I hear of people using USM in photoshop as a way to make things appear more and focus and such. How do I use this USM? I cannot seem to find it. I have CS2.
I usually end up with somewhere in the range of 125% .3 3 for photos I submit to DPC. That is going from an unsharpened RAW file.
Amount: is the amount of sharpening to be done on the photo.
Radius: This is the width of the contrasting pixels along the edge of detail in a photo. This can be and usually should be a decimal number.
Threshold: This number helps to smooth out artifacts that can occur in sharpening. What it does is set the differnce a pixel should be from its neighbor before sharpening occurs between the two.
I usually end up with somewhere in the range of 125% .3 3 for photos I submit to DPC. That is going from an unsharpened RAW file.
Amount: is the amount of sharpening to be done on the photo.
Radius: This is the width of the contrasting pixels along the edge of detail in a photo. This can be and usually should be a decimal number.
Threshold: This number helps to smooth out artifacts that can occur in sharpening. What it does is set the differnce a pixel should be from its neighbor before sharpening occurs between the two.
Yeah, the amounts vary from image to image. Those are just the numbers I learned with, and I find them to be a good, safe starting place for the most part. But I'm sure your numbers would work just as well. :-)
Yeah, the amounts vary from image to image. Those are just the numbers I learned with, and I find them to be a good, safe starting place for the most part. But I'm sure your numbers would work just as well. :-)
Yes they do vary. The amount of sharpening should depend first on the photo to be sharpened.
I've actually started playing with smart sharpen and USM combos with multiple passes, fading the sharpening using the Fade command in the Edit menu.
Yeah, the amounts vary from image to image. Those are just the numbers I learned with, and I find them to be a good, safe starting place for the most part. But I'm sure your numbers would work just as well. :-)
Yes they do vary. The amount of sharpening should depend first on the photo to be sharpened.
I've actually started playing with smart sharpen and USM combos with multiple passes, fading the sharpening using the Fade command in the Edit menu.
I'm sensing PS CS2 here...I don't have smart sharpen in PS 7, no fair! :-P
I've heard of doing multiple passes, but have never tried it. I also read something around here a while back about using USM to do high-contrast passes. So I guess it has multiple uses that take some honing.
I'm sensing PS CS2 here...I don't have smart sharpen in PS 7, no fair! :-P
I've heard of doing multiple passes, but have never tried it. I also read something around here a while back about using USM to do high-contrast passes. So I guess it has multiple uses that take some honing.
I wouldn't be too jealous LOL. CS2 is a LOT slower on my machine than PS7 even after a memory upgrade. I have PS7 on my notebook, which has about half the oomph as my desktop and it out-performs the CS2 resource hog by leaps and bounds.
But smart-sharpen is handy if the focus is a little less than tack sharp or a little camera shake has happened. It won't perform miracles, but can help a little.
As far as multiple passes of USM, it seems to produce less artifacting and doesn't enhance noise as much.
Funny how everyone uses different settings. I read somewhere that for web viewing you should use 85,1,4. That's what I use. For printing I use 100,1,1.
Funny how everyone uses different settings. I read somewhere that for web viewing you should use 85,1,4. That's what I use. For printing I use 100,1,1.
It depends on the elements in the image, and the desired result. Not every image is going to yield desirable results with those settings. Some need more aggressive sharpening, some, more restrained.
Almost all legitamate articles on Smart Sharpen in PS CS2 says it's much better than the old USM. It is still very controllable so it's really not automatic like many people think, just better programming.
I usually use lens correction, most accurate and either 1.2 at 75 or .4 at 125-200 depending on the photos.
I use smart sharpen for sharpening and USM for local contrasting. Since the two tasks use wildly different settings doing it this way keeps my settings in tact for each task. This saves critical seconds! :P
Almost all legitamate articles on Smart Sharpen in PS CS2 says it's much better than the old USM. It is still very controllable so it's really not automatic like many people think, just better programming.
In my opinion they are pretty much the same. The major benefit with Smart Sharpen is the improved workflow since it allows you to tweak the highlights and shadows separately. Before you could do that with USM but it involved creating a duplicate layer and applying the USM twice, changing the blending modes and opacity to tweak.
Almost all legitamate articles on Smart Sharpen in PS CS2 says it's much better than the old USM. It is still very controllable so it's really not automatic like many people think, just better programming.
I usually use lens correction, most accurate and either 1.2 at 75 or .4 at 125-200 depending on the photos.
I'm with Phantom here as well. SS is the way to go, haven't even looked at USM now that I use SS.
