i briefly mentioned my sharpening method in the waterloo falls workflow that was posted a few weeks ago, but in this tutorial i’ll try to expand on it a bit further and include some side by side comparison images to illustrate the main problem that most of you have probably encountered in sharpening for the web: the dreaded halo effect. but first…

sharpening with the smart sharpen filter
i’ve ditched the unsharp mask in favour of the smart sharpen filter. if you’re currently sharpening with unsharp mask i’d suggest you ditch it too. with the smart sharpen filter you can save your settings and you can selectively sharpen highlights and shadows independantly thereby enabling you to apply more sharpening without producing crazy amounts of haloing.

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anyone that keeps a photoblog and isn’t afraid to touch photoshop has probably pulled out the cross processing effect from time to time. i’ve done it a few times myself. without getting into the specifics of chemicals and film types and all that stuff that we digital shooters don’t really care that much about, the cross processing look is basically making your blacks look a touch blue and your whites slightly yellow.

typically the way this effect is achieved in photoshop is by adding a curves adjustment layer and drawing a reverse s-curve on the blue channel, but when i’m looking to add a modest cross processing look i’ll just use a blue colour fill layer with its opacity method set to exclusion.

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