What software do you use for Sharpening

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wornish

Senior Member
I find myself using a mixture of different software to do my sharpening depending on the type of shot and the camera.

Lightroom works great sometimes then on some shots it is no good.
I have also tried using Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpening and High Pass sharpening in Photoshop again with mixed results.
My last resort is to use Intensify which is easy to use but I tend to get carried away sometimes.

What else do you use ?
 
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Pretzel

Senior Member
Some of the sharpening tools in Perfect Effects 8 are nice. Enjoyed the sharpening capabilities of Intensify Pro when I had the free trial, too, but never bought the full product. Other than that, I use a lot of LR.

REALLY LOVE the sharpening "feel" I get from layering a color over a nicely contrasted B&W in PS (learned from Jake, of course) and blending the two! I don't do that often, although I should since I typically enjoy the results so much!
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
I primarily sharpen and do noise reduction in Adobe Camera RAW, but if I'm going the extra mile I'll use Unsharp Mask in PS or NIK Tool's Dfine. I've tried using High Pass filter and Smart Sharpen but I keep coming back to Unsharp Mask if I'm working PS.

....
 
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wornish

Senior Member
Pretzel said:
Some of the sharpening tools in Perfect Effects 8 are nice. Enjoyed the sharpening capabilities of Intensify Pro when I had the free trial, too, but never bought the full product. Other than that, I use a lot of LR.

REALLY LOVE the sharpening "feel" I get from layering a color over a nicely contrasted B&W in PS (learned from Jake, of course) and blending the two! I don't do that often, although I should since I typically enjoy the results so much!
Click to expand...

What are the steps you use. Can you point me at an example.
 
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Pretzel

Senior Member
wornish said:
What are the steps you use. Can you point me at an example.
Click to expand...

As far as layering a color over a B&W for that gritty shaprness?

Here's one that shows the before/after.

Layering for sharpness

As far as the process? I create a nice contrast-y B&W, open it up in PS, throw the color layer over the top of it, and play with blending levels until it feels right. @BackdoorHippie is the one that actually turned me on to the technique, and mentions it in one of his posts. At work now, but if he hasn't linked to it by the time I get home, I'll dig it up as it's bookmarked on my iMac. ;)
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Pretzel said:
As far as layering a color over a B&W for that gritty shaprness?

Here's one that shows the before/after.

Layering for sharpness

As far as the process? I create a nice contrast-y B&W, open it up in PS, throw the color layer over the top of it, and play with blending levels until it feels right. @BackdoorHippie is the one that actually turned me on to the technique, and mentions it in one of his posts. At work now, but if he hasn't linked to it by the time I get home, I'll dig it up as it's bookmarked on my iMac. ;)
Click to expand...

Here's the tutorial I did that Pretzel is referring to. It uses a luminosity blend mode on the B&W layer against the color, though there are obviously other blend modes you can use. In general the light based blend modes (Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Vivid Light, Pin Light and Luminosity) tend to work best.

 
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rocketman122

Senior Member
When I edit a specific pic in OS, I use fred miranda intellisharpen action. had nik..meh..

I never feel the need to sharpen though. you feel that your images arent sharp? if I need a little sharpening then I mostly do in ACDSEE pro 6. but maybe you like it really sharp or your glass is misaligned in focus or maybe your technique is off?

I shoot pretty open apertures and dont see the need.
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
I've abandoned a lot of pure sharpening tools and now use the Detail Enhancer action from Shutter Evolve (free download). It's a complex set of actions (not tunable) that create an Overlay blended layer that really makes details pop without being a noise generator. Once that's done, I look at my images when I export them at size and then apply minor sharpening (either unsharp mask or smart sharpening) if required on the sized image.
 
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traceyjj

Senior Member
Many of my images are processed with Elements and Topaz software, various topaz plug ins seem to have some sharpening/detail enhancing capabilities. Sometimes I will use the highpass filter to sharpen, but not often.
 
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Pretzel

Senior Member
rocketman122 said:
When I edit a specific pic in OS, I use fred miranda intellisharpen action. had nik..meh..

I never feel the need to sharpen though. you feel that your images arent sharp? if I need a little sharpening then I mostly do in ACDSEE pro 6. but maybe you like it really sharp or your glass is misaligned in focus or maybe your technique is off?

I shoot pretty open apertures and dont see the need.
Click to expand...

I will admit to having a "sharpness" addiction, so at times, I'll overdo it then back off a bit. :)
 
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Blacktop

Senior Member
As of now I just use light room, but looking into better options. I am just starting to understand the concept of "radius" "detail" and masking and how they interact.
 
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fotojack

Senior Member
For quick down and dirty jobs, I use Irfanview Sharpen and sometimes Picassa. For client work, I use LR4. Even then, sometimes I can't tell the difference. :)
 
Bob Blaylock

Bob Blaylock

Senior Member
I mostly use this for sharpening…

CSC_3346.jpg
 
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Lawrence

Senior Member
I am pretty clueless about all the intricacies of sharpening (detail, luminance, radius etc.) so simply use the presets in Perfect effects 8 which came free.
I need to turn up at Jake's door one day … just by chance.
 
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wornish

Senior Member
Thanks to Jake for the link his video tutorial on using Luminosity blend mode with a B&W layer I am certainly going to give that a go.

For those like me that are still learning the deep secrets of Photoshop I found this tutorial on YouTube that explains Sharpening.
It goes into quite a bit of detail and helped me understand the underlying principles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOeZD8ZKCjQ
 
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SteveH

Senior Member
I use Lightroom, and sometimes Nik tools DFine. I'm by no means a sharpening expert... I basically whizz the sliders around until it look better! Like @Pretzel says, go too far then back off a bit!
 
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