“Sharpening By Defining”. – Selective Contrast Adjustments In Photoshop

This is a piece that I recently created for a buyer/designer.
(This is not the final product/piece. May be able to show that later.)

They wanted a certain type of floral image, something soft, certain areas that were defined, rich in color, etc.
This image looked good while using the Orton method, giving it the overall feel that they liked.
It still needed some noise reduction, so I ran it through “Noise Ninja” which worked wonders, but it got the fairly well defined petal edges a bit soft. Some “High Pass” sharpening took care of that, bringing them back with a defined edge that I initially had.
But, with the very small grains of pollen, that sharpening did not do much at all.
They were a bit to soft because of the noise reduction. High Pass sharpening did nothing with it, selective sharpening with USM really would not work, … so what did I do?
Easy!

If you want something to look a bit sharper and you really can’t apply any USM or High Pass sharpening, you can define those edges to make something look sharper by dodging or burning, … or adjusting the contrast within a area of the image.
With this piece, I enlarged the duplicate layer on the screen to 100%.
I selectively “dodged” some of the grains of pollen, constantly changing the diameter of the tool and the hardness, the range and exposure, so that it would fit the size and look of the pollen grain I was working on, brightening them.
This gives the very edge of the pollen grains more definition from its surroundings, making them stand out a bit more, and when viewing from a distance, makes them look so much sharper and to really pop out.
This may not work for everything that you would like to sharpen up a bit more, but dodging and burning certain areas of a subject can work very well with some images.
In fact, … it was the brightening and defining the edges of those pollen grains that eventually convinced the buyer that “this is what they wanted”.
A tablet works wonders when it comes to detailed works such as this. Much better than a mouse!

© 2007 – Michael Brown
* Copying/downloading of images is prohibited.

So this season, if you have some of your macro images that needs a touch more details in certain areas but sharpening of any kind presents some problems, … try defining those edges by dodging and burning.
Works for me!

Paul Lester from North Carolina is coming down tomorrow and we are going to spend a day of shooting, goofing off, etc.
So, … I gotta get some things done here today before the “ol girl” here at home has a hissy tomorrow morning, so let me go.
Will get back with answering some questions tonight from posts earlier this week, and try to add more sites to the Google Reader I just added to make it easier to follow you guys and what you all are doing.

Take care everyone, and thanks for looking!

Portfolio Now Listed At “PhotoShelter”

“Macro Art In Nature”