Tutorial High Pass sharpening - my take on it,

Well written tutorial, I use high pass on all my headshots and rub out everything but the eyes, use overlay as the blending mode and sometimes reduce the opacity, it really makes the eyes pop.
 
I use High Pass Sharpening in NX2 and here you have the opportunity to reduce the Chrominance Channel to zero to prevent any colour shift, I'm not sure whether this is available in Photoshop or other software.
When you click on New Step and go to Focus>High Pass insert your settings> click on the Opacity tab you will see All click on the triangle next to it >click on Luminance_Chrominance > 2 sliders will appear reduce the Chrominance Channel to 0> Change Blending Mode to taste.
Dave
 
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Thanks for sharing the info. It's so much better than the "auto sharpen" feature in PSE7, I will be using this technique to sharpen from now on.

Quick question, at what stage is best to sharpen? Am I right in thinking it should be done last?
 
Great Tut, cheers Hacker
 
Great Tutorial, however the technique is also really good. I love the way this sharpens the image, without adding excess, unneeded artefacts, distortions and lowering quality.

Thank you!
 
Thanks Colin, just had a play with that and it's cracking, wish i found it 3 weeks ago when i had a poster print done :bonk: i will book mark that for future reference (y)
 
wow this has still improved some of my best pictures!

Thanks YOU!!
 
Thanks for this. I've got a quick query though - would you still need to sharpen for print after doing high-pass sharpening, or would that be overkill and is no longer required when using this technique?
 
Outstanding stuff...that's been set up as a custom action for me in CS4...should do very nicely on the sports shots from the darkly lit dungeons!
 
If anyone doesn't know how to set up an action to complete this then:

  • In photoshop make sure you have a picture loaded or just click new and ok.
  • Click on "Window" in the top menu and make sure that "Action" is ticked
  • Click on the "Action" tile to select it.
  • Click on the new action button at the bottom right of that tile (square in a square)
  • A window will appear, in the name box give the action a name such as "High pass sharpen"
  • Click on the record button.
Now we need to do the things that we did as above....

  • Duplicate the layer by holding CTRL/CMD and pressing "J"
  • Click on "Filter" >> "Other" >> "High pass"
  • Select "10" and click "OK"
  • Click on "Normal" in the layers panel and change to "Hard light"
  • Click on "Opacity" and change to "35%"
  • Click on "Layer" in the top menu and select "Flatten image"
Now to stop recording

  • Click on the stop button in the actions panel (small solid square)
Thats it you have now recorded your action....

To do the process again just click on the line "High pass filter" in the actions panel and click the play (small triangle) button. The steps you have just done will play out before your eyes.
 
I just tried it on a landscape using Corel PSPx2 and it worked really well, I will use that again, thanks Hacker. :)
First time I've used a layer as well.
smileyvault-dunce.gif
 
This is excellent, Thanks you! So glad I found it and I really should spend more time in this forum!
Thanks also to Cowasaki for the simple guide to setting it up as an action.
 
I am slowly working my way through some of these wonderful tutorials thank you they are a real help(y)
 
Used to use this and then with playing around with so many methods I had forgotten all about it until finding it here again.

Thanks for the reminder, will try it out again as it is so simple to do. (y)
 
Thanks everyone, I'd forgotten about this one and it is good to see it's still as relevant today as when it was written.

cowasaki said:
If anyone doesn't know how to set up an action to complete this then:

  • In photoshop make sure you have a picture loaded or just click new and ok.
  • Click on "Window" in the top menu and make sure that "Action" is ticked
  • Click on the "Action" tile to select it.
  • Click on the new action button at the bottom right of that tile (square in a square)
  • A window will appear, in the name box give the action a name such as "High pass sharpen"
  • Click on the record button.
Now we need to do the things that we did as above....

  • Duplicate the layer by holding CTRL/CMD and pressing "J"
  • Click on "Filter" >> "Other" >> "High pass"
  • Select "10" and click "OK"
  • Click on "Normal" in the layers panel and change to "Hard light"
  • Click on "Opacity" and change to "35%"
  • Click on "Layer" in the top menu and select "Flatten image"
Now to stop recording

  • Click on the stop button in the actions panel (small solid square)
Thats it you have now recorded your action....

To do the process again just click on the line "High pass filter" in the actions panel and click the play (small triangle) button. The steps you have just done will play out before your eyes.
Click to expand...

To add to what Darren has very ably put together, I have various 'copies' of this action at differing opacity strengths i.e. 35%, 50%, 75% and 100% so it makes it very easy to select whichever one I want at the click of a button. Another useful tip is create the actions in a set called Sharpening (or whatever you want to call it) and you can then keep all your sharpening actions, including USM, Sharpen for Web etc, in one place.
 
this and your other on USM are very helpful thanks
 
cowasaki said:
If anyone doesn't know how to set up an action to complete this then:

  • In photoshop make sure you have a picture loaded or just click new and ok.
  • Click on "Window" in the top menu and make sure that "Action" is ticked
  • Click on the "Action" tile to select it.
  • Click on the new action button at the bottom right of that tile (square in a square)
  • A window will appear, in the name box give the action a name such as "High pass sharpen"
  • Click on the record button.
Now we need to do the things that we did as above....

  • Duplicate the layer by holding CTRL/CMD and pressing "J"
  • Click on "Filter" >> "Other" >> "High pass"
  • Select "10" and click "OK"
  • Click on "Normal" in the layers panel and change to "Hard light"
  • Click on "Opacity" and change to "35%"
  • Click on "Layer" in the top menu and select "Flatten image"
Now to stop recording

  • Click on the stop button in the actions panel (small solid square)
Thats it you have now recorded your action....

To do the process again just click on the line "High pass filter" in the actions panel and click the play (small triangle) button. The steps you have just done will play out before your eyes.
Click to expand...

Does anyone know if this could be set up using Elements 8? I've taken a look but can't find anything. Would be a neat macro to run.

Di
 
Di Stone said:
Does anyone know if this could be set up using Elements 8? I've taken a look but can't find anything. Would be a neat macro to run.

Di
Click to expand...

You cannot easily make this type of procedure run using Elements (any version) there is a "way" but cannot get that to work.

Regards
 
Messiah Khan said:
I love High Pass sharpening. I however do it a little different to you Hacker. The way I do it;

1. Duplicate the image layer.
2. Desaturate the new layer.
3. Apply high pass filter so that the detail comes through.
4. Set the blending mode of the sharpening layer to vivid light.
5. Apply a layer mask to the sharpening layer.
6. Invert the layer mask with ctrl+I.
7. Now brush in the areas you want sharpening with a white brush.
8. Change the blending mode to soft light for a subtler effect.
9. Flatten the image.

Doing it this way allows me to only sharpen areas with detail and not the entire image. :)
Click to expand...

If you brush to much white on, how do you remove it?

Regards
 
Great tutorial, thanks!
 
I stumbled on this exact same technique by accident recently myself! I did not realise other people did it as well! And now that I've found it I use it all the time after LR. Not only does it add sharpness, but also really gives an image extra punch.
 
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