Sharpening

[CMYanko]

Just got Bryan Petersons new book, Beyond Portraiture. What a great book, I just love his work.

Anyway, he has a section in the back on Photo-Editing Techniques which is so helpful for me. In it he has an entry on Sharpening. I have noticed that alot of people when posting images cite if there was pp and often list USM which I have taken to mean Unsharp Mask. I was wondering if everyone has been doing what Bryan suggest and I'm the only one who never heard of it? He, after converting from RAW and doing color and white balnce stuff, take hi TIF and then sharpens as his last step (that much I knew). He converts the color model to LAB and applies the USM to that channel only! He even gives values of 80%, 1.4 radius and a threshold of 3 and applies it twice before changing the color model back to RGB (or CMYK) and saving. I am just blown away by this and can't wait to try it out.

[GoneTomorrow]

Yes, the USM is awesome! I only have Paint Shop Pro 9, but from my experience with Photoshop, it seems to get the job done just as well.

I usually have a radius between 1 - 2 and keep the clipping under 5. Other than that, I usually adjust the saturation and color balance if necessary.

Also, you should know (if you didn't already) that many DSLR and prosumer cameras can sharpen and over saturate every shot. But I keep those features turned off because I like to see the difference made in PSP9.

Also, when sharpening, be sure to look at the actual pixels (100% zoom or more)

[CMYanko]

Re- reading my original post I see I botched it as I'm always trying to go too fast.

I meant to say he applied the USM to the Lightness channel once in LAB mode.

[P_Schneider]

I've always used USM on the whole picture but I can see where just using it on the lightness would be a good thing. I will have to try this.