Student 1
Try using the Unsharp Mask first (see below for info on Unsharp Mask). Be careful, because the blue jacket/jeans/sweater area on the bottom left seems to contain detail, but what it really has is grainy texture. This tends to often be the case in dark areas, and you don't want to sharpen these artifacts. Then try adjusting the Levels in each of the channels before you adjust the Master channel. Be careful and don't overadjust. Use the gamma (center) marker.

You're posting really big images on your web page. This one was a few megabytes, though the display dimensions were small. That's not good, unless you are using it as a storage place where you can go to get them from other computers. It makes the page load slowly and drain the computer resources of your visitors.

What you're doing is this: You're putting the original, large image on your web page and defining the display size. When you define the display size (dimensions of the image, the file size is unchanged, so it looks small but it's really still a large image. This extra image data doesn't add anything to the way it looks, because the monitor can only display 72 ppi. So having a few hundred pixels per inch doesn't help, and only bloats.

Solution: Use Image Size to define 72ppi, 5" wide. Save optimized for web, in jpg format, and post the image.

In this case it was good that you did it. I was able to download your image in its original size and determine what the problem was. It's a grainy, soft image, (lots of film grain, blurry edges) plain and simple, and that's going to give problems. When you sharpen, you accentuate the artifacts - the film grain. When you over adjust, you get lots of black.

See below to read about Unsharp Mask, which is where the solution lies.

Christine

  Yours

Student 2
(Student wrote:) Well this is what I've been waiting for! A chance to start fixing up some photos that I took. The horses were taken with a traditional camera ... I'm still trying to figure out why the unsharp mask is named that way when it seems to actually be a sharpening tool. I'm really enjoying my classes here at LVS!

Sheila, great question, and one I've been wanting to address with students.

Very often you need to apply the Unsharp Mask right after you adjust color and get rid of artifacts, but in some cases you have to apply it even before you look at color and contrast. (See my other UNSHARP MASK message above.) Just about every image will need some degree of sharpening at some point. Often sharpening is done toward the beginning of your work session, to compensate for original softness, and then again as the last step, to allow for your individual output problems. Determining what those may be is done by trial and error. Print everything, and it's amazing that your output will improve, almost as if by magic.

The name of this feature comes from the old photographic method of sharpening the edges in photos. The negative would be put between the enlarger and a less-focussed duplicate. The exposure time would then be doubled. This would result in a white outline around edges. The blurred edges in the unfocussed image would act like a mask, making darks get darker and lights get lighter. Masking the Unsharp Edges, see!

Well, we don't have to understand all that. All we have to know is, the feature works by increasing the darkness and the lightness at the edges (where Photoshop senses differences in pixel color/value), and this will look like a white outline - and that's what makes the image look sharper. If you overdo it, you get broad white outlines. Since the outlines get broader as you increase the Amount of the feature, you will want to balance the settings according to how much detail is in the image, to be sharpened.

Closeup of sharpened image.

Increasing the threshold can help keep unwanted artifacts from appearing - so you don't sharpen film grain, for example.

Radius: Usually set first. The Radius has to be smaller if there are lots of small details in your image, because it's looking at the distance across the edges to be sharpened. If there are lots of little edges, you need a small radius. In the above example, I had it set at .7.

Amount:  Usually start out setting too high, then decrease. The amount can be higher in detailed images, lower in images with areas that need to look smooth.

Threshhold: Used to get rid of artifacts caused by sharpening. Start at zero. Increase as necessary.
 

Because Radius is the thing to start with (distance across edges) you also have to think about the image's resolution. Higher resolution, greater radius. BUT more detail: lower radius. It's a balancing act.

For your horse image, low res, medium detail, high contrast, I'd start with a threshold of zero, radius very low - maybe 0.4 or 0.5. Push the Amount all the way to the right and then bring it down until the white is right.

Always work at 100% when you're doing this. I know it's tempting to zoom in, but it really won't tell you anything.

Here's a neat thing to do if you are working with filters that take a lot of time to redraw the previews. You can select a bit, find the right settings with just that small bit having to update each time you make an adjustment. When you get it right, apply it. Then undo (ctrl-Z) and deselect (ctrl-D). Apply the filter with the same settings by pressing ctrl-alt-F.

Now if that's not more than you wanted to know about Unsharp Mask, just let me know.

Christine
 
 

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Be very kind to each other.