The closest thing is high-pass sharpening. Duplicate your layer and go to Filter>Other>High Pass. Adjust it till you can just barely see the outlines in your image. (If you can see color, it’s way too much). Usually this is going to be less than around 3.5, maybe as little as 1.
Then go to the layers palette and change the mode to Overlay. Actually you can use any of the choices in that group of blendmodes. Vivid light can be pretty cool sometimes, too.
Overlay and soft light give the softest effect, vivid light the hardest. If your photo is really noisy you won’t like the way vivid light or hard light accents the grain.
Another way is to try a layer of Poster Edges or Find Edges in luminosity mode.
Another variant of this (from Scott Kelby’s Elements for digital photographers book – he calls it edge masking but it isn’t quite the same)
Duplicate the layer, run the Emboss filter – leave Angle and amount at 135 and 100% and raise the height amount for more intesnse sharpening) Then switch blend mode of the embossed layer to hard light, and adjust opacity to suit.
I don’t know what Mr McClelland’s method is but it can probably be done in Elements – i’ll have a go at some instructions when i’ve worked througha few steps myself.
susan S
OK – Try this. First follow the instructions from the PS tutorial. for mask creation on a separate layer. Just selecting the mask layer image won’t work – you need to make a selection based on the luminosity of the mask to get a selection that isn’t just selecting the outside of the layer.
Here’s one way which requires no add-ons:
duplicate the background layer again.
Below this, create an adjustment layer – doesn’t matter which one as you are just going to use the layer mask part of it
Make the mask layer active
Select all
Copy
Now you want to paste the mask layer info into the layer mask of the adjustment layer – there is a trick to this:
Make the adjustment layer active;
Hold down the alt/option key (Windows/Mac) and click on the mask icon on the layer palette. The screen will turn white.
Paste
alt-click the layer mask icon on the layer palette again and you should be able to see that the mask icon now contains the mask image
Turn off the visibility on the layer you used to create the mask or delete it. Group the background layer copy with the adjustment layer So you should have (running top to bottom)Back ground layer copy grouped to adjustment layer containing the mask, back ground layer.
Then run the unsharp mask on the background layer copy and the mask on the adjustment layer will control where the image shows..
You can use this to do most photoshop masking techniques – it’s slightly less complex if you have an add-on which allows you to use layer masks on any layer – then you just have to duplicate the background, add the layer mask, alt-shift the layer mask icon, paste the mask contens and alt shift again, run unsharp mask.
Let me know if you need any clarification!
Edit : PS if you now command-click (mac) control-click (Windows) on the layer mask icon in the adjustment layer it will load the mask as a selection, if you want to do that.
Yeah, but Susan, Deke’s technique (if it’s the one I’m thinking of) involves substantially editing each channel’s mask separately. I sure don’t know any way to achieve that in PE. Do you? I’d be really curious if you do have a way.
Barbara – I don’t have Deke’s book – I was relying on the original poster’s assertion that the mask could be created on a layer. Katrin Eisemann has an edge masking technique in her book and I was assuming that the two were similar – hers can certainly be done with the trick I describe, as I’ve done it. (The mask is created using find edges/invert/median/maximum/gaussian blur in sequence on the channel with the most edge contrast – I use the hidden Power book tools to split the channels, but it works OK on a simple decoloured version of the original if you don’t have that.
Susan S.
Thank you! I’m really grateful. I’ll try these as soon as I get a chance!
Philip U.
