High Pass Sharpening

[Garnick]

Yes, yet another question concerning High Pass Sharpening.  A very basic question however.  Is this sharpening method used often by many of you PS experts, and at what stage(s) of the image processing workflow?  I dabbled with it a few years ago and I've been reintroduced to it recently while perusing Jeff's book(The Digital Negative).  Used conservatively and with great care it does seem to have its advantages, although I'm not sure what the disadvantages might be.

Gary

[Mark D Segal]

Not sure to what extent I'll qualify myself as a "PS expert" because I seldom use it any more. I do 98% of my image editing in LR and use LR's sharpening tools - they suit most of my needs just fine.

[bjanes]

Yes, yet another question concerning High Pass Sharpening.  A very basic question however.  Is this sharpening method used often by many of you PS experts, and at what stage(s) of the image processing workflow?  I dabbled with it a few years ago and I've been reintroduced to it recently while perusing Jeff's book(The Digital Negative).  Used conservatively and with great care it does seem to have its advantages, although I'm not sure what the disadvantages might be.

I do not consider myself a Photoshop expert, but I likely do use high pass sharpening indirectly when I perform output sharpening for inkjet output with Photoshop via the Photokit sharpening algorithm, which I understand does use that method. Since LR output sharpening is an adaption of the Photokit algorithm, I assume that I also use it indirectly with output sharpening from Lightroom. Jeff would be the proper person to comment knowledgeably on this matter.

Bill

[Tim Lookingbill]

I've compared high pass sharpening to ACR 6.7 PV2010 and LR4's PV2012 sharpening along with both of those app's output sharpening (Glossy Paper-Low, Standard, High) on export from LR or opening in Photoshop from ACR 6.7 and I find no improvement. From my observation with the right capture sharpening and output sharpening I get better sharpening results with far less hassle than high pass.

[Schewe]

Is this sharpening method used often by many of you PS experts, and at what stage(s) of the image processing workflow?

It's generally used primarily as a sharpening component in combination with others such as USM. Used only by itself it's somewhat primitive. The output sharpening in Camera Raw/Lightroom uses a blend of high pass as well as other components and blending. At this stage, the ACR/LR output sharpening is pretty far advanced from simple high pass sharpening...

[tom b]

Not quite on topic…

For my web images I usually use Photoshop's Sharpen and then I use Fade Sharpen until the image is just slightly over sharpened. Then I use Save for Web, in the past that has resulted in a nicely rendered image. Since I have started using Photoshop CC some of my images appear to be over sharpened, that is, more than before I used Save for Web. Has something changed?

Cheers,

[Garnick]

It's generally used primarily as a sharpening component in combination with others such as USM. Used only by itself it's somewhat primitive. The output sharpening in Camera Raw/Lightroom uses a blend of high pass as well as other components and blending. At this stage, the ACR/LR output sharpening is pretty far advanced from simple high pass sharpening...

Hello Jeff,

Thanks for the reply, which in many ways was exactly what I had anticipated.  As I mentioned, I came across HP Sharpening again in The Digital Negative(1st edition, second one on order) and decided to do a bit of digging.  For many years I've been using your PhotoKit Sharpener, mostly for output but also capture when necessary, and have always been very satisfied with the results.  One of my customers uses the High Pass method but I've mentioned to him on several occasions that he is overdoing it, too many halos.  I reprocessed one of his panos and only used PKS-2 for output.  He could instantly see the difference and was very pleased with the prints.  Just another tool that I will likely never use, at least not knowingly.  I say that because I suspect it is used to some degree in other sharpening schemes, perhaps even PKS-2, which would by default be part of Lightroom.  I could very well be totally mistaken in that assumption, and it would not be the first time.

Thanks again Jeff.

Gary     
 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hello Jeff,

Thanks for the reply, which in many ways was exactly what I had anticipated.  As I mentioned, I came across HP Sharpening again in The Digital Negative(1st edition, second one on order) and decided to do a bit of digging.  For many years I've been using your PhotoKit Sharpener, mostly for output but also capture when necessary, and have always been very satisfied with the results.  One of my customers uses the High Pass method but I've mentioned to him on several occasions that he is overdoing it, too many halos.

Hi Gary,

High-pass filters are usually not edge aware, and will thus create halos near high contrast edges, unless also edge masking is used, althought that can require a multilayered approach which adds to the file size. However, there is another unwanted side-effect of changing brightnesses of RGB colors, and this is color and saturation shifts that the layered approach does not automatically handle. I don't know how critical that is for your (customer's) kind of images, but halos and color shifts can be totally avoided with better tools. Since I've discovered Topaz Labs Detail, I've not seen anything as effective and powerful since. The price can also hardly be prohibitive, since they offer free updates and upgrades for life.

It's not only a useful tool for Creative sharpening, but also for output sharpening. It can be called from many host programs that support Photoshop Plugins, so one has a lot of flexibility to integrate into ones current or future workflow. It can also use presets, and they adapt to the size of the image, so the same preset can be reused for various output sizes.

Cheers,
Bart

[Garnick]

Hi Gary,

High-pass filters are usually not edge aware, and will thus create halos near high contrast edges, unless also edge masking is used, althought that can require a multilayered approach which adds to the file size. However, there is another unwanted side-effect of changing brightnesses of RGB colors, and this is color and saturation shifts that the layered approach does not automatically handle. I don't know how critical that is for your (customer's) kind of images, but halos and color shifts can be totally avoided with better tools. Since I've discovered Topaz Labs Detail, I've not seen anything as effective and powerful since. The price can also hardly be prohibitive, since they offer free updates and upgrades for life.

It's not only a useful tool for Creative sharpening, but also for output sharpening. It can be called from many host programs that support Photoshop Plugins, so one has a lot of flexibility to integrate into ones current or future workflow. It can also use presets, and they adapt to the size of the image, so the same preset can be reused for various output sizes.

Cheers,
Bart

Hello Bart,

Thank you for this.  I do remember you touting the wonders of Topaz Detail in a post not too long ago.  I actually have that plugin, as well as others from Topaz, but haven't yet been able to set aside the time necessary to do a thorough assessment.  This seems to be an ongoing issue with me.  I purchase PS plugins and cannot find the time to actually use them in my workflow.  You have just provided the incentive I needed to dig into "Detail" in a big way.  

Thanks again,
Gary

[Mark D Segal]

Hi Gary,

Once you've tested it on real world photographs I'd be interested in reading of your impressions. All the more so if you did a comparison with Photokit Sharpener and sharpening in LR.

[tongelsing]

High Pass sharpening is often used in 'frequency separation" techniques for the purpose of portrait retouching.

[Peano]

Since I've discovered Topaz Labs Detail, I've not seen anything as effective and powerful since.

+1

[kirkt]

Here is a nifty way to implement High Pass sharpening non-destructively without the need for bloated SmartObjects:

http://www.gregapodaca.com/photoshopmechanics/files/004.html

Download the actions to study how the author uses a curves adjustment layer to apply High Pass on the adjustment layer - the key is how the layer style is applied.  It is very clever and, unlike SmartObjects, will scale when you downsize the image.

If you need to mask the effect (to protect edges, etc.) you can select the adjustment layer and group it, and add a mask to the group, essentially adding a mask to the mask.  You can also use Blend-Ifs and use an adjustment layer with one radius for the shadows and another adjustment layer with another radius for the highlights, like a double-USM sharpening approach.

There are many ways to sharpen and increase local contrast, but this may work in your arsenal of tools and the script-able, action-able workflow.

kirk