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Input and Output Sharpening

We did talk a talk on it the other day talking about the detail panel um we talked about the three times of sharpening both was known as input sharpening, which is compensating for the demons aching process that takes place just by the fact that you have red green blue sensors and some cameras even have emerald sensors and you know there are four sensors. Some sensors have red, green and blue sensors on top of each other not next to each other like the phobia on ship used in some cameras awesome fantastic, but your image is going to be blurred by definition unless actually you're using a phobia on ship because each color sensors on top of each other it's the one ship in the universe that does not need to de mosaic the image to make color and because of that they're razor sharp they call a four megapixel phobia and chip camera twelve megapixel because it has twelve megapixels three deep it will only make a four megapixel file it's a sharp is a twelve megapixel file that is actually the ...

future of computer graphics as I die grass one more time, bigger and bigger sensors mohr and more pixels is not that's dumb use the technical term, but we want a really crisp clean images that aren't oversized that are beautiful and have the resolution and they're just razor sharp at a pixel level that's things like the phobia on ship probie on the thing with that is that it can't crab as much low light information as other cameras can because it has to go through each one of those sensors but anyway um the uh input sharpening has to do with compensating for that also you could say it's kind of compensating for the quality of glass that you're using the lens on your camera so the settings for sharpening are based upon those things input sharpening versus targeted shopping in output sharpening let me open up one other, um file here um because it goes into our concept of presets have kind of a nice antique file um here this happens to be a j peg so we'll just use a j peg as a demonstration for this one let's see if we've got we've got a fairly low res one I'll say it the concept's again of the details tab we're at one hundred percent magnification now we'll say that that's a good spot to look at going back to the detailed tab we talked about the fact that these different settings that we actually covered it even earlier today that you can get away with a much larger amount and even a larger radius if you understand the potential problems of detail which is that contrast within this radius area and masking can you isolate a portion of the image to not be sharpened so again, we kind of did that, but justin review also, we talked about that if you hold down that option or all key that it previews whatever that particular slider is working on. The reason why the amount slider goes to gray scale is because we're doing luminosity sharpening just the luminosity is being sharpened. There's no chance of getting color artifacts brought about by the sharpening process. Okay? And as I also mentioned, I often will take the amount weigh up to one hundred fifty so I can see what the other sliders they're going to do. Radius has that same thing where you can see that sphere of influence brought about by the slider again. If the image is already pretty sharp, you don't need it. You can actually go below a pixel. The maximum you can do is three again, if you understand the, um output that you're going to go to, the one thing I mentioned about that is, if your image is somewhat soft and you take that radius up, you will by definition start getting a little bit of artifact ng on that edge you're asking for it. That's, what you're trying to sharpen is you've got a slightly blurry dedge, um, you're gonna want a higher pp I file. When we talked about again, how many pixels prints or squished together on that page? If you're forcing, if you're forced to using a low pp, I file like one fifty because you're blowing it up too big, then the problem is, is those pixels and the artifact ing associated with them are going to be bigger? Obviously, if you're using a three hundred peopie I file versus a one fifty p p I file, the artifacts will also be half the size behalf is visible so you can get away again with more sharpening and the potential of some edge artifacts. If you're compensating for a blurred image, if you have enough pixels at your disposal, you're doing using a nice, big high resolution camera you doing it by ten? You can actually get away with a lot, because you're going to be hiding the artifacts in the number of pixels that you're going to use the p p I, um also, as I mentioned, you can use more excessive sharpening. If you're media that you're going to print to something like a canvas or watercolor paper, that texture is also going to hide by definition, the artifact ing in so you could get away with a lot, so, uh, I'm gonna take this radius up quite a bit. We have a little bit of a soft file here, but not much. I may find two met later. The detail holding down that option all key is that amount of contrast in there and that's going to be showing every single piece of noise, whether in the sky or in the shadows or anywhere else. So I'm always very, very cautious with using any detail I can use maur if it's a landscape none. If I'm doing a portrait very rarely, because it's going to be exaggerating poor structure and details, it will exaggerate if your are getting heavy handed with that sharpening its goingto make that edge that you're sharpening crunch here yes, it is more detailed, but it actually is term is crunch here, you know, so I use the minimal amount of detail, if any. And the most important thing to remember about masking, especially if you get a little heavy handed about sharpening, is that you want to take advantage of the masking slider to make sure that it's only coming up into those areas and now I'm not sharpening any of the subtleties in any of the flat areas. So here is our sharpening before, after before after, okay. A lot of apparent sharpening taking place here that's what the radius up that is that the amount at one fifty again you can get away with a lot maura aggressive sharpening if you understand that you can bring that detailed down even down to zero and again you can get that sharpening going on without exaggerating the noise in the file so that again is another little overview about it we talked about being cautious with the color noise reduction if you're not getting the christmas tree lights be cautious with it I will add one other little tip in here because what this is doing is taking subtleties and blurring them and blending that color back in where's another place that you could use color noise removal even if you have no color noise in your file skin tone this is going to take subtleties of the skin tone in your file and blend those together normally that this color detail but it may be if you're getting all sorts of little teeny specs on there you can use the uh color noise reduction slider to soften up skin tone a little bit specifically those little subtle area clear regularities of you know pores and skin and guts and things like that freckles are a little bit bigger than that so it usually doesn't do a whole lot with freckles but it does it can be used and the same thing for luminosity will do an excessive amount of luminosity here, but because that is softening things like noise pores kind of fit into that similar concept and you can soften it is serves to make it a little plastic that's that what we've been trying to not do when we do skin softening but if you wanted to, you can use luminosity, noise reduction for some skin softening just be very cautious. I would also use it any time that I use on excessive amount of luminosity noise reduction justus if I did that anti sharpening where blurred something basically making something smoother than it really wass I'm going to go back to the effects panel and add a little bit of grain to it so that way that there's an inherent kind of tooth was what we call it in the texture it has some texture to it. So if you do get carried away with luminosity, you can remember or blurring remember that ability to add crane back in I also and if you take this way up okay, then you can actually do some, um and we'll take a radius up. You can actually do what I call almost a painting technique, okay? In the sense that it is so stylized by what you're doing, especially if you do it in concert with kind of a anti clarity you can really get a, um very um stylized image where you have simplified so much of the detail in the file that now it's almost looking like an illustration so you can push it over cartoon exactly right, you're flattening it up and it's starting to become I'm a cartoon, and I have pre sets for those as well, specifically, just to make that painterly effect. Okay, that is input sharpening. I also mentioned in terms of targeted sharpening for storytelling, I usually don't fight that urge because sharpening brought in by something like your adjustment brush coming up here to this sharpened setting, I don't like it because it's working at a pixel level and actually changed the structure of the pixels in there, you could use it if you want to very judiciously. I would just be cautious with it. I would prefer to use clarity in a targeted fashion. I'm trying to make something pop as I did with the eyes on the model yesterday, I did not use sharpening. I used clarity that's going to do that edge, pop it's a much broader area and it's not bringing in pixel artifacts. But you could be targeted shopping if you want. Or you could just say that clarity is targeted, sharpening, and we'll say that that's what it is in terms of, um, output sharpening where your final printed work if you'd like you just get your image as sharp as you'd like it in here and if you're going to go out to either coded stock or uncoated stock or to the screen those three main areas that we talked about before you can't take advantage of the same image over here and if you're going out to something other than a digital negative say a tiff file you can come up here and say sharpen and those three main ways of sharpening for the screen for glossy paper or matte paper mat paper is the same thing you'd use for canvas wrapped glossy paper is the same sort of thing you do for metallic print are built into the save option and they are really nice algorithms not quick and dirty ones they are ones that have been fine tune and you do have the ability for low standard in high so it could be for again and uncoated stock that's like a matte finish like a high rag paper that doesn't have much texture to it you would do a come over here and do matt paper low okay it's not going to hide a lot because it's not a lot of texture for watercolor paper standard for canvas with a lot of texture high if you want some little ways well when should I use what there's a little standard for you just a uncoated matte finish versus a watercolor paper with texture versus a canvas with a lot of texture, same thing could be with your going out for a glossy, paper glossy paper versus a metallic paper. All of these times, when you go out to a coded stock, you're going to be very cautious, and that would be really cautious to do anything more than lo. I would be really cautious with doing it, but just because there's no forgiveness, every single pixel will be printed razor sharp on a piece of claude it's doc and the screen presupposes you're going to be scaling your file down and your interpolated it down, you're throwing away pixels that's needed to re sharpen the file, so the screen sharpening is great. I would again also because you're going to see every single pixel on the screen by definition, when you see something on screen, every pixel is being represented by a pixel on the screen. I would be very cautious with it. That depends upon the image and whether you're trying to compensate for being blurry. But that's. Why we did our input, sharpening our input, sharpening hopefully brought everything into a level playing field, and now the output sharpening can be specific for a specific destination.