I am taking a class in PSE, and our instructor had us doing this sharpening process using the Unsharp Mask filter.
I tried it on flowers and older scans of family pictures.
Use the Sharpen filter > unsharp mask, start near the settings I have listed here. Here are the settings that brought some of my pictures back to nice sharpness; the Amount slider to around 230%, the Radius to about 2.5, and the Threshold slider to 1 pixel. For each picture you will need to adjust these settings, but our instructor had us start close to these settings. Try them over and over again, and you will eventually get a picture that will be great.
I am just learning, but have really ‘saved’ some of our older family pictures, plus it is fun! Jane
In response to Patti’s remark,
I believe you can also perform partial sharpening by lasso-ing (running ants) an area and then do unsharp.
The unsharp tool takes a bit of practice as you can easily oversharpen your image (you see small blotches appear on normally smooth surfaces) and secondly an image that was not sharp already you can never make sharp with unsharp. (hope I made sense?).
By the way each digital image requires a bit of sharpening as digitalisation seems to give a soft edge to your images.
hope I was of help.
Robert
Robert,
I suggest that you select the kids’ faces, put them on their own layer, then apply the high-pass technique referred to by Patti above to that layer.You may want to feather the selection 2-3px to avoid a sharp delineation of the layer. I have had excellent results doing this. Working on layers will give you control and flexibility, such as adjusting the opacity of a layer, etc.
Ken
I will apply these techniques and let you all know what type of results I was able to achieve. I wasn’t familiar with the high pass filter, so I’m anxious to apply that method. I think Robert Schraven’s observation may reflect part of my problem – the original photos are not very sharp. I’ve been very impressed with PS2 so far. I believe it makes the saying, "If you plant a radish, you get a radish," completely obsolete.
Thanks for all your help. Please keep the suggestions coming in.
Bob Zidle
Another alternative – this gives sharpening (to some extent) but doesn’t have the light rims around eyelashes etc.
Duplicate the layer to be sharpened, run the USM filter on the top layer – probably a little more intensively than usual – then change the blending mode on the sharpened layer to darken. This can also be done with the fade command from Richard Lynch’s HPA3 action player – it’s the equivalent of the full version PS fade to darken command.
Susan S.
Robert Z,
Using Unsharp is most times the last thing you do before you decide the image is finished.
In addition to this it is my opinion that you can use unsharp only once per image. Just try unsharp over unsharp and you will find that the image starts to look unnatural.
I always make a note in the "information-file" that goes with the image you are working on, which says that I have used unsharp as I some times forget I used it previously.
I also make a note if I have cropped an image as well as you may loose some quality of your image that way too.
Robert
Robert, I never noticed this "information file". Where can I find it?
Leen
Leen, I guess that would be File>File Info and use the caption block….?
Leen,
Chuck already answered your question for me.
It is not the "information file" but "File" and then go to "File info".
That is where I drop my comments regarding alterations I made to the image. Don’t forget to save the information afterwards.
I find it a helpful tool as sometimes I go back on an image I already worked and do some more alterations. This way I avoid doubling changes.
Robert
Every day I learn something new. Thanks, both of you.
Leen
