Photoshop Image sharpening 7 hidden problems

Today's PS tutorial looks at what you need to be aware of using sharpening tools.

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1. The map environment is not under control

Looking back at the development of photo imaging, while still in the darkroom flushing, potions soaked in the era, any flushing adjustment will be a physical change to the photo, so that you can directly test all kinds of exploratory effects, all of which will be shown in the immediate. But in today's booming social network, if you want to share a picture, and you want the picture to look beautiful and clear, it's not that easy, and it's influenced by factors such as screen size.

Today, browsing pictures is affected by more conditions, such as screen size, ambient light, and even the distance from the eye to the screen, so that viewers may not be able to browse the picture in the ideal way. These factors all affect the clarity that the viewer eventually sees, and these factors are beyond the control of the designer.

If the constraints are objective, the best solution is to accept the reality, because none of the settings can satisfy all the devices. Instead, think about who your ideal picture viewer is, and how they are most likely to browse the picture, and then follow that line of thought. For example, images like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are not the same size, and most people are telling smartphones to look at these images, which can be optimized by this feature. For web design, you can use responsive design, so that the picture according to the screen size dynamically adjust the best resolution.

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2. Screen display clearer than printing

You will often look at the preview before you are sure to print. But this is only a preview, and the actual effect will be a certain difference. The electronic screen is now the clearest display medium, and with the improvement of technology, the resolution is improving, the sharpness is also improving. But sharpening it on the screen doesn't mean it can be perfectly displayed in print. And because of the reasons for printing materials, such as certain characteristics of the paper will require different sharpening degree, it will make the image from the screen to print the process more complex. If you are printing at home, you can easily get a sample effect, but if the studio is printing, the cost of printing the sample will be very small.

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3. Sharpening does not apply to any scenario

Sharpening does not apply to all image processing, although sharpening can improve sharpness for most pictures, there are still some pictures that are not suitable for sharpening. For smooth textures, sharpening effects are often poorly performed. For example, a beautiful snow scene or a long exposure to the flow of pictures, each texture has been clear and transparent, sharpening treatment instead destroys the original snow or the smoothness of the flow. Sharpening processing can be no details of the picture highlighting details, but the need for concrete analysis of specific problems, the extra sharpening process will allow the image quality to fall.

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4. Each picture has different sharpening requirements

Sharpening tool can be used as a balance picture of the late processing tools, both can sharpen the overall picture to look better, can also sharpen the local character such as eyes, lips, etc., quickly attract attention. This requires a different sharpening process for each image feature.

Local sharpening is just one of the sharpening techniques. Any sharpening process may have technical risks, and should be used more often than not. Excessive sharpening is worse than lack of sharpening. A lack of sharpening images may not be the best view, but an overly sharp image can be a visual disaster at times. So in the image sharpening process, you should take a moment to practice, try to be prepared. Sharpening will have some regularity, but it does not apply to any situation.

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5. Sharpening will bring high contrast

Sharpening is by strengthening the edge contrast to enhance sharpness and sharpness, for color contrast larger patterns, sharpening will have a kind of focus on the edge of the effect. As with excessive sharpening, some high contrast images will be obvious, but they will have an excessive contrast effect, making the image look like a finger painting.

As shown below, the right letter is the sharpness of the left letter, but the contrast effect of excessive sharpening looks like an inner glow. For the original low contrast image, sharpen the use also need to note that too much sharpening will also destroy the whole pattern.

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6. Shadows and high light sharpening effects can be very poor

Use high contrast retention filters to see the dark part of the noise, which is not to highlight the details of the part. Especially in shaded areas, noise is often present, and these noises need not be sharpened and too prominent to avoid. Usually, when the high light part looks like white is the most beautiful, if the high light part of the sharpening process, so that the color changes, the noise will come out, like a dust scattered on the image. Therefore, the middle tonal range is an ideal sharpening region, with maximum degree of freedom and realization effect.

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7. Sharpening processing can produce unexpected saturation

Increasing the contrast of the image also increases the saturation, and the same rules apply to sharpening. This creates a particular situation, because it affects the saturation factor, and the sharpening process is placed in the last loop of the image post-processing.

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This image in the example has been processed in a blue-gold tone, and any excess saturation will make it stale.

If you sharpen the image manually, you can avoid the problem of saturation through just a little attention. If you find that the sharpness of the image saturation through high, as long as the increase HSL adjustment layer can be adjusted back. However, if you are using automatic sharpening (such as the default sharpening effect of Lightroom), there may be a problem because the resulting image does not exactly follow your edits, and it produces more saturation than you think. For the overall tone is not very different image, such as Black-and-white image, small saturation adjustment will make the whole pattern changes.

So when dealing with an image, it is best to manually sharpen the pattern or the whole pattern of an important part, and consciously observe the change in saturation.

Summary

While sharpening tools may have 7 of these problems in use, sharpening tools can be useful in most cases. As long as the image according to the specific situation, select the appropriate sharpening processing can avoid problems. Hope that we can learn from this learning has been harvested, thank you!

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