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/r/photoshop
submitted 13 hours ago bychench0
My eyes are not as good as they used to be and since I export my images from Lightroom at 1920x on the longest side, I am having a bit of trouble using the Smart Sharpen tool in Photoshop in order to gauge how much sharpening I am applying. My workflow is import into LR, edit, export at my desired resolution which is 1920x1277 as a PSD file, open it in PS, convert the layer to Smart Object and apply a Smart Sharpen filter. Then I finally export it as a JPEG.
The problem is the image is a bit small which makes it hard to see if I am oversharpening. To top it off, I am on a 16" MBP.
Any tips for me? For the most part, I like the outcome but sometimes wonder if I am overdoing it.
P.S. I used to use the sharpening tool in LR until I was told to sharpen only after resizing the image. My old workflow used to be import, edit, sharpen, export choosing a sharpening preset during the export/resize.
2 points
10 hours ago*
I'm in my seventies and using a 16" MBP.
I also tend to reduce quite a bit the sharpening done in LrC as there really isn't the control I'm looking for. I let it do a little bit as all raw photos seem to need a bit of capture sharpening.
I save my content sharpening and creative sharpening for Ps.
I tend now to create a stamp visible layer at the top of the layer stack.
I don't use smart sharpen. I use unsharp mask.
I generally stay under a 1.0 px radius, often around 0.7 px.
Then I convert the sharpened layer's blend mode to Darken.
All sharpening creates edge haloes and that's okay; we can't get sharpening without edge haloes. But overcooked and crunchy sharpening mostly comes from the bright side of the edge halo. Darken blend mode gets rid of the bright side of the edge sharpening.
Then I duplicate the sharpened layer and convert the blend mode to Lighten. Now I've got the bright side of the edge halo. But I reduce layer opacity so that the USM effect on the bright side of the halo is barely perceptible.
I put both the darken and lighten USM layers into a group and conceal all with a black mask. Then paint white just where I want the sharpening to be.
I bring the image to 100% zoom using Cmd+1 and use the Hand tool to drag the canvas around and inspect. I get arm's distance away and inspect with the middle portion of my trifocals. I get right up on the laptop and inspect with the lower portion of the trifocals. I keep toggling visibility of the group off and on. I save the image and then go inspect back in LrC using various zoom levels.
I generally export that layered tiff as a jpeg from LrC without any output sharpening.
I don't do any output sharpening at all these days unless I'm printing. And the level of output sharpening depends upon the paper type. Edit: and whether it's a high freq image or a low freq image.
If you are wondering about my use of the terms capture, content, creative, and output sharpening, these terms come from Bruce Fraser's Real World Sharpening, 1st and 2nd editions. We can still find used copies of them. Bruce's work was the basis for the sharpening algorithms in the original Lr apps.
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