Having spent far too much time fiddling with photos over the last few years and trying to balance reducing noise, with preserving detail, and then trying to sharpen that detail without sharpening the noise and plunging back to square one, I've had a bit of a slapped forehead moment in the last few weeks.
Selective sharpening. In my defence, the reason it's taken so long is because it's staggeringly easy to do in Capture (another point in its favour) while I suspect it's a bit more complex in PS - which is where you come in.
In Capture, I can set the sharpening levels (or anything for that matter, this method works with all the adjustments, including noise reduction, gaussian blur, b/w conversion etc) and then just click on the slection brush and brush the adjustment onto the picture. Sharpening eyes while leaving skin nicely noise reduced is a thing of simplicity.
But what is the easiest way of reproducing this on PS? Layer masks?
I ask because my free trial on Capture NX 2 runs out on Monday, leaving me with my Capture NX on the horrendously slow, old and electrified Dell, or CS 2 on the work Mac (which also involved DNGing my NEF files thanks to Adobe's policy on ACR upgrades)
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Dunno, is the answer. I have never tried selective sharpening; I have about 3 standard sharpening combinations in USM and I apply one these to the whole image.
Having said that, I have seen PS tutorials showing how to sharpen the eyes, etc, whilst keeping the rest of the face soft. I think it involved quick mask. I will try to dig it out.
I used to take the same approach, but as I said, this meant I'd also be sharpening the areas of noise and sometimes making them look worse, or having to apply so much noise reduction in high ISO that I was losing detail on faces in background etc.
Seems obvious now, but applying noise reduction in selected areas and sharpening in selected areas solves the problem. Just needed an easy and quick way of doing it to show me the light, which Capture provided!
Now I've seen the advantage, would be useful to work out how to quickly do it in PS - quick mask seems like it might be the way forward, although I've never really got the hang of it!
Cheers - Tom
Slowly working my way through this. System so far is to select the area I want to selectively sharpen using quick mask (which lets me paint the selection on, like Capture). I then have to convert the selection to a new layer and sharpen that layer only - and repeat this process for all the different selective adjustments I want to make.
Main problems is it's far harder to see the effect of the adjustment in real time. In Capture the sharpening/noise reduction etc occurs as you paint, so yu can instantly see the change and how successful or otherwise it has been. With PS you have to wait until you've done the selecting, created the layer, set the adjustment criteria and clicked "okay".
Capture also advantageous because you can choose to expand or contract the area affected as you go - basically because you're painting or erasing. PS method you have to go back into quick mask mode, change the selected area and create a new layer again.
Perhaps missing an obvious easier technique?
As I said, never tried this myself. Found a tutorial on the web (in fact there are loads of them) http://www.thegraphicgroove.com/Tutorials/Tutorial_Main_Page.htm . But that sounds like what you are doing. There may be an easier way
As I said, never tried this myself. Found a tutorial on the web (in fact there are loads of them) http://www.thegraphicgroove.com/Tutorials/Tutorial_Main_Page.htm . But that sounds like what you are doing. There may be an easier way
Thanks Toby - that is actually better than what I was trying as by applying the USM first and then painting it on/off, you can see the effect instantly. One more step than with Capture, but essentially the same once you get to the brush stage. Excellent...now I just wait for IT to deliver the new Mac lappy with CS4 (odds on it won't be until the New Year :( )!
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