hanshab

Hi All,

I am thrilled to announce that Affinity is joining the Canva family.
This is a moment of great excitement, anticipation, and profound gratitude for all of you who have been part of our story so far. 
We know that those of you who’ve put your faith in Affinity, some since we launched our very first Mac app, will have questions about what this means for the future of our products. Since the inception of Affinity, our mission has been to empower creatives with tools that unleash their full potential, fostering a community where innovation and artistry flourish. We've worked tirelessly to challenge the status quo, delivering professional-grade creative software that is both accessible and affordable. 
None of that changes today.
In Canva, we’ve found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their extra resources will mean we can deliver much more, much faster. Beyond that, we can forge new horizons for Affinity products, opening up a world of possibilities which previously would never have been achievable. 
Canva’s revolutionary approach to design democratisation and commitment to empowering everyone to create aligns perfectly with our core values and vision. This union is a testament to what can be achieved when two companies that share a common goal of making design accessible and enjoyable for everyone come together. 
I want to express my deepest gratitude to our incredible Affinity team. Your passion, dedication, and relentless pursuit of excellence have been the driving force behind our success so far, and I can’t wait to continue this journey with you all. 
To our loyal users and the creative community, your support and feedback have been invaluable. You’ve inspired us to push boundaries and continuously improve, and we’re excited to embark on this new chapter together. 
The future is bright, and I am incredibly excited to continue our story together and create a world where design is within everyone's reach.
With heartfelt thanks,
Ash
For more information...
We have made four pledges to the Affinity community which you can read here. We have included some FAQs at the bottom of the announcement article here. A video message from me with some more background is on YouTube here. This announcement post is locked, but I have included a duplicate of it in the questions forum here which you can respond to.

Please include an improvement to the macro capability.  It is very hard to use . you still cannot move a macro category up or down except one at a time.  Takes too much time
 
Thanks

Please include an improvement to the macro capability.  It is very hard to use . you still cannot move a macro category up or down except one at a time.  Takes too much time
 
Thanks

Overtones Harmonic Color Grading
Color grading is an art, and it is one that I confess I have not mastered. Nevertheless, it remains inspirational. I have a collection of LUT’s that I occasionally use, but these are “one trick ponies” – you either like the effect or not, but you can’t change them (other than by adding adjustments after the fact).
I took some inspiration from a video about a Photoshop panel called “Infinite Color.” Specifically, there is a portion of this panel that allows the user to color grade photos based on a variety of color harmonies. While the availability of plug-ins and panels is on many a wish list for Affinity Photo, I am submitting these macros which attempt to accomplish something similar.
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
I am including a set of macros for color grading images. Each macro is based on a specific color harmony, and they include (i) Complimentary; (ii) Split Complementary; (iii) Triadic; (iv) Square; (v) Tetradic; (vi) Analogous; and (vii) Monochromatic. The chart below should explain the color wheel angles used for each of these harmonies.

The macros are attached as a Macro Category, and can be imported into the Library panel. (Do not try to import them into the Macro panel; this will fail.) The macros were created in Affinity Photo version 1, so you should be able to import them into either version 1 or version 2 of the application. They can also be imported into either version of the iPad app, although in my testing they are still a bit glitchy on the iPad.
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
To use the macros, click on the macro that corresponds to the desired color harmony. You will be presented with a number of choices, which can tailor the result as desired. Change the hue by setting the desired angle (using 0 as red on a standard color wheel). You can change the Saturation, Luminance, and overall Strength of the effect within the same dialog box. Click “Apply” when you’ve reached a result you like.
There are two additional macros in the category. “Delete Existing” will look for a group named “Overtones Color Grade” and will delete the group. You should be aware that each of the macros has a “Delete” function among its first steps; if you have tried one color harmony and want to replace it with a different one, you can simply click on the macro for the new harmony and the original color grade will be removed.
“Rename Existing” will also look for a group named “Overtones Color Grade” but will rename it to “Color Grading.” This latter choice allows you to stack multiple harmonic color grades, if you desire.
Shown below is an example. The photo on the left was treated with an Analogous color grade, using the settings shown. The Original and Color Graded versions are noted.

I’ve attached a small PDF file that explains the macros in more detail, and includes images of how they are best used. Keep this as a reference, if you like.
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
As with all of the macros I have submitted over the years, please remember that I am one person with one computer (and one iPad). This allows me to test on a limited number of images. There is no way to have foreseen all possible scenarios. I believe (but obviously cannot guarantee) that you will be happy with the results.
If you like the macros, please keep them and enjoy them. They are yours to use freely. What I ask in return is simply this: leave a comment below, letting me know if you’re using the macros and (hopefully) that you’re enjoying them. Remember that we users benefit from each other’s knowledge. Never forget to “pay it forward” and contribute to the forum in whatever ways you can.
Have a wonderful 2023. Stay healthy, contented, and fulfilled.
 
Round Two…
The original Zip file that was attached to this post did not actually contain the macros! Oops. I've deleted that zip file and attached the .afmacros file and the pdf as two separate downloads. Hopefully, everything works as it should. (Thanks, @Twolane for letting me know that things got upside-down and backward!)
 
Overtones Harmonic Color Grading.afmacros How to Use Overtones Harmonic Color Grading.pdf

Small celebration. I've just passed the 700th video in my InAffinity YouTube channel.
There's also a web-based index, including videos sorted by time and category, plus free resources.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Serif and all of its people, including devs, QA, and everyone else. You folks have created an amazing product that has freed many of us from the Adobe taxation system and indeed that stands on its own as an excellent photo editing and graphics system. Having worked in software development, quality, marketing and other areas, I have some inkling of the effort and sheer dedication that it takes. Thank you and well done.
 
 

Hello James.  I still refer to the old set of tutorials now and then.  Lately I needed to look at the LUT tutorial.  Are they still available ? There is a  lot of good information there.

the latest beta release  fixes this issue for me at least.

Thanks Walt, I tried both English US  and German which is my native language.  Neither worked.  IT must be due to the fact that I am running Big Sur OS.

Sharpen with Bilateral Blur
Here is a sharpening technique I learned from Calvin Hollywood.  He does this in Photoshop.  He calls it Freaky Amazing Details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV9u0Wu8L0M
It creates a group of a duplicated pixel layer and sets the group to blend mode overlay.  Because the macro capability of Affinity Photo is not extensive enough, I had to find a workaround to his approach to include the base and duplicated pixel layer into a group.  He then sets the group to overlay blend mode.  Then the top child layer blend mode is set to vivid light blend mode and the layer inverted.  Then he applies Surface Blur to the layer which is the same as Bilateral Blur in Affinity Photo. Bilateral Blur is an edge preserving blur filter that also reduces noise and graininess.  The radius determines the area size and the threshold addresses the tone values of adjacent pixels used in the equation. It determines how much deviation is required form the pixel being modified in order to include it in the blur operation. Keep the threshold around 7-10 and radius between 5-12.  The macro does a merge visible of the result as I don’t want to keep multiple copies of pixel layers to save space on disc. You can delete the working layers if you wish. I like this approach because it does not create the halos that unsharp mask and high pass often creates and you can sharpen pretty intensively without seeing artifacts. However, when driving the parameters high you can run into the several artifacts:  intensity plateaus that lead to images appearing like cartoons or introduction of false edges so don’t drive the adjustable parameters too high. Note that the bilateral blur filter is very computationally intensive.
You can find the definition of bilateral blur here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateral_filter
sharpen with blur.afmacro

This is one of the coolest sharpening methods I ever saw!.. and IMO gives by far the nicest results in A\Photo.
Until you posted this (last year) I was quite unhappy with Photo's 'sharpening-abilities' ... you changed that. 😃
So I just want to say: Thank you very! much! for sharing this!!

Thank You hanshab for this great macro. I have now tried it with very many images, and I have to say it really does fine job.

Serif has acknowledged to me via the support site that the layer fill does not exist.  I feel that is absolutely needed   here is my explanation that I gave them: Special blend modes:   in short opacity affects all aspects of a layer: styles, brightness , contrast, color etc etc.  Layer Fill does NOT affect layer styles AT ALL.  This is an important distinction. There are 8 blend modes that behave differently when layer Fill is adjusted, compared to when standard Opacity is adjusted. The blend modes that aren’t members of this Special 8 group react the same to both Fill and Opacity changes,  In Affinity Photo they they react only to opacity as there is no layer fill capability so they are basically useless and it would be interesting why they were even included. With these Special 8 blend modes, 40% Opacity will look different than 40% Fill, or 30% Opacity will look different than 3 0% Fill, etc. For all of the other blend modes (the modes that aren’t part of the Special 8), 40% Opacity looks the same as 40% Fill, or 20% Opacity looks the same as 20% Fill, etc. This is an important concept to understand, because it can extend the capabilities of these blend modes. For example, the Hard Mix blend mode usually doesn’t look all that great, but when you adjust the Fill  for this mode, you can get some great results.  In the hard mix blend mode the Layer fill  will add more colors when you reduce the fill as shown in in the video Link I attached.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxDwIjYAkL0&t=222s   here is one for color dodge and burn blend modes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YbjldiaP_  There is a fill opacity slider in the Affinity Photo Effects panel. It does not work as a layer fill slider should. Affinity is lacking an actual "fill" slider. It becomes painfully apparent if you try to use one of the 8 special blend modes. Then you can see a great difference between a “fill" slider and "opacity" slider. in photoshop  Serif need to rename their "fill opacity" slider to a plain opacity slider because that is all it is -- an opacity slider. It is really important to a number of folks on the forum including myself who have been asking for this for years. Affinity Photo really needs this capability or many folks wont be able to drop Photoshop like myself for instance simply because this is missing. The blend modes that are members of this Special 8 group are Color Burn, Linear Burn, Color Dodge, Linear Dodge (Add), Vivid Light, Linear Light, Hard Mix, and Difference. 

MEB:  when can we see the layer fill capability in Affinity Photo????  IT is becoming burdensome after asking for this for many years now.  I have to hang on to photoshop simply because of this lacking capability in Affinity Photo.

layer fill is the only reason I still have to hang on to photoshop. If I use these blend modes I go to photoshop and then of course I don't go back to Affinity Photo. The lack of this basic capability is causing me great pains.   I like Affinity Photo a lot but may have to go back to photoshop if this basic capability is not added soon. A number of folks including myself have been asking for this for years without result. 

Pretty sure you are missing the point. "Fill" and "Opacity" are different animals that's why it's confusing when the name of the check box is "Fill opacity".
That is strictly the opacity. Take a look at this video I posted earlier. It will show you the difference when you are dealing with just one the "special blend modes". You can't achieve this with Affinity Photo at this time:
 
 

One more example . . . because fill and opacity behave differently with the special blend modes (like linear light, used in this example) this is a great example for portrait photographers as to why a "fill" option would be a nice addition. This video was released this morning.
This option is especially beneficial when using a solid color adjustment layer with the soft light, hard light, dissolve, vivid light, linear light, pin light, and hard mix blend modes.

Wouldn't the fill option here work the same as with fill on the paint brush --- as in similar coding to achieve the effect?
Really unclear as to why this was not an option in photo. While it's true, opacity can help, there are occasions where when considering fill vs opacity --- fill is the only acceptable solution as there are differences in behavior.
Piximperfect (2017) explains some of the difference here:
Better info beginning at about 1:30 in on the following video:
 

Hello.
I've been using Photo for quite a while now on iPad and have just purchased the Mac version.
So far a great app, but there is one major (at least for me) feature missing – the fill slider for layers, like in Photoshop.
I use fill far more often than opacity in Photoshop, because the way blend modes and effects interact with the background better suits my editing style and requirements.
Here's an example of the different ways blending is handled when using fill vs. opacity:

 
I don't seem to be able to replicate that effect or behavior in Affinity Photo by any means.
Please implement this functionality in Photo for both Desktop and iPad.
Thank you!
Michael
 

I thought I must be missing something. If a member of support thinks we have a "Fill" slider in the layer effects, then we must have a way to adjust fill. How could I test that? Hmm...
So, I tried something different in hopes of getting "fill" to work.
Opened an image. On that layer I clicked on fx and added a color overlay. Here's where the fun begins -- makes me think of the story about "The Emporer's New Clothes". All the fill slider does is become an alpha change for the whole image. So, I duplicated the original, and added a color overlay to the top copy of the image.
I picked an orange color for my color overlay. Now, I figured that maybe "Fill Opacity" might behave differently, and it definitely did but not for the better.
You see, once you have added a color overlay and chosen a blend mode (special blend mode or not) you can do anything you want with the "Fill Opacity" slider. It will have absolutely no effect on the color overlay effect.  0% fill opacity is exactly the same as 100% fill opacity. Oh, you can make changes, but you have to use the "Opacity" slider for the Color Overlay settings. All it does at that point is adjust the alpha of the top layer which is only a solid color layer (much like Layer>New Fill Layer).
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO "FILL" OPTION IN AFFINITY PHOTO!  None. Nada. ZILCH!!! There is only opacity adjustment.
If I'm wrong, please prove it to me. I would love to see what I am missing.
If  you have no intention of adding this functionality, tell us. JUST BE HONEST!  Don't try to convince me that fill and opacity are the same thing, because they aren't.

I hope I am the only one that has experienced this:  I think there is apparently a super big problem in 1.9: MASKING NO LONGER WORKS!!!!!] if you do an adjustment to a pixel layer and try to use the brush to paint in or out the effect using black or white on a normal or inverted mask that is attached to the adjustment layer, or if you add a new mask to the adjustment and try to paint in or out the adjustment using brushes on the mask this no longer works. This is a giant big deal as most of my macros no longer work.  If i am the only one how can i fix this  thanks for your support. Otherwise the release is very good !

Sharpen with Bilateral Blur
Here is a sharpening technique I learned from Calvin Hollywood.  He does this in Photoshop.  He calls it Freaky Amazing Details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV9u0Wu8L0M
It creates a group of a duplicated pixel layer and sets the group to blend mode overlay.  Because the macro capability of Affinity Photo is not extensive enough, I had to find a workaround to his approach to include the base and duplicated pixel layer into a group.  He then sets the group to overlay blend mode.  Then the top child layer blend mode is set to vivid light blend mode and the layer inverted.  Then he applies Surface Blur to the layer which is the same as Bilateral Blur in Affinity Photo. Bilateral Blur is an edge preserving blur filter that also reduces noise and graininess.  The radius determines the area size and the threshold addresses the tone values of adjacent pixels used in the equation. It determines how much deviation is required form the pixel being modified in order to include it in the blur operation. Keep the threshold around 7-10 and radius between 5-12.  The macro does a merge visible of the result as I don’t want to keep multiple copies of pixel layers to save space on disc. You can delete the working layers if you wish. I like this approach because it does not create the halos that unsharp mask and high pass often creates and you can sharpen pretty intensively without seeing artifacts. However, when driving the parameters high you can run into the several artifacts:  intensity plateaus that lead to images appearing like cartoons or introduction of false edges so don’t drive the adjustable parameters too high. Note that the bilateral blur filter is very computationally intensive.
You can find the definition of bilateral blur here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateral_filter
sharpen with blur.afmacro

Sharpen with Bilateral Blur
Here is a sharpening technique I learned from Calvin Hollywood.  He does this in Photoshop.  He calls it Freaky Amazing Details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV9u0Wu8L0M
It creates a group of a duplicated pixel layer and sets the group to blend mode overlay.  Because the macro capability of Affinity Photo is not extensive enough, I had to find a workaround to his approach to include the base and duplicated pixel layer into a group.  He then sets the group to overlay blend mode.  Then the top child layer blend mode is set to vivid light blend mode and the layer inverted.  Then he applies Surface Blur to the layer which is the same as Bilateral Blur in Affinity Photo. Bilateral Blur is an edge preserving blur filter that also reduces noise and graininess.  The radius determines the area size and the threshold addresses the tone values of adjacent pixels used in the equation. It determines how much deviation is required form the pixel being modified in order to include it in the blur operation. Keep the threshold around 7-10 and radius between 5-12.  The macro does a merge visible of the result as I don’t want to keep multiple copies of pixel layers to save space on disc. You can delete the working layers if you wish. I like this approach because it does not create the halos that unsharp mask and high pass often creates and you can sharpen pretty intensively without seeing artifacts. However, when driving the parameters high you can run into the several artifacts:  intensity plateaus that lead to images appearing like cartoons or introduction of false edges so don’t drive the adjustable parameters too high. Note that the bilateral blur filter is very computationally intensive.
You can find the definition of bilateral blur here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilateral_filter
sharpen with blur.afmacro

Pop and Sharpen with intelligent high pass filter
 
Here is a more intelligent way of sharpening with a high pass filter.  The high pass filter does not work well with very bright and very dark pixels. It introduces undesirable artifacts for those type of pixels.  The first thing this macro does is add a brightness/contrast layer and the contrast is reduced to make these very bright and dark pixels move toward middle gray.  I set the macro to reduce the opacity by 0% but you have the ability to change this to whatever value you want.  (You may wish not to apply any contrast reduction as the high pass filter will be applied to the midtones only.) This helps eliminate some of the intensity plateaus / white halos.  You may or may not need to add this reduction based on the contrast of your picture. I merge this layer down into the pixel layer.  The macro then applies the high pass filter.  The high pass filter generates a 50% gray level and then looks for high frequency components which are defined as rapid changes in brightness in adjacent pixels.  Hence it basically looks for edges. It then brightens those pixels adjacent to the edges above 50% gray and darkens those pixels on edges below 50% gray. You can adjust the radius which determines the pixel depth adjacent to the detected high frequency edge that are modified. Keep the radius about 10 or less pixels and adjust to make sure that artifacts such as halos do not appear. I find 10 pixels the absolute maximum upper limit but typically use 0.8- 1.2 pixel. This upper limit can be adjusted based on the picture and how much you decrease the contrast in the brightness/contrast layer defined above. Then the blend mode is set to linear light but any contrast specific blend mode such as overlay, soft light, hard light, and vivid light will also work.  Linear light has the biggest effect and soft light the least effect.  I typically do not use soft light for this. Linear light provides the most sharpening but you could see halos, then comes vivid light which may still create halos then hard light, overlay and soft light  I found that vivid light sometimes still shows some halos depending of course on the radius but they seem to disappear with the hard light blend mode. The blend modes above do not address 50% gray pixels which the high pass filter ignores. These are the only blend modes you should use for this macro. Pick which one works for you. To control this effect even more, blend ranges are set to apply the filter to the midtones only.  Then the Fill is set for the linear light blend mode in the high pass filter to 100%. You can adjust the Fill. The higher the Fill, the higher the amount of sharpening so here is an embedded soft way to decrease the sharpening without changing the high pass radius. Next a black mask is applied to the high pass filter.  
Advanced users never sharpen the entire picture but only selected areas to draw the viewer into the picture. When the macro has run, the user needs to select the black mask and paint with a white brush set to appropriate opacity, fill and hardness and paint over the areas that you want to sharpen in the picture.   If you do nothing, no sharpening takes place. You again can reduce the amount of sharpening here if you set the fill and opacity to less than 100%. 
The macro then pops the picture by applying curves in the LAB color space and offsetting Ao and Bo.  You can adjust Ao and Bo to taste within the curves adjustment. You can adjust the lightness also to taste. The macro then also creates a selective color adjustment and Levels adjustment that you can adjust to taste to further enhance the picture.  These adjustment layers are picture specific, so no adjustments are made to them.  It is up to you to go in and adjust them to taste.
intelligent high pass sharpen and pop.afmacro

Pop and Sharpen with intelligent high pass filter
 
Here is a more intelligent way of sharpening with a high pass filter.  The high pass filter does not work well with very bright and very dark pixels. It introduces undesirable artifacts for those type of pixels.  The first thing this macro does is add a brightness/contrast layer and the contrast is reduced to make these very bright and dark pixels move toward middle gray.  I set the macro to reduce the opacity by 0% but you have the ability to change this to whatever value you want.  (You may wish not to apply any contrast reduction as the high pass filter will be applied to the midtones only.) This helps eliminate some of the intensity plateaus / white halos.  You may or may not need to add this reduction based on the contrast of your picture. I merge this layer down into the pixel layer.  The macro then applies the high pass filter.  The high pass filter generates a 50% gray level and then looks for high frequency components which are defined as rapid changes in brightness in adjacent pixels.  Hence it basically looks for edges. It then brightens those pixels adjacent to the edges above 50% gray and darkens those pixels on edges below 50% gray. You can adjust the radius which determines the pixel depth adjacent to the detected high frequency edge that are modified. Keep the radius about 10 or less pixels and adjust to make sure that artifacts such as halos do not appear. I find 10 pixels the absolute maximum upper limit but typically use 0.8- 1.2 pixel. This upper limit can be adjusted based on the picture and how much you decrease the contrast in the brightness/contrast layer defined above. Then the blend mode is set to linear light but any contrast specific blend mode such as overlay, soft light, hard light, and vivid light will also work.  Linear light has the biggest effect and soft light the least effect.  I typically do not use soft light for this. Linear light provides the most sharpening but you could see halos, then comes vivid light which may still create halos then hard light, overlay and soft light  I found that vivid light sometimes still shows some halos depending of course on the radius but they seem to disappear with the hard light blend mode. The blend modes above do not address 50% gray pixels which the high pass filter ignores. These are the only blend modes you should use for this macro. Pick which one works for you. To control this effect even more, blend ranges are set to apply the filter to the midtones only.  Then the Fill is set for the linear light blend mode in the high pass filter to 100%. You can adjust the Fill. The higher the Fill, the higher the amount of sharpening so here is an embedded soft way to decrease the sharpening without changing the high pass radius. Next a black mask is applied to the high pass filter.  
Advanced users never sharpen the entire picture but only selected areas to draw the viewer into the picture. When the macro has run, the user needs to select the black mask and paint with a white brush set to appropriate opacity, fill and hardness and paint over the areas that you want to sharpen in the picture.   If you do nothing, no sharpening takes place. You again can reduce the amount of sharpening here if you set the fill and opacity to less than 100%. 
The macro then pops the picture by applying curves in the LAB color space and offsetting Ao and Bo.  You can adjust Ao and Bo to taste within the curves adjustment. You can adjust the lightness also to taste. The macro then also creates a selective color adjustment and Levels adjustment that you can adjust to taste to further enhance the picture.  These adjustment layers are picture specific, so no adjustments are made to them.  It is up to you to go in and adjust them to taste.
intelligent high pass sharpen and pop.afmacro

Pop and Sharpen with intelligent high pass filter
 
Here is a more intelligent way of sharpening with a high pass filter.  The high pass filter does not work well with very bright and very dark pixels. It introduces undesirable artifacts for those type of pixels.  The first thing this macro does is add a brightness/contrast layer and the contrast is reduced to make these very bright and dark pixels move toward middle gray.  I set the macro to reduce the opacity by 0% but you have the ability to change this to whatever value you want.  (You may wish not to apply any contrast reduction as the high pass filter will be applied to the midtones only.) This helps eliminate some of the intensity plateaus / white halos.  You may or may not need to add this reduction based on the contrast of your picture. I merge this layer down into the pixel layer.  The macro then applies the high pass filter.  The high pass filter generates a 50% gray level and then looks for high frequency components which are defined as rapid changes in brightness in adjacent pixels.  Hence it basically looks for edges. It then brightens those pixels adjacent to the edges above 50% gray and darkens those pixels on edges below 50% gray. You can adjust the radius which determines the pixel depth adjacent to the detected high frequency edge that are modified. Keep the radius about 10 or less pixels and adjust to make sure that artifacts such as halos do not appear. I find 10 pixels the absolute maximum upper limit but typically use 0.8- 1.2 pixel. This upper limit can be adjusted based on the picture and how much you decrease the contrast in the brightness/contrast layer defined above. Then the blend mode is set to linear light but any contrast specific blend mode such as overlay, soft light, hard light, and vivid light will also work.  Linear light has the biggest effect and soft light the least effect.  I typically do not use soft light for this. Linear light provides the most sharpening but you could see halos, then comes vivid light which may still create halos then hard light, overlay and soft light  I found that vivid light sometimes still shows some halos depending of course on the radius but they seem to disappear with the hard light blend mode. The blend modes above do not address 50% gray pixels which the high pass filter ignores. These are the only blend modes you should use for this macro. Pick which one works for you. To control this effect even more, blend ranges are set to apply the filter to the midtones only.  Then the Fill is set for the linear light blend mode in the high pass filter to 100%. You can adjust the Fill. The higher the Fill, the higher the amount of sharpening so here is an embedded soft way to decrease the sharpening without changing the high pass radius. Next a black mask is applied to the high pass filter.  
Advanced users never sharpen the entire picture but only selected areas to draw the viewer into the picture. When the macro has run, the user needs to select the black mask and paint with a white brush set to appropriate opacity, fill and hardness and paint over the areas that you want to sharpen in the picture.   If you do nothing, no sharpening takes place. You again can reduce the amount of sharpening here if you set the fill and opacity to less than 100%. 
The macro then pops the picture by applying curves in the LAB color space and offsetting Ao and Bo.  You can adjust Ao and Bo to taste within the curves adjustment. You can adjust the lightness also to taste. The macro then also creates a selective color adjustment and Levels adjustment that you can adjust to taste to further enhance the picture.  These adjustment layers are picture specific, so no adjustments are made to them.  It is up to you to go in and adjust them to taste.
intelligent high pass sharpen and pop.afmacro