

I work a lot with layers to be very precise, and I find that and masking variables highly valuable. I like the control Photoshop affords me in general, and in sharpening especially. I don’t find I have as much control, but if you have good brushes and know the balance of how the different sliders adjust contrast and sharpness, Lightroom’s sharpening is very good, and our Lightroom Preset System with its custom brushes is good for this In Lightroom you can create brushes of your own or apply the general sliders. You can see the almost crystalline effect on the fibres of the ball. You can see from the last one what too much sharpening does. Here are a few examples of sharpening – from neutral to ok, to bad. Photos with phone cameras or point and shoots often have automatic edits done as a photo is taken, and sharpening is one of them. If you’re shooting in RAW especially, you’ll understand that the lack of compression and ‘edits’ that are provided in other file types, can give your photos a slightly softer look. You can make a feature seem more defined, create a sense of separation from surroundings, and in some cases it can be effective to remove a haze. It is for those reasons and those similar that you would want to add sharpening to an image.

This added contrast can give an image more definition, and the appearance of refinement. Essentially, one side will be made darker and the other lighter …hence, contrast. What IS Sharpening & Why Do it?Īt a very distilled level, sharpening is adding contrast between pixels, and edges in general. To many of you advanced and or discerning photogs, this will not be groundbreaking, but perhaps you’ll find some value in it nonetheless.
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Īnyway, now that I’ve rambled and set a precedent of restraint, I’ll discuss a few different types of sharpening methods what the differences are, and how to use them. Studying photographic history, even a minuscule amount, and learning how to critique photos is a good way to get a grasp of this, and leads to better application. I wish I could get it through the heads of the accused that some phenomenal photos aren’t necessarily sharp. And while I’m all for having clear photos, and respect artistic license, I think there should be greater restraint when it’s being applied. There’s this idea among many, especially beginners, that a sharp picture is a good picture, but truly the definition of both of those terms, ‘sharp’ and ‘good,’ are sort of nebulous.įar too many photographers use sharpening as a corrective tool to correct that which sharpening wasn’t really meant to fix. Along with saturation, it is the most commonly overkilled post process I come across. Used selectively, it can lead attention to the points of chosen focus in an image, save portions, enhance others, and if it’s wielded in a cavalier manner, can amplify a mistake and attract the wrong sort of attention. It can render a photo useless as quickly as it can improve it. It’s really quite astounding the degree to which sharpening can affect the outcome of a photograph. The Application Shortcut Mapper web app has one huge advantage over the more “traditional” method: If you press any key on your keyboard, the highlighted shortcuts on the website change and show you various possible combinations with the pressed key. Previous to this helpful web app you had to buy stickers and physically apply them to your keyboard, a method that works, but it has one huge disadvantage: other than the web app, your stickers aren’t interactive. Waldo Bronchart has created a web app called “Application Shortcut Mapper”, designed to visualize keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop, Lightroom and Blender.
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It works with Mac OSX, Windows and Linux. Keyboard shortcuts are pretty useful when it comes to speeding up your workflow In Photoshop or Lightroom you can use shortcuts to access tools or perform actions much quicker than you could with your mouse or graphics tablet. It doesn’t matter how often you use Photoshop or Lightroom, it’s almost impossible to remember every keyboard shortcut.
