Sharpening up far away images

Amphotography21

Concert photography has been my wheelhouse for awhile now and I usually get to be up close to the artist in the photo pit to shoot. Sometimes I have to shoot from the soundboard which isn't usually a problem...I'll rent a 300mm 2.8 lens from a local shop and that'll work well.

Last night I photographed James Taylor and wasn't aware that I'd be shooting from the soundboard which was about halfway across the arena. All I had with me was my 70-200 2.8...the images are okay but nothing spectacular. I usually like to fill the frame with a nice, tight crop.

Anyway, I can crop some of these images and "zoom in" on Taylor and compose them the way I normally would, however they aren't as clear/crisp as I'd like them to be. I know I probably won't be able to make them as clear as they would be if I took them from a closer distance but what tips/tricks can I do to make them look better?

ziggy53

If you shot RAW the first thing I would recommend is using ACR to upres the image. Try to take it up to around 20-25 MPix. Keep your Contrast a little low and do not sharpen in ACR. Then crop as needed and apply some sharpening in PS like in this thread:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=2064

This "will" boost any noise tremendously, so you may also want to convert to B&W and embrace the noise as grain, or plan on some serious noise reduction techniques. Also the above sharpening can be moderated by reducing opacity on the new layers to taste.

Instead of the above sharpening you can also try 'Smart Sharpen" in PS.

Amphotography21

ziggy53 wrote: »

If you shot RAW the first thing I would recommend is using ACR to upres the image. Try to take it up to around 20-25 MPix. Keep your Contrast a little low and do not sharpen in ACR. Then crop as needed and apply some sharpening in PS like in this thread:

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=2064

This "will" boost any noise tremendously, so you may also want to convert to B&W and embrace the noise as grain, or plan on some serious noise reduction techniques. Also the above sharpening can be moderated by reducing opacity on the new layers to taste.

Instead of the above sharpening you can also try 'Smart Sharpen" in PS.

Cool, thanks for the tip!!

pathfinder

I dffer with Ziggy here, as if i shot in RAW, I would do my initial capture sharpening specifically in ACR, and correct any chromatic aberration needed in ACR as well. I agree with uprezzing as the final step in Raw Conversion on the way to Photoshop. I discuss correcting chromatic aberration here - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=159524

In ACR I would start with Amount around 75-85% for strong sharpening, Radius around 1.0, Detail I would push to 28 or so but not more than 32, and Masking would depend entirely on the image - for high contrast images from stage lighting, I would tend to keep the mask number smaller but would really just do it by eye to watch what edges are not being masked out. You can do this by viewing the image at 100% and hold down the option/alt key while adjusting the slider with your mouse, and you will see the black and white mask as you slide the slider to the right - the areas in white are sharpened, and the areas in black are not affected or sharpened, so that you can limit the sharpening to just the edges you desire whether the image is a high frequency image with lots of fine detail, or a low frequency image, like with strong directional stage lighting. This masking can be done in Photoshop if you know what you are doing, but not nearly as well, or nearly as easy. Photoshop does not offer the real time masking nearly as nicely even in Smart Sharpen.

If further sharpening was needed, it could then be done in Photoshop, but I rarely sharpen in PS other than local contrast enhancement, or local creative sharpening via a mask. I do output sharpening when printing via the printing module in Lightroom2 or 3, since this sharpening is strongly dependent on the image size and the type of printer used.

High Pass sharpening can make an image look even sharper done right, but is not a replacement for good capture sharpening in ACR.

ejg1890

Reading through this thread I have several questions as a newbie to Photoshop:

1. How do you uprez in ACR or LR3 for that matter? Is it a crop and just increase the size and number of pixels from 240 to say 300?
2. Doesn't significant uprez from say 12mp to 21/24pm degrade the photo as approx 50% of the total pixels are now generated by a computer program?
3. I understand the need to sharpen and noise redcution but are these supposed t be the final steps is post processing?

Thanks

Foques

^^
I am curious on this as well.

arodney

At least in recent versions, upsizing algorithms in ACR and Lightroom are more advanced and should produce better results than Photoshop. Its using an adaptive Bicubic algorithm. In ACR, there are preset sizes based on the sensor (with the +), in Lightroom, you can enter any value you wish above native res.

ejg1890

arodney wrote: »

... in Lightroom, you can enter any value you wish above native res.

How or where would this be done - at the time of printing or exporting to tiff/jpg?

thanks

arodney

ejg1890 wrote: »

How or where would this be done - at the time of printing or exporting to tiff/jpg?

thanks

You configure this in the Export Presets.