High pass sharpen tutorial (photoshop)

I've been asked plenty times if I'd make some photoshop tutorials. I keep saying "sure, I'll do that" but then just not getting round to it. So I figured, now's as good a time as any. And I'm going to start with one of my favorite ways to add a final sharpen to a photo when preparing for print or web or whatever.

Later versions of PS have some very clever and impressive sharpen options, other than just the unsharp mask. You can use a smart sharpen to remove gaussian blur, motion blur or lens blur. It's all good. And I often use it to sharpen eyes or other details. But for that final tighten everything up kind of sharpen, I still favor the high pass sharpen. And here's how I do it.

OK, here's the first pic. Just something I chose randomly from my folder. A pic of Turtle.



Before I do the sharpen, I'm going to run through my basic editing.

I start by using the spot healing tool to remove some of those nasty marks on his face.




Then I'll work on the eyes a bit. I'll make a tutorial for this at some point in the future.



Then I make a few curves adjustments (I'm sure I'll do a tutorial for this too. Curves are my number 1 favorite tool for photoshop. I use them all the time.)



Ok, now the High pass sharpen bit.

Select the whole canvas by pressing control+A or by clicking select>all.

Then click copy merged or shift+ctrl+C.



Then paste this merged layer at the very top of all the layers. ctrl+V will do the job.

Now go change the blend mode of this new layer to hard light. It will look really weird, don't worry, we're going to fix it on the next step.





Click filter > other > high pass.

A window pops up, with a slider.



Mess around with the slider until it's nice and sharp, but not overly sharp.

It's ok if some of the details become a little oversharp, like this.



We fix that by making a layer mask on this grey looking high pass sharpen layer. Then take a nice soft black brush and paint over any of the details which are over sharp.

And there you have it!




(before and after)




My friend Shaye had a good suggestion, that I take submissions from you lot for me to fix up and post on here. I thought it was a fab idea. So if any of you want me to mess around and try to fix up some of your photos, please e-mail them to me and I'll choose which ones will make the most interesting tutorials. Then I'll post a tutorial up here, made using your pic, and of course you'll get to keep the edited version. I'd love to see a variety of pic problems, like red eye, extra person in background, bad color cast, lots of shadow, overly pale skin, bad lighting, cracks or tears in (scanned) photo etc. I won't necessarily be able to fix up all submissions, but I'll try to work on as many as I can. I do hope some of you will send in your photos, it would be fun. Let your blogger friends know about it too! Spread the word. The more the merrier.

Also, what should I call this segment? Any good name suggestions? I just think it would be nice to have a name...

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Fix it Friday

I've been posting my fix its over at smugmug, but a few of you have asked me photoshop questions so I figured I'd go ahead and post this here.

This weeks I heart faces fix it Friday is a picture of a sweet, but sad looking little girl. Anyone who follows me on twitter may have seen that my stylus died on me this week. I *need* my stylus to do photoshop. Otherwise it's like trying to skip rope without the rope, or trying to eat without a mouth, or trying to do a road trip without a car, or trying to have breakfast without oatmeal, or trying to socialize without talking about your kids, or kids tv or anything kid related. You get the picture.

I have a new stylus on the way, thanks to my wonderful, compassionate, hard working husband. (sucking up? me? no way) And I was going to skip on this week's fix it Friday, since my hands are so naked today. But this little girl looked so sad.



So I rolled my fingers, clumsily all over the tracker pad thingy on my laptop and made a fix on the photo. Because she needed a little happiness, a little sharpness and a bit of a color fix.




My process was basically:

- liquify tool to her mouth and brows, to make her happier

- paint, sharpen, dodge and burn on her eyes

- curves for brightness, contrast and color

- curves and mask for lighting fix

- alien skin bokeh for soft blur around edges

- high pass sharpen over whole image


And that was it. Here's the b4 and after.




Check out the other fix its here

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Heavy photoshopping

I'm not usually a huge fan of the heavy photoshopped look, but when I shot these photos, I had PS in mind, and wanted to go for the digital urban look. I'm not thrilled with them, but I thought it would be fun to show the straight off the camera pics beside the photoshopped ones.

PSed


SOTC (straight off the camera)



PSed


SOTC


PSed


SOTC



This one was a fav shot of mine, and the original was messed up


SOTC



PSed


SOTC



PSed


SOTC



See the rest here

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Fix it Friday

I figured I'd join in with the I<3Faces fix it Friday thing, where you all take the same photo and play around with it in your photo editing software, then share the results and the process.

It seems everyone's all about actions these days, and I'm just behind the times. I don't really use them. I mean, I make my own actions and use them, but they're mostly little functions, like opening a curves layer, or apply a sharpen filter. It's to save me time clicking extra buttons. I do have one that converts to black and white. Otherwise I do everything manually. Maybe I should start thinking about getting in on the whole action thing, I'm just a bit snobbish about making the whole thing be my own work. There are some awesome actions out there though, and it probably would improve my photos...

Anyway, here's my edit. (it's a cute boy called Weston, I don't know him)




Here's the original.



The process:

I started with curves. I always make an adjustment layer for my curves, so I can tweak it later if I need. I made a few curves layers, to gradually brighten and keep the details dark.

Then I used a curve layer to reduce the red on his face. I brought down the red of the whole photo, then applied a mask to the curve layer and masked off the whole layer, then painted back in the face part with a brush set at 40% opacity. That made the face a little less red (it had become really red with the lightening earlier)

Next I did some work on the eyes. I made a new layer via copied merged layers, so I could work on it without losing my other layers incase I needed to go back. I took a soft brush, set to multiply mode at about 40% and zoomed in real close, and started painting with black (or v.dark brown) around the pupils to make them larger.

Then I took a brush and painted some light grey/blue to enhance the catchlights. I selected the eyes using quick mask and applied a smart sharpen to them.

Then I zoomed back out and flattened my image then made a copy of the bgnd layer to work on. (oh, I made a history capture first, in case I'd need to go back later).

First, I used the healing brush to take out skin blemishes. Then, I applied a dust and scratched to this new layer, then masked it out and airbrushed back in the face and neck, but not details like eyes and lips. I repeated the process with a box blur. This all softened the skin tones. I also made a box blur layer which I set to 10% opacity, on soft light, to increase contrast.

Lastly, I burned in a vignette around the edges (using the burn tool), and burned in his shirt a little, to make it stand out more. As one final tweak, I applied a new curves layer over the top to slightly reduce the contrast and improve color (added a little yellowish highlight and slightly blue shadow)

And that was it.

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Photoshop Brush Set

EDITED TO ADD: I've added my e-mail address to the links at the top right. Mail me if you want this set.

It's been a while since I've done this! I made a photoshop brush set. Some sketchy swirls.
Let me know if you want it, I can probably send it to 5 or so people. It's about 1.5 MB in size.

I'm hoping to get making some more supplies - papers and brushes mostly, for my own personal use. I don't mind sharing with folks who read this blog, just understand these are not professionally done - the pics are not perfect, there's no terms of use file or index file etc. I'm just sharing in a friends and family sort of context.

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