Sharpening w/o increasing noise on high iso?

[Marsu42]

Has anyone tried this or has experience with similar blending techniques? Sounds intriguing ...

creating a High Pass duplicate layer of the photo, desaturating it and reducing noise on it, sharpening that layer, and then blending it into the original photo with Photoshop’s “Linear Light” blend mode.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqQSkTFiYw

http://petapixel.com/2015/03/22/a-trick-for-sharpening-high-iso-photos-in-photoshop-without-adding-more-noise/

 

[Besisika]

Will try it tonight when back home.
Thanks for sharing.

 

[candyman]

Thanks Marsu42 for sharing this. Interesting.
Would that be possible in Lightroom - now or maybe in the near future? Or is it exclusive for PS?

 

[privatebydesign]

I tried it yesterday when I read about it, I bookmarked the link as it seemed to work quite well.

candyman, no it won't work in LR and probably never will, the functionality just isn't in the program.

 

[candyman]

I tried it yesterday when I read about it, I bookmarked the link as it seemed to work quite well.

candyman, no it won't work in LR and probably never will, the functionality just isn't in the program.

Hmm, what a pitty. Wasn't planning to invest in PS....

 

[Joe M]

I just got an email the other day from Topaz with a blog post showing nearly the same workflow. Of course, to reduce noise they used their NR plugin so that was their "plug". I've seen variations of this many times before and it can do a decent job depending upon the pic.

 

[mackguyver]

I can't access the videos, but it looks like high pass sharpening, which also works quite well on skin for portraits. That and sharpening in the LAB space are two of the best ways to sharpen challenging photos. Beyond that, you really need to mask and layer if you're attacking specific items. I used to have some tutorials on my old website about that - but alas, it's ancient history. Here's a PDF you might find interesting - it's by Jeff Schewe, one of the masters of PS:
http://www.pixelgenius.com/tips/schewe-sharpening.pdf

 

[JustMeOregon]

@ mackguyver

it looks like high pass sharpening

Yeah, the sharpening-method is simple high-pass sharpening that has been around forever. But in this video, he also runs a noise-reduction filter on the high-pass sharpening-layer; that I don't believe I've seen before! It could be an interesting way to sharpen noisy high-ISO images... I'm thinking wide-field astro photography...

 

[bluemoon]

Huh?
All those tools are available in Lightroom. Under the sharpening there a sliders that control the radius and something else. Hold the alt key while adjusting the sliders and you should be able to create the same effect. Alt key lets you see the mask you are creating.

 

[privatebydesign]

Huh?
All those tools are available in Lightroom. Under the sharpening there a sliders that control the radius and something else. Hold the alt key while adjusting the sliders and you should be able to create the same effect. Alt key lets you see the mask you are creating.

Rewatch it, LR doesn't have layers, high pass filters, or blending modes, which is the entire point of the video.

 

[Zeidora]

See also
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)
for many other approaches.

 

[Hillsilly]

Huh?
All those tools are available in Lightroom. Under the sharpening there a sliders that control the radius and something else. Hold the alt key while adjusting the sliders and you should be able to create the same effect. Alt key lets you see the mask you are creating.

I've tried similar methods as described in the video a few times. I picked the idea up from a froknowsphoto video a while back on getting edgier looking portraits. But ultimately there are just a few too many steps involved for me to remember to do it easily and quickly. The above is my usual approach. That is, playing with the masking in the sharpening tool in Lightroom to only sharpen the sharper parts of the image and leave the rest of the photo alone.

 

[mackguyver]

@ mackguyver

it looks like high pass sharpening

Yeah, the sharpening-method is simple high-pass sharpening that has been around forever. But in this video, he also runs a noise-reduction filter on the high-pass sharpening-layer; that I don't believe I've seen before! It could be an interesting way to sharpen noisy high-ISO images... I'm thinking wide-field astro photography...

That sounds interesting, I'll have to give it a watch.

 

[Keith_Reeder]

Rewatch it, LR doesn't have layers, high pass filters, or blending modes, which is the entire point of the video.

It's not. The point of the video is to demonstrate how to sharpen edges without adding sharpening noise to the flat areas - the layers and blending modes are just away to achieve that point.

And Lr does - absolutely - allow the user to achive a similar result (sharpened edges without the sharpening being applied to low-detail areas) by use of the Masking slider.