I do do sharpening, but mostly just as a way to offset the effect of the down-sampling that happens on my server.
Let me explain that last bit; my workflow consists of:
- editing my image at full resolution (3000x2000),
- sharpening a bit (I use Photoshop CS2's Smart Sharpen with a radius of 2px, ~70%, and a fair amount of shadow and highlight fading),
- uploading the full-sized image to my server.
On the server a script uses ImageMagik to resample the image down to my design's size du-jour (currently 750px wide or 650px high). The advantage being that if I change my design, I can run through resizing all my existing images to match the new design.
Unfortunately, for historical reasons, I don't apply any sharpening at this stage, hence the importance of it in the earlier steps.
Having said all that, I do vary the amount and nature of the sharpening based on the look of the individual image. In this case I noticed that it wasn't as sharp as I expected (I think the plane-of-focus is about an inch in front of Michael's nose), so I upped the percentage (but not enough). I thought about selectively sharpening more around the face, but as it was after midnight I gave it a miss; I didn't expect anyone to call me on -- oops :-)
(Mind you, I'm pleased that you were paying attention enough to notice.) I always worry about over-sharpening, but maybe I should be a bit more aggressive about it.
Comments
matt wrote, on 8 March 2006, at 2:36PM:
Nice. I like to use other objects in the scene to frame my portrait subjects. You did that well here.
Do you sharpen your images? If not I think you would see a dramatic and good difference in the final result. Let me know if I can be help.
Marty wrote, on 10 March 2006, at 4:10AM:
matt: Thanks.
I do do sharpening, but mostly just as a way to offset the effect of the down-sampling that happens on my server.
Let me explain that last bit; my workflow consists of:
- editing my image at full resolution (3000x2000),
- sharpening a bit (I use Photoshop CS2's Smart Sharpen with a radius of 2px, ~70%, and a fair amount of shadow and highlight fading),
- uploading the full-sized image to my server.
On the server a script uses ImageMagik to resample the image down to my design's size du-jour (currently 750px wide or 650px high). The advantage being that if I change my design, I can run through resizing all my existing images to match the new design.
Unfortunately, for historical reasons, I don't apply any sharpening at this stage, hence the importance of it in the earlier steps.
Having said all that, I do vary the amount and nature of the sharpening based on the look of the individual image. In this case I noticed that it wasn't as sharp as I expected (I think the plane-of-focus is about an inch in front of Michael's nose), so I upped the percentage (but not enough). I thought about selectively sharpening more around the face, but as it was after midnight I gave it a miss; I didn't expect anyone to call me on -- oops :-)
(Mind you, I'm pleased that you were paying attention enough to notice.) I always worry about over-sharpening, but maybe I should be a bit more aggressive about it.