For instance, a landscape image or an image of most anything but faces and skin can tolerate more sharpening. But a portrait of someone -- especially a close up will tolerate much less sharpening. Think "edges" when adjusting the "Radius" slider for sharpening. This slider is going to determine how far out from the edges the sharpening will be applied. As a general rule, images with small details or images with a lot of skin should have a fairly low number. Images with larger details can tolerate a higher number.
The radius slider is best adjusted while holding down the ALT key. The "Detail" slider brings back a little detail after sharpening has been applied. The Detail slider is often used when editing people, but it is even more frequently used with landscape photography because it will dramatically sharpens edgesbecause you will see a more noticeable effect on trees, structures, etc.
This slider is also best adjusted by holding down the ALT key and dragging the slider until you can start to see some detail from your image. The "Masking" slider is really a magic slider. It will look for solid or smooth areas and try to mask off the sharpening from those areas and keep it to just the edges. Also, what about selective sharpening using the brush? Can you cover that in another tutorial? GREAT tutorial.
Using LR sharpening as you described well done, by the way is great for capture sharpening. IMO, the resizing and output sharpening in the export window are way too crude though. You must resize and output sharpen blind and since there is no preview in the export window of the result of resizing and output sharpening. I think LR should have a preview in the export window. Simple and to the point explanations of Lightroom sharpen features.
Just the way I like it. Great post. Thank you. Where have you been all my life? I just finished an online tutorial a lesson that I paid for about sharpening in lightroom, but it left my head full of questions, so I came to you looking for more information and I found it. Thanks for the detail about how it works and why, as well as the examples. Thanks for the kind words, Donna. Very glad to hear this tutorial was helpful to you!
And for free, no less. Thanks for this article. What could be the problem? Also, any discussions on the Sharpening adjustment you can do with the Brush?
I find it really limiting and wish we could dial in similar controls and paint in the sharpness. Absolutely fantastic, what I wanted when I hit Google: This information. What I got when I hit Google: This information. Finishing by the explanation of the seemingly now archiac? Lightroom 3 is in fact the addition of all the steps performed previously was the convincing point to get to know your software. Really good work. Music Photography See All. Focus on Photography, Not Camera Brands.
Reviews See All. Why Music Photographers Wear Black. Tutorials See All. Understanding Sharpening With Adobe Lightroom. Todd Owyoung. Photography Tutorials. Amount Slider The Amount slider is straight forward, controlling the blunt amount of sharpening that's applied to the image. Amount Preview: While the normal image viewer in Lightroom continually updates the preview based on your adjustments, Lightroom offers some handy preview modes that can help discern the finer differences between settings that guide you in sharpening your photos.
Radius Slider If the Amount slider affects how much sharpening is applied, the Radius slider controls that sharpening is distributed. Radius Preview: While the preview mode for the Radius slider shows a grayscale image, just like the Amount preview, this preview mode shows the level of edge enhancement, rather than just a grayscale conversion. Detail Slider The Detail slider adjusts how much high-frequency information in the image is sharpened and how edges are emphasized.
Detail Preview: The Detail preview mode is similar to that found in Radius, with subtle differences. Masking Slider The masking feature of Lightroom 3 allows you to selectively apply sharpening based on image content — specifically, edges.
Masking Preview: With the Masking preview, you're being shown how the overall sharpening scheme — including the Amount, Radius, and Detail — is being applied. Sharpening For Different Subjects So, why does Adobe bother including different adjustments for sharpening?
Next Steps In the next part of this feature on understanding sharpening in Lightroom , I'll do a step-by-step tutorial on sharpening a sample image and call out some of the factors I consider in the process. Start Playing: If all of this control over sharpening sounds good to you, that's just the tip of the iceberg for the goodness Lightroom has in store for you.
End Notes Thanks to the ability to fine-tune and dial in just about any imaginable detail, Lightroom 's sharpening dialogue is one that works beautifully on any image you throw at it.
Get Lightroom I think that you'll be surprised and pleased by the flexibility of Lightroom 's sharpening process. Adobe Lightroom at Amazon. This is going to be immensely helpful. Thank you for this tutorial. Hey Kevin, thanks for the kind words. Hey Patrick, thanks for the comment, glad to hear this was helpful. Stellar write-up Todd!
Been hoping for a tutorial on sharpening in LR3 and this is fantastic! Hi Matt, Nice to hear from you. Hey John, Thanks for the comment — very happy to hear that this write-up was helpful and easy to read. Hey Thomas! This is, hands down, the best lightroom sharpening tutorial ive ever read. Pingback: Scott Wyden Kivowitz. Pingback: Todd Owyoung. Pingback: MarR.
Pingback: Sean McCormack. Pingback: Ally O'Keefe. Pingback: kevindeleon. First you can see the effect of the sharpness increases in the detail panel directly above the Sharpness slider:. The best way to check your work is to you can press the Alt key Option on a Mac while adjusting the sharpness sliders. Doing so will cause the screen to turn grey and help show the effects of your sharpening.
If you are going to spend some time sharpening your photo i. Pressing the Alt key while making your sharpening adjustments will make your sharpening much more effective and precise. While you are adding a baseline of sharpness to your images, there are a few other tools to use. The first is the Clarity slider. This does the same thing as sharpness, except that it applies to midtones.
You will probably see more of a sharpening effect from this tool than from using the Sharpening slider. Increase it to about as a starting point, and then adjust it to fit your picture.
Lightroom has recently added another tool to make your pictures look a little sharper. It is called the Dehaze tool and it is all the way at the bottom of the Develop module. The Dehaze tool was designed to eliminate fog and haze from your pictures , so this is not something you are intended to use every day.
At the same time, increasing the Dehaze slider a little bit will add clarity or crispness to your pictures. This is a new tool and I am still getting used to it, but I often find that increasing this to 10 make my pictures look a little sharper.
It is important to remember that you are just applying a base level of sharpness to the entire image at this point. In fact, they are frequently two sides of the same coin, in that an increase in sharpening will increase digital noise within the picture, and conversely an increase in noise reduction will reduce image sharpness.
Therefore, you should pay attention to the noise in your image at the same time you are sharpening it. You can avoid the trade-off between sharpness and noise to a certain extent by using the Masking slider above. That will focus your sharpening to the edges within your image, which in turn will avoid sharpening of artifacts within solid areas of the picture.
Beyond that, you will often need to apply noise reduction as well. You just pull the Luminance slider, which is under the Noise Reduction heading, to the right. Noise Reduction is conveniently placed there so you can see the effects of the noise reduction and sharpening in the detail window. You can also press the Alt key Option on a Mac to see the changes without color, as you could with the sharpening tools. One of the great aspects of Lightroom is how easy it is to apply changes to multiple pictures at once.
For simple Input Sharpening, this is a great. With multiple images selected, go to the Develop module and make changes to a picture. This slider is looking for stark luminance contrast variations between individual pixels. The higher you set the number, the more this control will start to reduce the amount of variance between the pixels, this will smooth the pixels out and reduce the amount of noise.
However, the more that you reduce the luminance noise, the more you will start to lose details in the image as a whole. Finding a balance here can be tricky which is also the reason why the two subsequent sliders exist. This control is to help you regain pixel contrast within the small subsets of pixels. It is looking for the smaller grouped pixels that have been smoothed over and by increasing this control it will try to increase the contrast within those small pixel packets.
The Contrast slider works very similarly to the Detail slider, but instead of targeting the smaller sets of pixels, this looks to retain contrast in the larger groups of contrasting pixels. You will see the larger shapes and color sets become more defined as you increase this slider. This control is here to help reduce the color noise and variance between the color in the pixels.
It's similar to modifying the hue and saturation controls, but on a grouped pixel-by-pixel basis. It can identify the color differences between pixels and it will look for a color in between the two to essentially even them out to become closer in color to each other.
The higher you push this control, the more pixels will start to take on color similar to surrounding pixels. If you overdo it, then the pixels start to edge towards neutral hues, becoming more gray in color. This slider will look to retain the color differences between the small sets of pixels. The higher you move the control, the more color variance will be retained. The lower you keep the control, the pixels packets will continue to look similar to surrounding pixels. I recommend sliding the control all the way to , just to see how intense the control really does affect your image and then scale it back to find a nice middle ground for your image.
This will probably not surprise you, but the Smoothness slider works very similar to the Detail slider. Instead of solely targeting the small groups of pixel sets, this control will even out the colors in a widening range when you increase the control.
Setting the control at 0 means that the pixel packets will stay as they are. I like to think of this as a control for reducing splotchy areas in the image. When starting to adjust this control, you will see small groups of pixels that have similar colors. These small groups are what we see in splotchy color patterns within the image. The more you increase the control then you will start to see splotchy groups of pixels start to even out and the areas of mass within the image will attain a more uniform color.
It is like expanding the radius of color similarities between grouped pixels to become larger groups of similar pixels. If done too much, then you will see patches of color disappear as they take on enough of the surrounding pixels and end up in a neutral zone. Striking a balance between each of these controls is how you can simultaneously sharpen your image while reducing the amount of noise.
It's fairly easy to spot when an image has been sharpened too much, or when it has had the noise reduced to a point where the image as a whole becomes muddled and loses too much contrast.
Below is a simple before and after between what Lightroom applies to the image by default and what I have set for my images as a default preset which is applied upon import.
Above is a screenshot of the settings that I have found to work well for my files, in general. This is a Lightroom preset that I use to jumpstart my sharpening process. It's nothing fancy, but the controls that have been set up in it are exactly what you see in the screenshot, it is simply a default setup that tend to work well for my files as a blanket application for sharpening and noise reduction.
I purposely set the controls for the preset to start higher than is likely necessary, by doing that I am able to gain a good grasp as to what the image is capable of and I scale back the controls as needed. Again, take the time to test the limits of the controls, find what works for your own files and your own preference, and roll with that. Rex lives in Saint George, Utah.
Shooting landscapes is always his first choice but he also shoots his fair share of portraits. He is a full time student, working on his degree at Southern Utah University.
He is a reserve firefighter with the City of Saint George, and works periodically as a photography adventure tour guide. Check out the Fstoppers Store for in-depth tutorials from some of the best instructors in the business. I really like the masking slider too. That's good to know!
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