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Revised Sharpening Technique

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 11:09 pm
by John
The Lab Mode technique previously examined is a useful method to give very sharp images without "mushing" the colour. However, it does involve two conversions RGB>Lab>RGB which could introduce errors of their own.

A revised method which has the same effect but without needing the conversions is as follows:

Stay in RGB throughout.
Unsharp Mask>select a very high value, maybe up to 400% if you so wish.
Immediately after that go Edit>Fade Unsharp Mask, selecting Luminosity as the blending mode. Reduce the effect until it looks right.

And that's it. Again, we are sharpening the underlying black and white image without affecting the colour.

In all sharpening techniques, including this one, the final effect is best judged for print with the on-screen image at around 50%.