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I just came across this sharpening tip at luminous-landscape:

Take a (High) Pass

On the Layer palette select your Background Layer and right click. Select Duplicate Layer.

* With this new layer highlighted select Filter / Other / High Pass. Set the Radius to 10 and click OK.
* Zoom into your image to Actual Pixels level so you can better see what you're going to do next.
* Go back to the Layer Palette and select Hard Light from the left drop down.
* Now go to the Opacity Slider and select a level of sharpening that seems best to you. Usually something between 20% and 70% will be best.

For the two images that I tried this on it worked MUCH better, as doing too much USM starts to pixelate the images (still getting used to this on an LCD monitor) and generates halos around the images.

Give it a go

Thanks Owen interesting. I'll give it a go.
cheers
marco

G'day,

I use high-pass sharpening a fair bit and it's a good alternative to USM if you're after one, try de-saturating the highpass layer to get rid of colour noise, might help as the high-pass layer doesn't need any colour, just luminosity contrast stuff....

If you're using CS2, try using smart sharpen and adjusting the "fade amount" in the advanced tab of the smart sharpen window, that way you can sharpen only highlights instead of shadows etc... Worth a try

Cheers.

Another good technique andrew, thanks. Always good to have a few differing techniques up the sleeve
cheers
marco

There's heaps of different ways to sharpen and it's always good to have alternatives for different uses... You can copy the layer, use stylize to find edges then use that as a mask to create a selection of only edges and use agressive USM as it's only on the edges... There's probably swags of ways... USM with a high pixel radius (like 20-50) and a low % is great for increasing "contrast", works well for skies...

I've been using this method for a few weeks now with good results (better than USM in my view).

What I like most about it is that I'm not modifying the original image layer. It's best doing things on layers/masks like this I think.

Yeah. I am prefering it to using USM now as well. Used correctly though both methods will sharpen your images.

If you have Photoshop CS2, Photoshop guru Russell Brown has a video tutorial on his site about using smart sharpen. It's great. Just scroll down the page until you see it. There are many tips & techniques here for a variety of things covering Photoshop 7.0 to CS2.
http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html
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Cheers,
Paul

Good post Owen. I have tried this method, along with several others....although I tend to use USM in LAB (on the lightness channel) most of the time - which is again another method.

Something that might be worthwhile is to create your own PS action, so with one click of the mouse button, you can do what is probably taking you 30-60 seconds.

If you wanted to get really excited, you could create an action for several sharpening methods and try each one. That way, they are all just a mouse click away (which makes things so much easier & quicker). From what I have read, and found through my own trial & error, is that there is no one sharpening technique that is best in every situation. Depending on the image, the High-pass technique may suit best, for another, the LAB method, or another type may give better results.

Something else to consider....

This is great stuff for a newbie like me. Thanks for sharing guys. Can't wait to get back home and try these techniques on some images.

theres a thousand ways to do the same thing increasing radius
is analagous

to the already slimlined unction of unsharpen mask

menu: 'filter' 'sharpen' > 'unsharp mask'
sweetspot setting 100%
radius 0.3 pixels

this effect makes a very subtle sharpen that only exentuates edge highlights and shadows
to make thi seffect even more subtle afyter applying it
go menu: 'edit' ' > 'fade unsharp mask' to control the effect more

butany sharpening makes your end image larger in file size

i.e a 30kb file may become a 90kb after sharpening and exported as a jpeg

unsharp mask gets my vote too!

checkout before and after images:
http://dslrusers.com/viewtopic.php?t=16087&highlight=

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html

Paul mentioned the Russell Brown videos above. I have downloaded and watched several of them and they are really good. Great information, entertaining presentation, and of course you can review as often as you like.

Highly recommended.

wow! russell brown is still around?

lostinsydney wrote:wow! russell brown is still around?

Apparently so, and he has some great tutorials on CS2 and some of the newer features and capabilities.

This was in a tutorial I actually watched 2 days ago on photoshop TV. They actually say to take the high pass filter all the left, then gradually bring it back until you just start to see some edges appear. That way your make it to suit each image individualy. So try having an action with the highpass filter checked, that way it allows you to adjust the settings on each image indivdually.
The same show also mentions the lightness channel in LAB mode.

I recomend to anyone using I-Tunes to subscribe to the free podcasts from Photoshop TV. You dont have to have a Video I-Pod to watch them, you can just watch them on I-Tunes itself. Although having a Vidoe I-Pod and the conector allows you to dump JPEG images straight over from your camera so a worthy investment none the less.