Sharpening photos in elements

B

brewers_fan

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Edit My Images
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I will be reediting these photos over the weekend and am after some advice on how to sharpen them, I have been told to use unsharpen mask but don't really understand what that is and how to use it. Also at what part of the editing process would you sharpen a photo and would you look to sharpen all the photo or jut a section of it. Still new to editing so any help would be really good.

Also the last one I used the make sky blue smart brush - wont be doing that again.





 
What makes you think they need sharpening? At the resolution you posted them it's impossible to say whether they need it or not, but many people have a tendency to over sharpen, so be careful. The best way to understand unsharp mask is to use it.. play with the controls and see what it does.

That last image isn't working, because you've painted blue over the wings of the Buccaneer, but you seem to have realised that yourself by your comments. Where these shot in RAW? You may be better off recovering some blue from the sky at the RAW stage by simply recovering some highlights.

Things like sharpening are nearly always best done at the RAW stage, not after you've converted it to a bitmapped image in Photoshop.


Are you shooting RAW?
 
The blue sky in the buccaneer shot doesnt look too bad really, apart from as David has said, it extends over the plane as well. To avoid this you need to use the selection tools to select the sky first and then do the blue sky brush thing. That way it'll only affect the areas that are selected. The magic brush or the quick selection brush would probably select the sky in a matter of a few seconds. Click once in the sky "outside" the plane, adjust the sensitivity and try again if it doesnt get all the sky in one go. Then do "add to selection" and click inside the folded wings on the sky and agian on the sky showing by the cockpit. Once you think youve got all your sky selected, try the blue sky brush again.
As for sharpening I always thought it was best left to the very last thing done after you've resized the image to what size you want.
 
Tip

Never work on the original but on a copy, that way if you mess up you still have the original
 
BBR said:
Can't you just press 'reset' ?
Click to expand...
In Elements, changes are made irreversibly to the image when you press 'Save'. After that, you don't have the option of 'Reset'.
 
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