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Best sharpening technique for portraits


Foley_Fotos

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I'm looking for the best sharpening technique for portraits inside of Photoshop. I get mixed answers when I look online. What is the best technique to use between unsharp mask, smart sharpen, or high pass? How does sharpening pug-ins compare to those techniques? Also should I sharpen after or before I resize for web?
 
Tom just posted something in reference to this or like it, i liked it I think I'll copy and paste i'll find it and get it posted
 
Sorry my bad, that was in reference to high pass....... but he loves to type so I'll let him chime in on his own:mrgreen:
 
For the past 5 or more years, the accepted standard workflow for professional sharpening has been a three step process first described by Bruce Fraser.

There is a very nice summary of this technique here: http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/image-sharpening.htm .

If you like the above summary, buy his book and help out his widow: Real World Image Sharpening (2nd Edition)

If you want the most simplified version of the above that will still produce reasonable results:

a) completely omit the "capture sharpening" step;

b) take a decent enough photo so that you don't have to use "creative sharpening"; and,

c) use the Image / Image Size / Bicubic (best for smooth...) tool in PS6 / CS6 to do all of your final down-rez'ing for web, email, etc. Don't use "Bicubic (automatic)" or any of the other options like Bicubic (sharper). And, if you are stuck using CS4 or earlier, still use "Bicubic (best for smooth gradients)", but you will have to apply a little final sharpening, preferably using Smart Sharpen.

Be cognizant of the fact that different images, even if equally well photographed, demand different sharpening, eg, consid sharpening a photo of a baby vs sharpening a wonderful cross-lit landscape.


HTH,

Tom M
 

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