High Pass Sharpening

Muineach

Some people were asking me what I meant by multiple high pass sharpening with masks.
This is a tutorial I made of what I do (not saying it's right), it loads up about 5mb. of images in total, so be warned.

There's a Photoshop file to go with it
Photoshop file (40mb.)

If people find this useful I can tidy it all up a bit more, bit of a rush job.

rahtkennades

Muineach,

you're a genius! That's an excellent tutorial, thanks much. Exactly what I needed to sharpen something I wasn't happy with too!

Just one question. I presume that if you want to save off as a jpg etc that you need to "Flatten Layer" to bring them all onto the same layer? (sorry, only learning this photoshoppy thing!)

Fajitas!

I find this great for working on eyes, it really gives them 'that' look.

Muineach

Ok first off this is how I do it, probably not "right" but it works for me.

There's a secret key combo in photoshop that I haven't seen anywhere, I found it in a tutorial but I can't find the tutorial.

Create a new blank layer, put it on the very top, now try this

ctrl + shift + alt + e

It's easier than it sounds, honestly, this will create a copy of the image shown at that time, into the layer you've just created, so you don't need to flatten the image. I tend to use this for comparing the original to the "final" version, i.e. uncheck the visibility icon on all layers except for the background and the final version, then toggle the final one on/off.

You don't need to flatten an image, what you see on screen is what gets saved as a hard drive as a jpg/tiff.

There's a few ways to save a jpg,

1) Save for web
Adv: Simple, and you can see what the compression will do to the jpg.
Auto converts a copy of the image to 8bit (needed for jpeg)
DisAdv: Lose all EXIF data i.e. what your focal length was and other bit's n'
bobs

2) Save as
Adv: Can save as png, tiff etc.
It automatically keeps the EXIF data
Disadv: If you working in 16bit mode, you have to manually convert to 8bit,
then save as to have the jpeg option, remember though that the original is now in 8bit, and you can't go back to 16bit from 8 bit, so I normally close the file without saving.

3)
Then there's image processor which is different again, you can select directories, psd, etc. and it will run number 2 (Save As) and save the jpg's to the hard drive. This is what I tend to use, so in adobe bridge select the psd files, Tools->Photoshop->Image processor, it's fairly easy and self explanatory, make sure to try on a new directory, i.e. with a copy of al the files until your used and happy with it. It's very good for processing multiple 16bit files (psd's) into 8bit jpegs automatically with the EXIF data intact.

i bet that was a longer answer than you expected

rahtkennades

Muineach wrote:

Ok first off this is how I do it, probably not "right" but it works for me.

There's a secret key combo in photoshop that I haven't seen anywhere, I found it in a tutorial but I can't find the tutorial.

Create a new blank layer, put it on the very top, now try this

ctrl + shift + alt + e.......

Thanks Muineach, I'll give that a go this eve.

Also thanks for the info on saving JPEGs. I hadn't realised that it converted the original to 8-bit as well as the jpeg. But then again, since I'm working with PS Elements 2, it doesn't really matter!

countryjimbo

hi Muineach,

Thanks a million for that tutorial, its very well done, really glad you went to the effort of creating & sharing this. I've a few pictures that can really do with a bit of sharpening!

Must check out the image processor you mentioned as option 3 for saving to JPG's, that sounds very useful.