Sharpening in your work flow - tell me about it!

In the spirit of getting answers to the questions that gnaw on me at night, I am

hoping for some information on why to use/how to add sharpening into my work

flow. Right now my wedding work flow consists of shooting in RAW, bringing into

Lightroom for most color editing, export as JPG and then some tweaking in

Photoshop for a few files. I use the default Lightroom sharpening (25, I think)

and occasionally increase the "clarity" for specific photos. In reading about

others workflow, I see a lot of people mention that they add sharpness, etc.

 

I have a few questions that I am hoping fellow pnet-ers can help with!

 

- what is the purpose of the sharpening for standard images? Is the idea that

digital is just not able to show edges as nicely?

 

- how do you integrate sharpening into your work flow? Do you use lightroom? Do

you adjust the Sharpness for each situation, or for a whole wedding at a time?

Do you use "clarity" and "sharpness" in lightroom, or do you use a third party

product or something in Photoshop?

 

For the record, I have been shooting weddings professionally for years and

worked with many other professional photographers, but my work flow has been

mostly self taught, and is obviously always changing! Also, my question is not

about how to make blurry images sharp, but instead what to do with in-focus,

normal images.

 

I look forward to hearing how you all handle this!

The best procedure that I've discovered is a 3 step process ...

 

1. Browse to www.amazon.com

 

2. Search for "Real World Image Sharpening" by Bruce Fraser

 

3. Click "Buy Now"

 

Your chance to learn from the late guru of sharpening & professional author/educator Bruce Fraser. My observations about sharpening in general is that only 5% of photographers truely understand it - and yet 95% of photographers think that they belong to that 5%! You'll hear all sorts of conflicting advice - some will sharpen first - some will sharpen last - some will sharpen multiple times - some will do it in LAB colour - others in RGB.

 

Bottom line is that sharpening is an in-depth subject and the optimal settings to use depend on many things. Sharpening the image of a model with fine & frizzy hair is completely different to sharpening the image of a groom with slicked back hair enjoying his last beer at the pub. And that's without even getting in to local sharpening, global sharpening, noise reduction (chroma and luminance), image frequency etc.

 

It wasn't until I'd got the book that I came to realise how important correct sharpening is when it comes to making an image believeable - and giving it somewhat of a 3 dimentional "pop".

 

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

"The best procedure that I've discovered is a 3 step process ...

 

1. Browse to www.amazon.com

 

2. Search for "Real World Image Sharpening" by Bruce Fraser

 

3. Click "Buy Now" "

 

 

And after that go to http://www.pixelgenius.com and purchase the Photokit Sharpener , which was built by Fraser and implements the 3 step process in the book.

 

Fair warning: I very, very rarely use or needto use the second localized sharpening tool. MAybe occassionally on portraits. But I always use, and have used for at leat 4 years, the capture and output sharpening steps and I think I get optimal results over jsut a one size fits all sharpen atthe end of the process step.

 

Some further further notes on Cpture sharpening.

 

do all of your global tonal edits first: white balance , color balancing, resizing, etc. and if you must apply any noise reduction do that to.

 

if ou are using Adobe Lightroom to process your raw files the capture sharpening step is built in and I use it , either with the Alndscape of the Portrait sharpening presets or a custom sharpening pre set.

 

If youoeare usign Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw also use the Clarity contrast enchancement. This tends to clear out any digital haze you might have. Don't use a setting stronger than 10 however.

 

While I am on the subject of Lightroom and presets: For weddings Iwould build a preset that includes the Portrait sharpenign settigns and Calrity at 9. Yo ucan then apply this preset automatically when you re importing the images: That saves oodles of time.

 

For high ISo images I turn off the capture tools in Lightroom but do all of other my global tone corrections in Lr. I then export the images (As 16 bit per channel PSD files in the Pro Photo Color Space) t oa folder and in Photoshop CS3 I'll run Noiseware as a batch action and then run the appropriate Photokit Capture Sharpener , also as a batch action.

 

Once set up this is all a lot less convoluted, complicated or time consuming then it reads.

Becca. I agree with you. I have read a lot fuzzy writing about sharpening and theory. I still would like to know simple ways of properly sharpening a photograph that do not take a lot of processing time. I am not too inderested in a lot of theory. I hope your post will be in digital darkroom. I guess like you I am a member of the great unwashed who don't really understand sharpening according to the above. I worked for several years leading R&D efforts. I also did weddings in my own photo business for seven years. So I think I can understand something that is sensibly written. I also print some very nice large digital prints so I must, maybe, be doing something right. I guess I just don't know how I do it when it comes to sharpening.

Here's what I do for a normal wedding photo that comes out of the camera in focus and without much noise, and will be printed 12x18 or smaller:

1) 25 initial sharpening in Adobe Camera Raw

2) Edit in CS2 as needed (including any localized sharpening)

3) Finish up by creating a duplicate layer, set blend to luminosity, run Smart Sharpen or USM at a high percentage and low radius (350% 0.3r), followed by Smart Sharpen or USM at a low percentage and high radius (15% 20-60r), flatten.

 

I view sharpening effects at 50% magnification, which I've found to be more accurate to what the prints will look like than 100% mag.

Matt--I just printed a couple of pictures using your advice. It works better than what I have been doing. A got a couple of quite sharp prints. Thanks.

Matt--what is the reason for running Smart Sharpen or USM twice?

Good question Nadine. I also had a question about why this works now that I have seen it work. I shot a waterfall in the NH woods this weekend and it has lots of leaf detail which sharpened up very nicely doing this. I don't know how it works on a wedding picture, however.

I hope the following is useful and it attempts to directly answer some of the questions posted. So, in order of posting:

 

- what is the purpose of the sharpening for standard images? Is the idea that digital is just not able to show edges as nicely?

 

The problem with the conversion of an analog signal (eg. reflected light captured on a sensor or scanned film) is that there are limits to how much detail the sensor can resolve. Unfortunately, signals with a higher frequency than the resolving power of the sensor can lead to moire, banding, popping, etc. all of which are not desirable in a photo.

 

As a result, your sensor is covered by a low-pass filter which is designed to prevent the passage of the signal that has a higer frequency than the sensors resolving power (to reduce the risk of these flaws appearing).

 

The low-pass filter is also called a blur filter or anti-aliasing filter and its nett effect is to reduce the sharpness of the image slightly.

 

Additionaly, when the RAW data is converted into an image (whether in camera for a jpeg or a software package), the demosaicing process that constructs RGB values from the individual R, G and B photosensors in the array applies a tradeoff between sharpness and anti-aliasing. The nett effect is some additional blurring of the image.

 

As a result, all images that are converted from analog to digital require sharpening.

 

 

 

- how do you integrate sharpening into your work flow? Do you use lightroom? Do you adjust the Sharpness for each situation, or for a whole wedding at a time? Do you use "clarity" and "sharpness" in lightroom, or do you use a third party product or something in Photoshop?

 

With Lightroom 1.2 the demosaicing process for RAW conversion has been improved and with the tools introduced in the 1.1 upgrade, there are some useful options to use.

 

So, to get back the initial sharpness lost as discussed above, you can use both the clarity tool and the sharpening tools in Lightroom. They perform related, but different functions.

 

The idea of the clarity tool builds on the work of Mac Holbert and others and is designed to provide a mid-tone contrast boost through a sharpening process. This is also called HIRALOAM sharpening by some, which refers to "HIgh RAdius LOw AMount" sharpening using unsharp mask. It basically applies a very wide halo at low amount to give a smooth transition, but the overall effect is the same, an increase in contrast on both sides of an edge. This boosts the mid-tone contrast and is generally beneficial to almost all images. In Lightroom, values up to about 30 are good, above that can be useful for some images.

 

The sharpening tools that are now in Lightroom are designed for capture sharpening only (except in the print module, but I don't like the current implementation, so I still do final sharpening in Photoshop). Bruce Fraser (as mentioned above) was directly involved in the development of the sharpening tools in LR and they are designed as the first stage of his three-pass sharpening routine (capture, creative and output sharpening).

 

In LR there are two presets for sharpening that you should find in the preset tools on the left. One called portrait and one called landscape. For fast workflow for weddings, just applying the portrait preset would be ideal. This basically applies an edge sharpening, but masks out the sharpening from braod surfaces like skin. So it is designed to increase sharpening of hair, eyes, lips, etc with a gentle sharpening, but it won't touch the skin too much.

 

That should give you back the lost sharpness from the digital capture process.

 

However, this initial sharpening is not sufficient to produce optimum sharpening for output, and sharpening for output depends on the final size and resolution of the print. I'll follow up on this in a separate post.

 

If you only want to stay in LR and not detour to PS for output sharpening and softproofing, then I think you would get an acceptable result from using the sharpening in the print module from within LR. For high volume work, this would give you an acceptable result with speed.

 

For finer work, it would be worth taking the image to PS and then doing final sharpening there (but with the tradeoff of slower workflow).

 

- Matt--what is the reason for running Smart Sharpen or USM twice?

 

Basically, this is applying the first sharpening to give a increase in sharpness to the edges followed by a mid-tone contrast boost which, as indicated above, is generally good for nearly all images.

 

The two sharpening routines #1 low radius high amount and #2 high radius low amount complement each other and perform slightly different functions.

 

You can run them like this, one after the other, or separately in the workflow.

 

One additional thing that should be considered is to protect the deepest shadows and the highest highlights slightly on the sharpening layer using the blend-if sliders. This helps prevent blowing out the highlights when you increase the contrast on the light side of an edge and prevents bloccking up the shadows on the dark side of an edge.

 

I hope that long post is helpful.

 

Regards,

 

Peter

Peter. That is a very cogent explanation which makes sense to me and also makes sense out of Matt's recommendation. I am going to read it a few times. Dick Arnold

So then what is the appropriate setting for "clarity" in PSCS3 using Matt's method?

Peter,

 

Nice write up :)

 

Just for the record, it's been my opservation that people vary greatly in their tolerance of "unsharp" images. Personally, I work with a 24" monitor - and as such, I'm usually viewing images between 50% & 200% of their true size - unfortunately I'm of the sort that just can't tolerate an unsharp image - for some reason I find it very hard on my eyes ...

 

... In consequence, the very first thing I do when I pop out of the RAW converter and in to Photoshop is Capture Sharpening.

 

On most occasions it's a very simple process ...

 

1. Zoom in to 100% (preferably on some fine detail)

 

2. Apply an Unsharp Mask with the following settings:

 

Amount: 300%

 

Radius: 0.3%

 

Threshold: 0

 

If you click the threshold off and on repeatedly you'll see the difference.

 

Note: A Radius of 0.3 is the average value I use - sometimes it produces frosting on fine detail, in which case I drop it back to 0.2 - sometimes you'll need more - up to 1.0 (or even 2.0 in extreme cases) with small JPEG images (it can compensate to a degree for poor focus / overly agressive anti-aliasing filters etc).

 

Hope this helps.

 

(Best solution is still to buy the book!) (and no, I'm not on commission!)

 

Cheers,

 

Colin

Dick,

 

In relation to clarity in CS3, the engine in LR 1.2 and ACR 4.2 are the same, so as long as you have good strength in the mid-tones, values up to around 30 for clarity should give you a good boost without overdoing it.

 

You can also subsequently run another round of mid-tone contrast later in your workflow and see how it looks (often it looks good, but is more subjective and can be easily trashed if applied on a separate layer).

 

The typical vlues for this using USM are 20, 50, 0 (amount, radius, threshold) but sometimes lower values can work.

 

Since this is a sharpening which increases contrast, there is always a risk of blowing out the highest highlights or blocking up the deepest shadows, so I would pull in the blend-if sliders slightly to protect those areas.

 

Additionally, to protect yourself from color shifts, change the blend mode of the layer to Luminosity.

 

Regards,

 

Peter

Colin,

 

Good point on the zoom level when viewing and it reinforces what Matt mentioned earlier about his viewing at 50% to judge sharpness.

 

I also use a multistep workflow to my sharpening with capture sharpening early in the process (straight after color correction).

 

I now prefer Lightroom for my capture sharpening, and following the way the workflow in LR is designed, I work from the top down and left to right. This means that the capture sharpening is one of the last steps in the Workflow before heading to Photoshop if I need to work directly with pixels.

 

The reason that Lightroom is good for the capture sharpening is because the sharpening is applied through a mask to confine it to the edges. To see the mask, just view the file at 100% and hold the option/alt key down while moving the various sliders in the sharpening module. You'll see on the fly, the effect of each slider and can adjust the settings accordingly (although the settings for portrait should be good for most wedding shots).

 

Applying capture sharpening globally shouldn't be a problem for most wedding photos, because the workflow is designed to produce a natural result with minimal editing.

 

However, if you have a photo where you are planning to do a lot of editing, I wouldn't apply capture sharpening globally. I think the risks in this situation outway the benefits unless you are really careful and probably a traditional, single round of sharpening for output is a safer option.

 

Regards,

 

Peter

Peter- one concept that I picked up from you, at least in my mind, is that this is not really improving sharpness, but restoring original sharpness. It gives a basis to work from. I just produced a 13x19 print of an old Strearman aerobatic airplane in flight with a wingwalker that I never thought I would be able to blow-up because of sharpness issues (It is in my PN portfolio low res). I shot it with a 100-400 at 400. The results were quite surprising in terms of sharpness and "clarity". I can show it. This is one of the most useful threads I have been on in PN. As Colin says it has some "pop". I now have a much firmer basis from which to do my own experimentation. I will probably get the book but I really feel I have learned something here. Thank you. Regards-Dick Arnold

I agree with Dick.

 

Peter Stacey's contributions here are among the very clearest explanations I've read of why sharpening is necessary, how it works, how to implement it, and leaves me really looking forward to his contribution on output sharpening.

Dear Dick and Ellis,

 

Thanks for the positive feedback. Sometimes I think I write too long because sharpening is an area that I have been doing a lot of testing over the last year because there are a seemingly endless stream of approaches and techniques; and I needed to understand it better myself so that I could streamline my workflow and stop being confused.

 

Dick, in realtion to capture sharpening, you are absolutely correct, that the idea is to bring back the crispness in the image that is lost during the conversion to a digital image.

 

After that, both sharpening and blurring (eg. blurring the background) can be used creatively to give greater emphasis to certain areas in a photograph (since the eye is generally attracted to sharp areas over soft areas) and then output sharpening attempts to apply additional sharpening to preserve the sharpness of the image when the file is converted to inks or pigments on paper (which introduces softness as well - which I'll hopefully explain clearly in my next post).

 

On the issue of output sharpening, that will be my next post in this thread, and I hope it is OK to post that up tomorrow because it is an area where sharpening has earned its "black art" tag and I want to make sure I don't just present a post that just muddies the water.

 

Regards,

 

Peter

I am looking forward to it. Dick

Just to recap, so far we've covered capture sharpening using the sharpening module in LR, which applies a gentle sharpening through a mask in order to bring back the sharpness lost during capture (I will follow this in the next post for those not using LR).

 

We've also covered the mid-tone contrast boost using the clarity slider, and by running a high radius low amount unsharp mask if you aren't using LR.

 

The original Mac Holbert method for the mid-tone contrast boost (and actually this is closer to how LR does it with clarity) is to copy the image to a new layer, change the blend mode to "overlay" and then run a high-pass filter (Filter - Other - High pass) with a radius that roughly matches the size of the file (so pretty big radius). The mid-tone contrast boost is really a tonal adjustment rather than a sharpening (I didn't quite word it right up above), but the nett effect is the make the image look sharper to the eye and a lot more snappy. When doing it in Photoshop (or other program), it's good to change the blend mode of the layer to "luminosity" (to prevent color shifts) and to pull the blend-if sliders for the layer in a bit to confine it to the mid-tones so you don't blow the highlights or block the shadows.

 

Capture sharpening and a mid-tone contrast boost are fairly easy and quick to do, especially to do the capture sharpening in Lightroom. For weddings, just select the portrait sharpening from the presets and be done with it (some more information on this in the next post). This is fast and it should produce an acceptable result.

 

But this still isn't the end of sharpening. As a minimum, you should also apply some output sharpening designed for the intended output.

 

Why? Because just like there will be some softness when you capture a digital image, the same occurs when you convert that image into a stream of ink or pigment on paper. Printers also have limits to their resolving power and so some softness is introduced at print.

 

Also, our ability to see detail changes as we move closer or further from an image (eg. move away from your computer screen and after a few feet you won't be able to read the text - the same is true of a photo).

 

As a result, we need to account both for the softness of the output medium and the intended image size and viewing distance; and if we want the image to look nice and sharp, we need to sharpen at output.

 

Traditionally, all sharpening was held over until output because doing it wrong at an early stage created bigger problems later in the workflow and was harmful to the final result. So capture sharpening should not make the image look like it has been sharpened, it should just make the image look good on screen (ie. not soft).

 

To continue, because we need to account not only for the output medium (eg. a printer), but also for the intended size and viewing distance, it is important to do the final output sharpening at the final image size and resolution. So if you are reducing the image size (eg. for web display) or increasing it (eg. for a large canvas print) then you need to change the size of the image first, before final sharpening.

 

If you sharpen and then reduce the image size, then the sharpening will be averaged away as the pixels are merged and if you do it before enlarging, you could see the sharpening after printing (and that isn't good).

 

This is where the problems start to arise with sharpening and trying to produce an image that will print good.

 

If you are going to be displaying on screen, then it is easy to just make the image look good on screen, because that is your output medium. However, LCD screens are sharper than CRTs, so if you are using a CRT, you need to be careful not to overdo it because to most people, the images will look crunchy because most people will see the image on an LCD. I do all my sharpening for web images using an LCD, specifically because an oversharpened image looks terrible, whereas a slightly soft image viewed on a CRT is a better alternative.

 

But, if you are preparing an image to print to a printer, it is unfortunate that the state of the industry is still at the point where the best result is achieved by printing the image to see the result and then adjusting the sharpening and re-printing.

 

This isn't really acceptable, especially for high-volume photographers, so I hope the following guidelines help:

 

1. to judge the final sharpness of the print, don't view the image at 100% on screen. Screens are low resultion devices (mine runs at 92 ppi), but we print at much higher resultions (eg. send data at 300 ppi). So, viewing an image at 25% or 50% magnification on screen will give you a better indication of how sharp the image will be in print. So after sharpening, view the image at 50%. If it looks oversharpened, then reduce the sharpening until it looks good. If it looks a bit soft, then apply stronger sharpening.

 

[sorry I can't give you some magic numbers, but more on that below and in my next post].

 

2. For output sharpening, you don't need to worry too much about trying to sharpen through a mask. In my experience and testing, for acceptable results, you can apply a global sharpening via USM or smart sharpen on a new layer and it will be OK. If you've been careful up to that point, this shouldn't enhance noise or other artifacts and make them ugly.

 

this makes the overall workflow relatively fast for high volume users (eg. wedding photogs). You can apply your capture sharpening in Lightroom (which does it through a mask), adjust the image, resize and then apply a global sharpening on a new layer for output. After viewing the image at 25% or 50% maginification, you'll have an idea of how sharp it will look in print.

 

3. If you apply output USM or a smart sharpen and it looks good at 50% magnification, then at 100% it will look crunchy and ugly. Don't worry, it will print good. That takes a leap of faith to believe, so the easiest way is not to believe that statement, but to test it yourself.

 

Because a properly sharpened image will look slightly crunchy at 100%, the temptation will be to reduce the sharpening so that it looks good. That's not what I would do, but I'm printing myself mostly and printing low volume, so I can spend the extra time to get an optimum result. If you are a wedding photographer, then you might feel safer going for an acceptable result (slightly softer image) rather than an optimally sharp image (except for maybe a few special images). But I would recommend you test the crunchy looking image with your printer (your own or your print service and have a look at the results).

 

4. It's difficult to give specific numbers because different print sizes and output mediums require different sharpening to get the best result.

 

However, one method that you can try (and see my next post for a lot more information] is to do the following (very quick method):

 

1. copy the image to a new layer;

2. change the opacity of the layer to 66%;

3. change the blend mode of the layer to luminosity;

4. double click on the layer in the layers pallette to bring up the layer styles box;

5. pull the blend if sliders in slightly (5-10 points) to protect the darkest shadows and highest highlights;

6. Apply a USM to the layer;

7. Start the amount at 500, the radius at 0.1 and the threshold at 0;

8. increase the radius by 0.1 point at a time until you see the image pop in the sharpening window (trust me you'll see it around 0.3 - 0.6);

9. After the image pops, either leave things as they are and click OK, or increase the radius a couple of more points and reduce the amount to around 300-350 and then increase the threshold a few points (to about 3-4) and click OK.

10. immediately run a HIRALOAM sharpening as per Matts post above.

 

That is a rough method, but because the opacity of the layer is reduced and the blend-if sliders are pulled in slightly, the results should be OK.

 

It's quick and should be acceptable for most situations.

 

However, if you aren't doing wedding photography and don't need a fast workflow, then I'll follow this post with another that gives a number of other options and after I go and create a few actions in PS, I'll post a link to them so you can download them and try them out.

 

I hope that this has been useful and if I think of additional things, I'll add them to the thread.

 

As a final note I should add three things:

 

1. Bruce Fraser's book Real World Image Sharpening is very good and is worth getting. It was only published this year and it has already had a major impact on sharpening ideas and workflows.

 

2. Bruce's work along with the work of Jeff Schewe is available as a sharpening plugin for Photoshop. It's called the Photokit Sharpener from Pixel Genius. I don't use it for my sharpening, but I do use it to test everything I do against. It is regarded as the best sharpening system by many leading people. If you want a system that has a multitude of options for different outputs, it is worth looking at. A trial version can be downloaded and used. With it, you can do your capture sharpening in LR and then creative and output sharpening in Photoshop using selections from within the plugin. It then takes care of things behind the scenes.

 

3. As indicated above, another post will follow this, but it's getting late in Europe, so I might not finish the actions and additional post until tomorrow (I'll make some test images available as well and explain how to use the sharpening routines with them).

 

Regards,

 

Peter

Peter. I have read your post once. I am going to print it and read it several more times. I really appreciate your thoughtful efforts. Please continue. Regards Dick Arnold

Dick, thanks for the feedback.

 

Having re-read the post, I think I can make things much more clear by posting a page off PN, including the actions and additional information.

 

Today I found out that I am heading to Oregon for 7 weeks on Monday, so I have been a little busy at work and then with my wife and kids and haven't finished off the work yet.

 

So, I hope you don't mind waiting for a complete view (as I see it) to be posted. At the latest, I will be able to finish everything on Monday during the flight from Amsterdam to Washington and then I'm in Washington overnight so should be able to post things then.

 

If I get some spare time over the weekend, I'll certainly upload things earlier if possible.

 

Regards,

 

Peter

Not at all Peter. You have been very generous with your expertise and your technical writing skill. I look forward to it. I downloaded the Photokit Sharpener and have done some sharpening with it. It sets up a series of automatic layers and I have produced some very sharp but natural looking pictures with it. I don't know whether I will buy it, most likely will. In any event it shows me what really good sharpening looks like and helps me set my own standards. Thanks again and I am looking forward to your post at your convenience. Regards --Dick Arnold

Dick,

 

Just to let you know. I've arrived at my final destination now and will get the additional details up asap.

 

Regards,

 

Peter

Thanks. I did purchase Photokit Sharpener. It is quite flexible and very effective. I look forward to your post. Dick

Peter, I wonder if you could also comment on ACR vs Lightroom vs Capture NX vs ViewNX. I shoot mostly B&W, the volumes are not really large, but sometimes due to poor lighting indoors the noise is a problem. I assume I need to do some exposure correction,white balance, conversion to B&W, perhaps noise reduction, and capture sharpening before I do some tweaking in PS.