Sharpening for Forums

[Fangman]

I notice it was the IceMan's turn today to get advice on sharpening as I had earlier in the week. Come on you experts - how do you do it?

I used to go into lab and sharpen usm in the lightness channel and recently moved to the TPF action to resize and sharpen. Recently been playing with the script for capture and output sharpen and can get told not enough and then I over compensate.

Tell all you experts. :confused-

 

[Jonny]

I simply have bount an action to my F4 button to do this:

Unsharpen Mask
100%
0.3px

I just press F4 to sharpen my image, and press it again if i need to do some more.

 

[Ross]

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=1740

 

[Bachs]

My current favourite is sharpening the lightness channel in LAB mode then converting back to RGB. I've also started to use the threshold slider more (I previously left it alone at zero) I zoom into critical areas of the image checking for haloing and noise accentuation..

I also use a layer mask to remove or reduce the sharpening in shadow areas for instance, where noise is most prevelant and always duplicate the original layer and do the sharpening on that so I can completely remove it if I goof or at least reduce the opacity of the whole layer.

Amounts obviously differ for print and web resolutions and I don't use any fixed formula...the individual image and detail dictates the amount.

I used to always sharpen last and always back off the sharpening in the RAW converter but these days I sharpen for print then add a little more when I resize for web or just use the 'Bicubic Sharper' option when I use the 'Save for Web' resizing option in Photoshop.

 

[ppp]

use nik sharpner pro it is much more advanced and is a lot better than the standard unsharp mask