Thom Hogan's Sharpening Technique

[Baywing]

I'm sure some of you have seen this before, but I'll bet many haven't. I ran across it a while back and have been using it for a while now. While more involved than simple USM, it does have several advantages, in that it doesn't add sharpening to blank areas like sky. This means less artifacts and better images. For those who want to try it, the proceddure is here: http://www.bythom.com/sharpening.htm
I don't use it all the time and there are variations of this, but there are times when it really helps.

 

[eng45ine]

Thanks for the link, I get to Thom's site now and then but I don't recall reading this topic. I will print it out and read it soon. Thanks for taking the time to refer it to us.

 

[JeffKohn]

The "Edge Sharpening" technique as Thom describes is definitely useful for many images. Doing it manually is a fair amount of work though. THere are some sharpening plug-ins that use the edge mask approach to sharpening and make things much easier. Pixelgenius Photokit Sharpener and Photowiz FocalBlade come to mind.

 

[helmet155]

Thanks for the link, perfect timing as I am going to take the jump to shooting in NEF mode and am researching photoshop processing methods!

 

[manzico]

It's fantastic

I use it in almost all of my images. It's really a great technique. I know it seems like it would be time consuming, but I'm so used to it by now that it only takes 10 seconds or so to do. There are alot of other pluses to the process too. It makes it easy to spot hot or dark pixels (they jump out in the mask). Also, in addition to sharpening, you can invert your selection and then run a gaussian blur with a low radius to selectively "remove" digital noise in high iso shots without really effecting your edges.

Dave

 

[TOLady]

I'm with Jeff, I use PixelGenius PK Sharpener, you paint it on only where you want it, you can vary the severity by lowering the opacity of the brush. It paints it on a separate layer, and also you can un-brush sharpening by changing brush colour from white to black, etc, just like regular painting.

The more pics I take, the lazier I get in my editing. I've assigned keyboard shortcuts to all my stuff now and wd rather be shooting than editing, hence going with a plugin.

 

[Hermie]

Don't forget Uwe Steimueller's EasyS sharpen plugin !

http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_66/essay.html

IMHO, it's even better than PK Sharpener, although the differences are subtle. I use both, PK Sharpener for setting the target and EasyS for the actual sharpening.

Herman

 

[MikeG]

If you have Thom's ebook on the D100, D2H, D70 etc the Smart Sharpen action for PS in included on the CD. 8)