Gharv From United Kingdom, joined Jan 2004, 11 posts, RR: 0 Posted (3 years 4 months 4 days 23 hours ago) and read 1325 times:
Can anyone offer some advice..
Have trawled through various posts on this site explaining how to sharpen your images etc.. and have attempted various processes, but still dont really understand what im doing.
Currently i have 35 piccs on this site and all have a cropped width of aprox 1550 with just using the basic sharpening process on photoshop, but even then had rejections such as 'reduce size'.
I understand that the ideal size of images on here is aprox 1024 in width, but using my current process when cropping to 1024 then sharpening, the image is of a lesser quality.
Im up to speed with most of the other processing technices, its just the resizing and sharpening which is really giving me difficulties.
Ive tried to have a go at the USM process, but really need someone just to give me a quick 'no brainer' step by step guide on what to do to set me off.
One last thing do i crop first then sharpen to finish off?
Ive seen the guide by Jeffm but still confused.
Ptrjong From Netherlands, joined Mar 2005, 3040 posts, RR: 23 Reply 2, posted (3 years 4 months 4 days 22 hours ago) and read 1310 times:
I use the old-fashioned technique of stamping the jaggies out.
After deselecting any sky by selecting it with the magic wand tool and inverting, I:
1. Apply a layer
2. Apply USM. Settings, 200, 0.2, and treshold 0 (thanks to Eduard (Il-76) for these settings)
3. Stamp out any jaggies with the eraser tool (in fact, I generally don't look too closely but simply fire away at suspect areas such as flap lines)
4. Flatten image (merge the layers)
I usually repeat this two times. After that, I usually apply more USM to selected areas, with the same settings, sometimes several times. These areas I select simply with the polygonal lasso or magic wand tool.
Peter
The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad (Salvador Dali)
Dlednicer From United States, joined May 2005, 265 posts, RR: 6 Reply 3, posted (3 years 4 months 4 days 17 hours ago) and read 1237 times:
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It should be noted that Peter is referring to the use of Photoshop. Peter is right - Eduard's technique works very well. I sometimes use 500,.2,2 instead of 200,.2,0.
One other trick is to downsize your picture from initial size to the final size in steps, instead of all at once. Making one big step can introduce jaggies. On the other hand, too many small steps can introduce them too. I usually step down 300 pixels at a time. This picture was really difficult to downsize - I had to experiment to avoid jaggies in the pinstripes:
Helicon Filter has some good sharpening tools too. I was working on a image last night where it did a much better job at sharpening than Photoshop. Also, HF's noise reduction tools are the best I've ever seen and have rescued quite a number of my older shots:
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