A.Photo V1 - High pass and Highlight selection

[Chris26]

This is about Sharpening for Print Only.  Not about creative sharpening or DNG sharpening or editing.  I work with photoshop but decided for convenience sake to give A. Photo another bash at sharpening for print since my printers are on windows, my adobe suite on Apple.  However to my dismay, I kind of expected a little complication and did not mind, to my dismay the High Pass filter does NOT work with  a B/W image with a Dot gain 20% profile, IE, all colour removed.  On photoshop no problem there, it works like it would with all colour channels in place regardless.  Secondly I wanted to do what PS does, simply select highlights with Option click on a channel if colour present, or on the actual B/W channel, like photoshop.  Then one creates a mask to mask the highlights and sharpen 128 and below so to speak.   could not find a way to do this in A.Photo though I am sure there is one.

To summerize:

1.  High Pass on B/W images where all colour has been discarded not possible?  Or something else happening here?

2. Equivalent of PS Mac's OPTION Click on a channel, then in A. Photo to select highlights (or reverse it) to use as a mask to prevent sharpening with high pass, OR whatever sharpen technique you want to use.

Yes sorry, I really like and support both Publisher and Designer, really like them both, but A. Photo was never for me as a photographer though I did try - have been transferring files over for ages now but if I can just use A. Photo for output sharpening before final print that would be a little consolation in the workflow.

Thank you.

[NotMyFault]

Can you provide an example B/W image? 
high-pass filter works for all color format, but you need to zoom to 100% to see the effect. 
To select highlights, simply use the „Select“ menu and option of the same name.

[Chris26]

3 hours ago, NotMyFault said:

Can you provide an example B/W image? 
high-pass filter works for all color format, but you need to zoom to 100% to see the effect. 
To select highlights, simply use the „Select“ menu and option of the same name.

Hi Thanks for some inexplicable reason the high pass did work on the B/W image even at 50%.  Ok that's solved.  Now I selected highlights, But after messing for 30 minutes....how do I get those highlights to become a black mask which is then placed over the Layer which has the high pass sharpening applied? 

Also, if you have time, could you explain how I can make these masks to reveal or to hide ONCE they are already MADE.

This is all I ever need A.Photo for, thank you.

[NotMyFault]

Hi, you can create a mask from any active selection by adding a mask. It is neither fully white or black, but shows white in selected areas and black elsewhere.

But do not forget to „deselect all“ (cmd-d / ctrl-d) after creating the mask. 

Similarly, if you have a selection active while adding a highpass live filter, the Selektion will be used a§ inherent mask for the filter layer.

last, you can invert the mask any time with cmd-I / ctrl-I

Hope that helps.

 

[lepr]

@Chris26

 

You can cmd+opt+click on a thumbnail to get a luminosity-based pixel selection.

Alternatively, duplicate an object/layer then do Rasterise To Mask to convert it to a luminosity-based Mask.

However, you don't actually need a luminosity mask for your high pass filter. Every layer/object, including live filters, has built-in blend options with graphs for controlling opacity according to the luminosity of the layer/object itself or the luminosity of the underlying scene. The cog wheel at top right of the Layers panel opens the Blend Options for a layer/object.

My screenshot shows an example of a live filter being made less opaque for brighter pixels of the background image.

[Chris26]

Notmyfault and Lepr, thank you for taking the time to respond and advise, but after some considerable time with the luminosity mask, inverting and trying to paint out and paint in - I should have known better, I will stick to Photoshop and transferring files back to apple for output sharpening if necessary.  It was only for making slight adjustments before print so it's no big deal but I find A.Photo clunky and unwieldy.

Kind Regards

Chris

EDIT:  Having watched countless youtube videos on Luminosity range masking, this is NOT the same as the Luminosity mask I am wanting to make.  The Lumnosity Mask literally selects Highlights and you then INVERT the mask to Protect them.  You are now free to apply high pass sharpening, THEN, take the brush and brush in or out selected areas accordingly.  The High pass filter, while I have tested it just now, was surprisingly ok, except for one niggly point, unlike photoshop's high pass, Affinity's high pass pixel range at 0.2 pixels looks awful, and is equivalent to PS 10 pixels when viewing it on screen (Yes I have a 360ppi 3500 px image Tiff at 150% viewing).  I was scared to move beyond 0.2 pixels in Affinity, so I did a 1 pixel knowing that this is what I would do in PS -  knowing logically that this had to be fine, and as it turns out, was almost perfect.