MikaG
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Everything posted by MikaG
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How-to: Sharpening with edge masks
MikaG replied to MikaG's topic in Tutorials (Serif and Customer Created Tutorials)
8. With the help of the Median Blur… filter, adjacent pixels are evened out a little. Set the radius slightly above 2 pixels. I chose 2,1 in this case. As a rule of thumb, you generally want to set the radius to the double amount of the previously applied Maximum filter.
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How-to: Sharpening with edge masks
MikaG replied to MikaG's topic in Tutorials (Serif and Customer Created Tutorials)
7. Now it’s time to apply some more filters to expand and smooth out the masked portions of the image some more. First I apply the Maximum Blur… filter and set the radius to around 1 pixel. Activate the circular check box, to get smoother results. Now the boundaries expanded a little and the sharpening affect will eventually come through even more.
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How-to: Sharpening with edge masks
MikaG replied to MikaG's topic in Tutorials (Serif and Customer Created Tutorials)
6. With this image I did no skin retouching whatsoever in the first place. Therefore all skin blemishes, spots and imperfections show perfectly in the mask. To reduce these press Cmd + 1 to zoom in to 100%, pick the brush tool and set the opacity to around 50%. Set the Blend Mode to Overlay and make sure black is your foreground color. With the Blend Mode set to Opacity, the dark pixels will be affected a lot more than the bright ones. To show the difference I painted the left portion of the face with the Overlay brush and let the right portion unaltered. If you already cleaned up the skin beforehand, this step is not necessary. But for the sake of demonstration of the cool Overlay feature of the brush, I cleaned up the mask a little.
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How-to: Sharpening with edge masks
MikaG replied to MikaG's topic in Tutorials (Serif and Customer Created Tutorials)
5. Next select both adjustment layers and the b/w edge layer by Shift + click and press Cmd + Shift + E (or choose Merge Selected form the layers menu), so we can apply some more filters to the flattened edge layer.
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How-to: Sharpening with edge masks
MikaG replied to MikaG's topic in Tutorials (Serif and Customer Created Tutorials)
4. By applying another adjustment layer, the contrast between blacks and whites are pushed even further. Press Cmd + L to create a Levels Adjustment layer and set the Black Level slider to around 5-10% and the White Level slider to around 40-50% as you see fit. The blacks are even more pronounced now, as are the whites.
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How-to: Sharpening with edge masks
MikaG replied to MikaG's topic in Tutorials (Serif and Customer Created Tutorials)
3. To turn this layer into a pure black and white image, create a new adjustment layer by pressing Cmd + U, which will add a HSL Adjustment layer. Take the Saturation Shift slider all the way down to -100%. Now you have a decent black and white edge layer where the edges are represented in white and the smooth gradients are “represented” in black. But we will improve on this in the next steps. Right now the edges are still too filigrane.
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How-to: Sharpening with edge masks
MikaG replied to MikaG's topic in Tutorials (Serif and Customer Created Tutorials)
2. Duplicate the Background layer (Cmd+J) and apply the Detect Edges filter, so the copied layer will look like this.
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Sharpening with an edge mask 1. This is a portrait after RAW conversion with standard sharpening applied to eliminate anti-aliasing from the sensor. The image is sharp, but not tack sharp. I will improve on this by using a sharpen filter in Affinity Photo. The problem is, that the effect is applied globally to the entire photo. Smooth gradients, like the skin will be affected also and in most cases this is not desireable. Therefore, I will show you a way to create an edge mask, which allows to only sharpen the edges and leave the gradient portions of an image intact.
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Thanks Darren, for sure, I prefer high pass sharpening over other methods on people all the time, because of its nature of edge sharpening. However, with edge masks one can define the edge areas very precisely where the sharpening effect should be applied. Once you get used to it, its creation is really fast. Not to mention automation, when 'Actions' will be available in AP.
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Yeah, I already tried the channels command 'Create Spare Channel'. But I couldn't get this "mask"/spare channel being applied to any given layer... I figured out a way to create a decent black and white mask (attachment below). BUT, although it is rasterized and attached to a Live Filter Layer, it has absolutely no masking effect. Though 'Alt + click' on the mask shows the mask is intact (as shown in attachment). I just don't get it... yet. :( Edit: Stupid me... In the Layer Menu is also the option for "Rasterize To Mask". It wasn't shown in the right click pop-up. Now it works! Now I'm waiting for something like Actions. :)
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Thanks for your reply! I somehow managed to create some rather dirty masks on two of my images with your quick guide. But these work a lot better, than my previous attempts. - in Photoshop I used to choose to most detailed channel, usually the green or blue one and duplicated it - then I tweaked the contrast with Levels, to reduce most of the gray areas and produce deep blacks and pure whites - with some combinations of Maximum, Median and Blur the transitions were smoothed out a little bit - and after inverting the mask, a decent edge mask was ready to protect skin tones, for example, while sharpening the edges only (see example image in 1st post) The biggest problem, I guess, is that I am still confused about how layers, masks, adjustment layers and live filters are managed/applied in AP...
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Hello everybody, I'm struggling to find a way of creating an edge mask that would serve as a protection mask for gradient portions of an image during sharpening. There are several ways to achieve this in Photoshop, but all of my attempts lead into dead ends and now I am lost... The problem for me is, that one can't apply filters to an mask to tweak it further, like applying a levels adjustment or blurring, for example. Any thoughts would be highly appreciated. To show what I'm looking for, I attached an example I created in PS.
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I haven't used Astropad for some time but I will try it with AP tomorow and reply.
