You can't use unsharp mask, because that allows adjustable control of the sharpening. I've always been under the impression that you can use one pass of sharpen. Multiple passes may be allowed, I'm a little confused over that.
Dang, I just realize the challenge I had a good shot for is minimal and I shot in RAW. Oh well, it wouldn't be a decent entry without some tweaking anyway.
i use smart sharpen ..
and i also sometimes use high pass in soft light or overlay blending modes ..
i would have thought those would be ok .. and not against the rules in minimal ..
they say you can sharpen in any way as long as you dont selectively do it .. ??
We don't allow any kind of layering/layer modes in Minimal Editing, so High Pass is not acceptable. Any form of sharpening that can be applied to the base layer itself is acceptable as long as it is applied equally to the entire image. That is to say, for example, a sharpening tool that can be limited to the shadows (or highlights, or mid-tones, whatever) would not be acceptable, even if one was not required to "draw" a selection when using it. The key here is, nothing can be selected by any means whatsoever to be sharpened.
And Sharpen (global not the sharpen tool) applied globally on a layer and that entire layer reduced in opacity?
You can't use any layers in Minimal.
Okay, then if I used Sharpen on a single layer and then Edit, and Fade Sharpen? Is that legal?
But, why no layers? Nothing I can find in the rules says that. I get no masks, but...
That's actually a carryover from the former Minimal rules. You can sharpen on a layer then merge it down, there's nothing to prohibit that. As you say, sharpen/edit/fade sharpen is the same thing. The main thing is, no layer modes, that gets to be more-than-minimal.
It's really pretty simple: enter an unedited picture. Sharpen if you wish, but sharpen all parts at once, globally. Looking beyond that for the "best" way to sharpen is starting to get into a non-minimal mindset :-) All *I* ever do is use Bicubic Sharper when I resize...
I think "sharpening on a layer and merging down" would not be the same as fading the filter unless the blending mode is other than normal or the upper layer opacity is less than 100% (both illegal in Minimal) -- merging down should just replace the lower layer with the upper.
I think "sharpening on a layer and merging down" would not be the same as fading the filter unless the blending mode is other than normal or the upper layer opacity is less than 100% (both illegal in Minimal) -- merging down should just replace the lower layer with the upper.
I see the confusion: for it to be "the same thing" that would mean duping the base layer, sharpening it, then fading the layer opacity. That's exactly the same as sharpening on the base layer then using edit/fade. It's just a little easier to see the result and correct if necessary, 'cuz edit/fade is a one-time operation.
