How to best sharpen this image

musicvid10 wrote on 8/14/2016, 8:18 AM
Scanned from the original in 16 bit grayscale, leveled but not graded, lots of detail can be brought out in the shoulder and headdress. This sample was reduced to 2k so I could post it.

I did two scans, one rotated 90 deg., registered, and composited at 50%. That eliminated the matte finish, but softened the edges a bit.

The best filter I found is a bit of edge sharpen. Not doing what I want are unsharp mask or other low level sharpening, because it messes with the shadow grain.

What say you?



Comments

Steve Grisetti wrote on 8/14/2016, 8:20 AM
What are your video project settings?

Remember that no matter how sharp, detailed and high-resolution your original photo is, once you load it into a video editing project it will be only video resolution.
Former user wrote on 8/14/2016, 8:22 AM
I did a 1.7 radius with the unsharp mask and that seemed to help a lot. Some grain in shadows popped up, but not objectionable to me.

Photoshop CS3
musicvid10 wrote on 8/14/2016, 8:26 AM
Steve, It's a Photoshop project, I should have said.
Donald, for printing, the area around the shaded eye is most critical. That's what concerns me about low level filters. My try with a 2.0 radius unsharp mask looked bad on a print.
Former user wrote on 8/14/2016, 8:29 AM
Yeah, I didn't print it to see how the artifacts held up.
amendegw wrote on 8/14/2016, 9:14 AM
How 'bout this? I used the Photoshop "Smart Sharpen" I'm using Photoshop CC and I don't know which version introduced this filter. There are also various 3rd party sharpening filters such as NIK, Topaz, piccure+ that may do a better job.

Certainly, even with any Sharpening filter more is not necessarily better as all sorts of haloing & edge effects are introduced.



...Jerry

System Model: Alienware Area-51m R2
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amendegw wrote on 8/14/2016, 10:07 AM
Okay, I felt challenged (and it's a lazy Sunday morning). Here I added the NIK Detail Extractor to the Smart Sharpen and notice how it brought out he detail in the whites.



...Jerry

Edit: I'm not sure this image is displaying. Here's a link to the image: : ChiefDetailSharpenPlusNIK

System Model: Alienware Area-51m R2
System: Windows 11 Home
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz, 3792 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Memory: 64.0 GB
Display Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super (8GB), Nvidia Studio Driver 527.56 Dec 2022)
Overclock Off

Display: 1920x1080 144 hertz
Storage (12TB Total):
OS Drive: PM981a NVMe SAMSUNG 2048GB
Data Drive1: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB
Data Drive2: Samsung SSD 870 QVO 8TB

USB: Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C) port Supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, DisplayPort 1.2, Thunderbolt 3

Cameras:
Canon R5
Canon R3
Sony A9

Former user wrote on 8/14/2016, 10:54 AM
Sorry. Misunderstood the brief...
musicvid10 wrote on 8/14/2016, 2:08 PM
What a thrill to hear from you, Jerry!
I'll try Smart sharp again.

amendegw wrote on 8/14/2016, 3:01 PM
musicvid,

If you want me to work on the full resolution image and return it to you, send me an email. A .TIF (or uncompressed) image would be best, but barring that a high res JPG would be fine.

My email address hasn't changed.

...Jerry

System Model: Alienware Area-51m R2
System: Windows 11 Home
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz, 3792 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Memory: 64.0 GB
Display Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super (8GB), Nvidia Studio Driver 527.56 Dec 2022)
Overclock Off

Display: 1920x1080 144 hertz
Storage (12TB Total):
OS Drive: PM981a NVMe SAMSUNG 2048GB
Data Drive1: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB
Data Drive2: Samsung SSD 870 QVO 8TB

USB: Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C) port Supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, DisplayPort 1.2, Thunderbolt 3

Cameras:
Canon R5
Canon R3
Sony A9

rmack350 wrote on 8/14/2016, 9:04 PM
There are a couple of ways to put your finger on the scale. Regardless of your sharpening method, you can use a mask to only mask in sharpening where you want it. So, for example, I'll sometimes do a kind of old school sharpening where I
-- copy the image to a new layer (ctrl+J)
-- Run Filter / Other / High Pass (around 1.4 radius)
-- Set layer's blend mode to overlay
-- Apply a black mask to the High Pass layer (Alt+mask button at bottom of layers panel)
-- Use paintbrush tool to paint white in the mask where you want sharpening to occur.
-- Change the opacity of your brush, or change the opacity of the entire High Pass layer if you want to tone down the effect.

You could also do this by turning your picture layer into a smart object (a symbol) and then applying any sharpening filter you want. Then you can paint a mask on your smart filters layer to limit the sharpening to the places you want. The advantage here is that the smart filter is adjustable later on.

Another way to affect things is to take a sharpening layer like my high pass layer, right click it, and adjust it's blending options. This would allow you to adjust it so that it doesn't affect your shadow areas at all. You could also do this using the Smart Object approach by placing the filtered smart layer over an unsullied copy of the smart layer, then adjusting blend options. They're just symbols so you don't double your file size.

The only other thing here is that I'd do spotting before doing sharpening. You don't want to sharpen the dust spots. For those dark dust specs you could use a healing brush or a clone stamp, either one set to Lighten mode. Setting it to lighten makes the brush only paint over things that are darker than the brush's source. Also, both of these brushes can be aligned with other source elements so you can do touchups over seams fairly easily. Do all your touchups on a separate layer and then you can erase them if they didn't work.

Rob

musicvid10 wrote on 8/14/2016, 10:03 PM
I'm as concerned about high pass because of the sensitive detail in the whites, which really isn't revealed in the sample.

rmack350 wrote on 8/15/2016, 11:32 AM
I just use High Pass as an example of sharpening and then using Masks and Blending options. It's not the only way to skin a cat, of course. A high pass copy layer used in an overlay blend mode sharpens edges. In fact, if you run the process and then do a difference comparison with a copy of the original layer, you'll see that it's not affecting your whites except at edges. And that's what sharpening does, increase edge contrast.

I know you know this stuff but I'm also spelling this out for other readers. In any case, if you're curious about the method you could try it. It's a very manual way of doing sharpening, and it makes the process a little more visible. It also doesn't bake the effect into the original image, so it's nondestructive.

It's easy enough to get similar control over a Smart Sharpen filter. If you use the filter as a smart filter applied to a smart object then it's nondestructive and you can play with it a lot more. If I were teaching, I'd start with the high pass method first because it also provides a good excuse to talk about masking and blend modes.

Rob
amendegw wrote on 8/15/2016, 12:34 PM
This may have been lost in my post above, but the NIK Detail Extractor is absolutely amazing for bringing out details in the highlights & shadows. Best of all, since Google bought NIK, it's FREE. https://www.google.com/nikcollection/Google NIK Collection[/LINK]

Here's NIK's tutorial:



...Jerry

System Model: Alienware Area-51m R2
System: Windows 11 Home
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz, 3792 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Memory: 64.0 GB
Display Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super (8GB), Nvidia Studio Driver 527.56 Dec 2022)
Overclock Off

Display: 1920x1080 144 hertz
Storage (12TB Total):
OS Drive: PM981a NVMe SAMSUNG 2048GB
Data Drive1: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB
Data Drive2: Samsung SSD 870 QVO 8TB

USB: Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C) port Supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, DisplayPort 1.2, Thunderbolt 3

Cameras:
Canon R5
Canon R3
Sony A9

rmack350 wrote on 8/15/2016, 1:39 PM
Thanks Jerry, these are very nice and would be super useful to one man band photoshop users, or people who work collaboratively in the same shop. I like that they can work as a smart filter. As long as another editor also has the filters installed they can make adjustments to what you've done.

Because I sometimes need to work with a freelancer or two, I tend to limit myself to whatever is stock in photoshop. It's about the most I can rely on as far as what the freelancer will have installed.

Good recommendation!

Rob
John_Cline wrote on 8/16/2016, 1:18 AM
I just tried my simple "Enhance Focus" convolution filter, it can be used in Vegas, Photoshop, ACDsee and anything else that supports custom convolution filters. Here are the settings for Vegas:



Here's the result:

John_Cline wrote on 8/16/2016, 1:25 AM
Here the other convolution filter I use a lot, it's called "Enhance Detail" and is much more subtle than "Enhance Focus."

musicvid10 wrote on 8/16/2016, 8:43 AM
Initial problem solved.

My objection to the paper matte was seen in the shadows; I didn't need to mask the highlights too. So I only applied the 45% overlay to the areas needed, thus keeping all the original detail in the feathers and weavings too.

Going to try Jerry's detail enhancing tool, along with other suggestions given to sharpen the edges a bit, and I should be good to go.





musicvid10 wrote on 8/16/2016, 11:01 AM
So here's the improved sample, this time at full resolution. It is already much sharper than my first attempt.
I've done a little to the shadows, highlights, and edges, but not much. I like Jerry and John C's take on this.



amendegw wrote on 8/16/2016, 2:28 PM
Musicvid,

To my eyes, I'd like to see it a little sharper. That said, adding sharpness is a trade off. The more sharpness that gets added, the more noise & artifacts are introduced. So... what looks the best to you is the most important.

I did one thing, however. There were many dust spots on this image. The image below should be identical to yours minus those spots.

...Jerry

System Model: Alienware Area-51m R2
System: Windows 11 Home
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700K CPU @ 3.80GHz, 3792 Mhz, 8 Core(s), 16 Logical Processor(s)
Installed Memory: 64.0 GB
Display Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super (8GB), Nvidia Studio Driver 527.56 Dec 2022)
Overclock Off

Display: 1920x1080 144 hertz
Storage (12TB Total):
OS Drive: PM981a NVMe SAMSUNG 2048GB
Data Drive1: Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB
Data Drive2: Samsung SSD 870 QVO 8TB

USB: Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C) port Supports USB 3.2 Gen 2, DisplayPort 1.2, Thunderbolt 3

Cameras:
Canon R5
Canon R3
Sony A9