, and, once again, that's a function of setting the blend mode to luminosity where the unsharp mask filter is concerned. All right, I'll go ahead and click okay. All right, now the thing is, if I were to save this file as a layered PSD document once again, it would take up 60 megabytes. So it grows from 1.5 to 60. That's an increase of 40 times, four zero, the file size. Also it produces a different looking effect than high pass. So notice where the high pass effect is concerned, we get these glowing bright edges, whereas with unsharp mask we get these darker edges. All right, so given that this is not what I want, I'll go up to the file menu and choose the revert command in order to restore the saved version of the image, and now I'll turn off the contrast layer for the moment, and I will create a merged version of this image. So I want you to notice once again down here in the bottom left corner of the window, the value after the slash is zero bytes, but if I were to merge these layers together by pressing a keyboard shortcut, there's no other way, and that shortcut is mash your fist E. That is to say Control + Shift + Alt + E here in the PC. That's going to be Command + Shift + Option + E on the Mac. That produced a merged layer as we're seeing right here, and the file size after the slash grows to 16.3 megabytes. So we are adding to the file size, we're just not adding nearly as much. All right, I'm going to go ahead and double click on the name of this layer and rename it merged like so, and then we want to take the color out of this layer so we don't see any of those aberrantly colorful edges, and you can do that by going up to the image menu, choosing adjustments, and then choosing desaturate, and that'll make the image gray scale, which of course doesn't make a lick of sense at this point. We were really relying on the color to make sense of this composition, but bear in mind the function of this layer is just sharpness. And so I'll go up to the filter menu, and this time instead of dropping down to sharpen and choosing unsharp mask, you want to instead drop down to other and choose high pass, which is basically going to produce the same effect as unsharp mask, but without the amount value. And so notice that I'm using the same radius value of 20 pixels so we have some big, thick, meaty edges, at which point I'll click okay, and now you want to merge the merged layer with everything below by assigning a blend mode. And so if you want just a little bit of sharpening, you'd go with overlay, and so notice the difference. This is without the layer, and this is with it. Now if that were too much sharpness, then you could ratchet it down to soft light. If you want more, as I do, then you want to crank it up to hard light, or even better for this effect is linear light, which is going to increase the sharpness of those edges like so. And so this is the artwork without that layer, and this is what it looks like with that layer. Now if you want more sharpness still, then you can jump a duplicate of this layer by pressing Control + J, or Command + J on the Mac. And so now that we have two versions of this merged layer, we have a lot more sharpness. So this is the original image, and this is the way it looks now. Now it's way too bright, and so I'm going to turn back on the contrast layer in order to darken it up. And now I'll press Shift + F to switch directly to the full screen mode, and I'll go ahead and zoom in as well. And just for the sake of comparison, this is the original soft version of our molecular artwork, and this is the sharpened edition complete with tactile edges.

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