I've recently been playing around with a new (to me) sharpening technique, which is 100% non destructive & may be worth a try.
You make your adjustments, levels curves etc. as you normally would. When it comes time to do the sharpening create a copy of the background layer & run the high pass filter (filter>other>high pass), with the radius set from between 1.3-2.5 pixels depending on the image size & content. Everything goes grey but that's normal. Now, do your sharpening to this background copy layer (USM or smart sharpen, whichever you prefer). I deliberately over sharpen at this stage. Now set the sharpened background copy layer blending mode to "soft light". >From here you can fine tune the sharpening by either adjusting the layer opacity and leaving it at that or, for a little more control, add a layer mask and paint over the areas that need to be brought down. I find it works great most of the time. Dave. PS. Nice picture, but I too find the foreground leaves look a little "odd". On 10/18/06, Jostein Øksne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thanks for all the comments, folks. Much appreciated. > > Re: sharpening, I agree that it looks a bit odd. I went back and > checked the raw file again, and reduced sharpness adjustment to > minimum. This produced a very soft image indeed, but the bright spots > among the leaves were still there. Some leaves are much brighter than > the others, and produce specular highlights. Some of the trees are > aspens which have a waxy leaf surface... that could be one culprit, I > think. There are also goat willows in there, with leaves that are > covered with white hairs underneath. With a whiff of wind they could > cause trouble too. Btw, the specular highlight in the background is > caused by sunlight reflection off a barn roof. > > Hmm. Too bad. I almost felt I liked the shot...:-) > > Cheers, > Jostein > Hooom booom barooom.... > > On 10/18/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > In a message dated 10/17/2006 1:41:46 PM Pacific Daylight Time, > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > > The trees in the foreground look a bit oversharpened > > though, lots of specular highlights jumping at you ... > > > > Regards, JvW > > ========= > > Very pretty. But I agree, the leaves in the foreground look oversharpened. > > And that is a comment I do not make often. Because the background is hazy, > > the > > leaves jump out too much. It would be easy to tone down, then you'd have a > > great shot. > > > > Just my .02. > > > > Marnie aka Doe :-) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
