Sharpening

[Vixpix]

Although i have in the past used Unsharp mask and other sharpening tools such as Extensis intelihance pro, i no longer use them, instead i use the High pass filter in Photoshop for all my sharpening because it's about the best method i've come accross.

For those that don't know about the High pass filter, try giving it a go and see what you think.

Work should be carried out on the full original file prior to cropping and resizing.

here's the process:

Layer > Duplicate layer > Filter > Other > High pass > select between 2 to 3 pixels so that you have a grey mask with little or no colour showing through but plenty of texture > OK > In the layers dropdown pallette chosse between Overlay, Hard light, Vivid light which will depend on the type of image and personal taste, Overlay works best with most images although Hard light can be good for fur and hair > Use the layers opacity slider to fine tune the amount of sharpening you want, then > Layer > merge visible and you're done.

One other tip,
While you still have the High pass filter layer, you can erase any areas that are blurrred to help reduce noise if you are doing heavy sharpening.

[FISHiEE]

I used to use High Pass also, but then forgot about it. I recently wentback to look at it and see how it compares to smart sharpen in CS4 and couldn't really see any difference, so think to use Smart Sharpen (at least in CS4) is equally as effective but far simpler.

Having said that though, I'll check again as you have suggested a couple of things a little differently to what I used to do, so maybe those make it better...

[MikeOxon]

When I have time, I'll try a direct comparison of these different methods and post some results on the forum.

While the weather has not been great out in the field, I have been trying the various suggestions in this thread. It's not been a very scientific study but I have tried to examine the effect on both fine wing fringes and large areas of blank background.

Sharpening Methods Comparison

The 'original' is a straight jpeg conversion from the RAW file with no additional sharpening applied. The image is 4288 x 2048 px size. I first used 'Unsharp Mask' (USM) in Photoshop Elements v.5 with settings of 2px radius, 125%, and 7 Levels. This improved the fringes a little but the background was already showing a little more grain. I then tried 'Smart Sharpen', with similar settings and the 'more refined' option selected. This gave a much crisper result, especially in the scale detail on the wings, which was very finely delineated and no more background grain than USM. I then tried the High Pass filter, exactly as described by Vixpix. I found I needed a higher pixel setting of 7px, to get the textured effect he describes, and also selected Hard Light and 100%. The result was not as crisp overall as Smart Sharpen, but I could see the potential for much better control of the areas to be sharpened and believe that this could be very effective on 'difficult' images. Finally, I used the Wavelet Sharpen plugin with the GIMP software. This was better than USM but not as crisp overall as 'Smart Sharpen'.

For convenience of use, I felt 'Smart Sharpen' was best, but the High Pass filter offers more selective control.

I appreciate that the small attached image probably doesn't show much of this but, if anyone is really interested, PM me and I can supply larger images.

Mike