On 5/13/07, William Robb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Paul Stenquist" > Subject: Re: Bad Bokeh > > > > Yes, but it's not bokeh. His nose isn't completely out of focus. It's > > just sharpening artifacts on highlights. That's where they frequently > > show up. > > This is where I frequently have found problems with sharpening. It's not the > completely out of focus stuff that is a problem. For lack of a better term, > partially unfocused areas give sharpening software grief. > What buggers things up is when you have a partially unfocused background and > you hit the entire image with USM. > Quite often, I am finding that what was a nice background suddenly has > double image (bokeh) simply because it wasn't out of focus enough and USM > had enough to work with.
Try this selective sharpening technique. - Create a copy of the background layer and run the high pass filter (filter>other>high pass) at a radius between 1.3-1.8 pixels for web sized images and 2.0-2.5 for full size shots (as a starting point) everything goes grey but there can sometimes be some colour in it so desaturate it completely (ctrl+shift+u). - Then apply USM to this layer. I tend to over sharpen a bit and pull it back later. - Change the copied background layer's blending mode to Soft Light. Now you can do a few things at this stage: - If you just want global sharpening, dial back the layer opacity until it looks right. Or use use plain USM/Smart Sharpen :-) - If you want to selectively sharpen just a portion of the image, adjust the layer opacity slider until the area you want sharpened looks right, then using the paint brush with the foreground colour at 50% grey paint the areas (on your copied background layer) you don't want sharpened. - If you want varying degrees of sharpening add a layer mask (to the background copy) and using standard making techniques paint in the areas using various shades of grey to suit. I've been using this technique for some time now. What I like most about it is that it non-destructive to the original image, so I can always come back and quickly re-do it if I stuff up. Cheers, Dave -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
