Practical photoshop issue 136, july 2022 freemagazines top

Issue 136 July 2022 LEARN PHOTOSHOP CC LIGHTROOM THE EASY WAY S H A R P E N I N G E X P L A I N E D M O T I O N B L U R P O R T R A I T S L I G H T R O O M S K I L L S H A N D S O N S K I L L S CRE.Issue 136 July 2022 LEARN PHOTOSHOP CC LIGHTROOM THE EASY WAY S H A R P E N I N G E X P L A I N E D M O T I O N B L U R P O R T R A I T S L I G H T R O O M S K I L L S H A N D S O N S K I L L S CRE.

UPDATES

James Paterson, Editor • james.paterson@futurenet.com

HIGHLIGHTS: WHAT’S INSIDE…

www.digitalcameraworld.com

WHAT’S NEW

IN PS AND LR

n Find out about all

the latest Lightroom

and Photoshop tools

SHARPENING: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE

n Become a sharpening master with our full roundup

LIGHTROOM SKILLS

n Get to grips with soft proofing for better prints

MOTION BLURRED PORTRAITS

n Shoot and edit amazing blur effects

in your portraits

CREATE THE COVER IMAGE

n Make incredible effects with clipping masks

Sharpening is one of the most important editing tasks, but’s it’s often misunderstood In this issue’s feature you can learn pretty much everything there

is to know about it Elsewhere, discover the latest updates to your favorite image editors, and learn

to make powerful effects like the cover image

Also available on:

http://bit.ly/pp_pocketmags http://bit.ly/pp_app_store http://bit.ly/zinio_pp

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES

To download this issue's files, type the following link into your web browser on your

PC or Mac:

https://bit.ly/pho_136

http://bit.ly/practweet http://bit.ly/pracface

Welcome to issue 136 of Practical Photoshop!

If you enjoy the issue, why not subscribe and get

a whole year for just $19.99?

The headline feature

here is video editing in

Lightroom CC Lightroom has

previously offered very basic

video editing functions in

Lightroom Classic, in that you

could view video clips in the

Library and apply tonal

changes with the Quick

Develop tools in the Library

Module But crucially, you

couldn’t work on video in the

Develop Module Now you can

use Lightroom CC’s powerful

array of tonal controls on your

videos in much the same way

as you do on your stills (with a

few limitations – unfortunately

you can’t use local masking

tools) You can also use presets

Presets have always been one of the best things about

Lightroom; now they’ve been improved with a couple of

exciting new features First, after applying any preset you now

have an Amount slider that lets you control the overall strength,

much like the Amount slider in the Profile controls

NEWS

LIGHTROOM AND PHOTOSHOP UPDATES

TONE YOUR VIDEOS

IN LIGHTROOM CC

CONTROL YOUR PRESET STRENGTH

This month Adobe released a raft of new updates –

here are the key improvements…

for different tonal effects, and easily sync edits made on one video clip to several others (or copy edits from stills to videos)

While you’re also able to trim the start and end of a clip using the crop dialog, Lightroom isn’t the place to start creating a fully edited video in a timeline – for that

you’ll still need Premiere, Final Cut Pro or a similar video editing app But for those of

us who are photographers that dabble in video, this could prove to be a great feature It means we can take everything

we know about enhancing photos in Lightroom CC, and apply it to video instead

Another new feature is Adaptive Presets

These utilise AI to intelligently pick out

parts of the image and apply tailored preset

effects to them Several Adaptive Presets

are included in the latest release, such as

a Landscape set for boosting skies

Go to the Preset Panel in Lightroom Classic, Lightroom CC or Camera Raw, and≈you’ll find sets for Adaptive Sky and Adaptive Subject presets Click on a preset – like the Adaptive Subject ‘Warm Pop’ here – to apply the effect to the subject or sky

If you want to modify things further, adjust the Amount slider in the preset settings to control the overall strength of the effect For further control, head to the Mask Panel, where you’ll find a local adjustment has been created, which you can alter in any way you like

Preset-lovers can make use of five new

sets of premium presets in Lightroom

CC and Classic (you’ll also find them in Camera

Raw) – Portraits: Black & White, Portraits:

Edgy, Portraits: Group, Subject: Concerts and

Video: Creative

You can now apply batch edits that include AI subject or sky masks If you want to make a local adjustment to your subject

in an entire set of photos, you can make the adjustment to one image, then sync the edits to the rest of the set The AI mask will automatically

be generated for each individual image

ADAPTIVE PRESETS HOW TO USE ADAPTIVE PRESETS

DOWNLOAD THE PROJECT FILES HERE http://bit.ly/pho_136 ON YOUR PC OR MAC

From the best tools to judging the results, here’s everything you need to know about sharpening in Photoshop and Lightroom

Sharpening is an essential skill for photographers who want to maximise the detail and impact of their photos But it’s a task that can be as frustrating as it is rewarding: frustrating in that it can

be difficult to know which tools to use, and how much sharpening to

apply; and rewarding because – when done right – it can subtly elevate

your images to another level

Let’s look at a range of tips and tricks for sharpening your photos

to perfection We’ll begin by exploring the basics and principles of

sharpening, then look at a few cutting-edge tools and techniques…

SHARPENING

T HE DEFINI T I V E

GUIDE T O

Oversharpened images will begin to look crunchy and unnatural, which is definitely something to avoid

T HE BES T SH A RPENING

T OOL S   IN PHO T OSHOP

There are essentially four sharpening tools and techniques that you need to know These are the Camera Raw Detail Panel, the Unsharp Mask filter, the Smart Sharpen filter and the High Pass method There also are a couple of useful selective sharpening tools: the Sharpen tool in Photoshop and the Adjustment Brush in Camera Raw and Lightroom

Rudimentary filters like Sharpen, Sharpen Edges and Sharpen More might give decent results, but the lack of control makes them redundant compared with these more advanced tools

The Detail Panel in Camera Raw and Lightroom houses an array of simple yet powerful sharpening sliders Alt-drag any

of the Sharpening, Radius, Detail and Masking sliders for a black-and-white view that can make it easier to judge.

CON T ROL SH A RPENING S T RENG T H

Sharpening is essentially a form of contrast control, and contrast is increased by

making shadows darker and highlights brighter With sharpening, this is done along the edges in the image where dark pixels meet lighter pixels The pixels along the dark side of the edge will become darker, and the pixels along the light side will get brighter Most sharpening controls have an Amount slider or Sharpening slider that controls how strong the change in contrast will be You’ll find a slider like this in Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen and the Detail Panel in Camera Raw and Lightroom

Every image can be seen as a series of edges in which collections of lighter pixels meet darker ones The Sharpening slider in the Detail Panel controls the overall strength of the contrast change that occurs along these edges.

WH AT IS R A DIUS ?

As discussed earlier, sharpening increases contrast along edges The four key

sharpening tools in Photoshop – Unsharp Mask, Smart Sharpen, High Pass and the

Detail Panel in Camera Raw – all have a Radius control This determines how far from the edge sharpening will occur Set to a low value, the contrast change may only spread a pixel or two from the edge, but with a higher value the change expands outwards on either side of the edge If we push it too far, we might see halos around details in the image As such, Amount and Radius are directly tied to one another, and one doesn’t work without the other

R A DIUS 0 P I X E L S R A DIUS 1 P I X EL R A DIUS 3 P I X EL S

With Radius set to 0, there is no sharpening When Radius is set to 1px, the change in contrast occurs in a tight line along the edge With Radius set to 3px, the contrast change spreads further out.

DON ’ T SH A RP E N NOISE

When an image has out-of-focus,

detail-less areas, there’s really no

need to apply universal sharpening to

these areas: all we end up doing is

amplifying the image noise As such, it’s

often better to apply selective sharpening

to different areas There are several ways

to do this You could use layers, selections

and masks in Photoshop to zero in on

different areas (we’ll explore a few

techniques for this later on)

When an image has a shallow depth of field and blurred background like this, there’s no point sharpening the blurred areas, as it will only increase image noise.

SH A RPEN T O SUI T YOUR SUB JEC T

There are no hard rules with

sharpening The best advice is to

eyeball the image and use your judgement

to decide how sharp it needs to be Different

settings will typically be suited to different

types of subject Portraits, for example, will

usually benefit from a combination of high

Radius and lower Amount This is because

with portraits there are usually areas of

smooth detail in skin and clothes, then points

of sharp detail dotted around the frame like

the eyes, lips and hair By contrast, with

landscapes and other detail-heavy scenes,

the opposite approach tends to work better

As a rule of thumb, use a fairly low Radius and a high sharpening Amount to get the best results from heavily detailed scenes like landscapes.

M ASK SOF T ER A RE AS FROM SH A RPENING

The Masking slider in Camera Raw

and Lightroom can be very helpful

for restricting image noise to in-focus

detailed parts of a photo After applying

sharpening the shot universally with the

Amount, Radius and Detail sliders above,

hold Alt and drag the Masking slider to the

right You’ll see areas begin to appear in black

and white The black areas will be excluded

This allows us to restrict sharpening to areas

of detail in the image Watch the video to find out about the Masking control

and all the other important features of the Detail Panel

in Camera Raw and Lightroom.

WATCH THE VIDEO

https://bit.ly/3HA9z34

WHEN T O SH A RPEN

Digital images are inherently soft, so they need some level of sharpening just to make them appear acceptable If your camera is set to shoot in JPEG, the initial sharpening takes place in-camera By contrast, with raw files you need to do your own initial sharpening This is sometimes called Capture Sharpening, as it happens at the start of a workflow (as opposed to Output Sharpening, which happens at the end, after an image has been resized for print or web) Capture Sharpening usually takes place in your chosen raw editor, like the Detail Panel within Lightroom or Photoshop’s Camera Raw plugin

By default, Camera Raw and Lightroom set a sharpening Amount of 40, Radius 1.0 and Detail 25 to all raw images:

a base-level starting point for further sharpening.

SH A RPEN W HEN OU T P U T T ING

OR E X P OR T ING

Sharpening is tied to resolution: if we alter the resolution of an image , perhaps in order

to prepare it for printing or web publication, we often need to apply sharpening too

So once we’ve resized an image for a specific output – whether it be a 10x15 inch print or a 600px web image – we need to apply output sharpening that is tailored to the specific media and resolution of the image, to ensure that the image looks nice and sharp when viewed in its end format Usually the ideal tool for this will be Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen But if you want to export images directly from Camera Raw or Lightroom without having to open them into Photoshop, there’s a simple, effective output sharpening tool in the Export dialog (or in the Save Image dialog for Camera Raw)

Head to the Export settings in LIghtroom or the Save Image settings in Camera Raw for output sharpening that is

tailored to the image size Choose a media type and set a strength for a finely tuned level of output sharpening.

SH A RPENING FOR PRIN T

When sharpening for print, always do so after resizing for a specific print size The correct resolution for prints is 300 pixels per inch So a 10-inch print should be 3,000 pixels wide Typically prints need a stronger level of sharpening than images for web, as the printing process tends to soften them slightly So in general, push the sharpening effect slightly further than you might think acceptable

If preparing images for printing, resize to the correct print size first using the Crop Tool or Image Size command in Photoshop, making sure the resolution is set to 300 pixels per inch Then apply sharpening – perhaps with Unsharp Mask – to the resized image.

M AS T ER UNSH A RP M ASK

Ironically one of the best tools for sharpening, Unsharp Mask, sounds like the opposite of what it’s doing (it’s

called Unsharp Mask because it blurs then

subtracts the blur, resulting in enhanced

edges) First double-click the Zoom tool to

zoom to 100% view, then duplicate the layer

(Cmd/Ctrl+J) and go to Filter > Sharpen >

Unsharp Mask Use the Amount slider to

control the strength of the effect and

Radius to control the spread, then increase

Threshold to prevent the sharpening from

amplifying image noise

Unsharp Mask is one of Photoshop’s best sharpening tools Watch the video for an explanation of this powerful tools key features.

WATCH THE VIDEO

https://bit.ly/3tPwK3U

TA K E CON T ROL WI T H SM A R T SH A RPEN

If you want options, Smart Sharpen

gives you more sliders and controls

than any other sharpening tool Go to Filter

> Sharpen > Smart Sharpen to launch Once

open, make sure ‘More Accurate’ is checked

under the cog dropdown at the top Use

the Amount and Radius sliders to apply

sharpening There are further options to

remove noise, fix blur and apply sharpening

to the shadows or highlights independently

of one another Smart Sharpen lets you apply sharpening to highlights

and shadows independently.

WATCH THE VIDEO

https://bit.ly/3O9uwo7

T HE A M A Z ING HIGH PASS T ECHNIQUE

Of all sharpening techniques, perhaps the most-loved by photographers is the High Pass method It brings a crispness to the details without overly affecting image noise The High Pass technique is especially suitable for localized sharpening of specific areas of an image Watch the video for a neat trick involving Focus Area, which lets us target just the in-focus

parts of the image with our high pass sharpening effect

WATCH THE VIDEO

https://bit.ly/3zSUOGK

01 DUPLICATE AND BLEND

Open high_pass_before into

Photoshop CC Go to the Layers Panel

(Window > Layers) and hit Cmd/Ctrl+J to

duplicate the Background layer Double-click

the layer name of the duplicate and rename

it to ‘Sharpen’ Next, right-click the layer and

select Convert to Smart Object

Go to Filter> Other > High Pass

Experiment with differing Radius strengths,

judging by eye how they affect the details

in the image The right amount will depend

on the resolution of your image and the

subject matter, so apply trial and error

We’ve used a Radius setting of 3.7 here

When you’re happy, click OK

Go to the Blending Mode dropdown

at the top of the Layers Panel and change

it from Normal to Overlay (or Soft Light for

a subtler sharpening effect) Next, click the Zoom tool This’ll jump your view to 100% (viewing the actual pixels is better when judging sharpening strength)

The great thing about Smart Objects

is that we can edit the filter strength whenever we like Click the eye icon to toggle the layer on and off and assess the effect If you think it needs tweaking, double-click the Smart Filter attached to the layer to re-enter the High Pass radius settings We’ve increased it to 4.2

T RY SUPER RESOL U T ION OR PURER AW

Sharpening is directly linked to image quality, resolution and crispness, so if we want sharper photos we need to think beyond which sharpening tools to use We also need

to consider how to get the best quality from our digital photos Options like Enhance Details and Super Resolution can give us a better starting point If you need a boost in resolution, simply right-click an image in Camera Raw, go to Enhance and click Apply to double the

resolution For better-quality raws, consider using DxO plugins like PureRaw This applies AI-powered noise reduction and industry-leading lens-correcting tools, resulting in a sharper, higher-quality raw file It’s especially effective for high-ISO images, as it reduces noise and enhances details to an astonishing degree

Advanced tools in Camera Raw and Lightroom can give you a cleaner, sharper, higher-resolution image to work with.

M A K E IM AGES P OP W I T H UNSH A RP M ASK

OV ERSH A RPEN T HEN PUL L I T BACK

As well as sharpening fine details, the

Unsharp Mask filter can also

be good for adding midtone contrast, in a similar way to the Clarity slider in Camera Raw and Lightroom Launch the filter (Filter > Unsharp Mask), then try using a very high Radius setting, and increase Amount until the details begin to pop

If you’re struggling to settle on the right amount of sharpening for your photo, try taking the sharpening Amount all the way to the maximum, then gradually knock it back until you find a happy medium The idea with this is that it’s easier to recognize over-sharpened, fuzzy images than it is to recognise slight undersharpened details

Try using a high Radius and low Amount to add punch to monochrome photos.

Shift Amount to the maximum first, then drag it down to an acceptable level.

REMOV E H A L OS WI T H BL END IF

After you’ve applied sharpening to a

duplicate layer using the Unsharp

Mask or Smart Sharpen filters, you may

notice that halos appear around areas of

extreme contrast, such as the horizon line

Rather than trying to reign in the sharpening

(which might adversely affect other areas),

you can remove the halos with the Blend If

command Simply double-click the layer to

open up the Blending options In the Blend

If settings, drag the This Layer highlights

sliders inwards slightly to knock out the

brightest parts of the layer

To remove halos, apply sharpening to a duplicate layer, double-click the layer then drag the Blend If

This Layer highlights slider inwards slightly.

WATCH THE VIDEO

https://bit.ly/3Oa86Tu

SEL EC T SUB JEC T SH A RPENING

Why not use AI-powered selection tools to zero in on your subject before sharpening?

In Photoshop, try using Select > Subject, then use the Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen

to boost the subject In Camera Raw or Lightroom, use the Select Subject Mask, then increase the Sharpness slider to crisp up the area

Duplicate your layer and apply Unsharp Mask to the duplicate, then go to Select > Subject and click the Mask icon

in the Layers Panel to restrict sharpening to your subject.