 A NOTE FROM SCOTT

JUST SAY NO TO BLUR

I don’t sharpen in Photoshop anymore.

I didn’t say I don’t sharpen; I just don’t use Photoshop’s built-in sharpening any longer. No Unsharp Mask. No Smart Sharpen. No High Pass sharpening. No nuthin’. So why the big change? I’ve found something that does a way better job, and it’s a plug-in. Yes, there have been sharpening plug-ins around for many years, but not like this.

So why am I telling you this? I don’t think it would be right for me to show you how to sharpen using Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask filter, which is 30+ years old, when I’m using a sharpening plug-in behind your back for my own images. I feel like my job is to show you what I’m doing and how I’m doing it, which is why I wanted to tell you. I’m not sponsored by the company or anything like that (I bought the plug-in myself, just like everybody else), so I don’t get a kickback or affiliate fee or anything like that if you buy it (and if you mention my name, they’ll say, “Who?”).

The plug-in is called Topaz Sharpen AI, and it’s so good that, at a recent talk I gave at the 75th annual NECCC Photography Conference up in Massachusetts, I described it as “almost cheating” to use this plug-in. And one thing that I think is so amazing about it is the more out of focus or blurry an image is, the better it works. I find myself resurrecting old images, primarily ones where I didn’t hold the camera as still as I needed for the slow shutter speed my camera chose, and I’m absolutely amazed at the results. I know, I know, this sounds like a marketing pitch (and it’s not), but rarely have I seen a plug-in that was a real game-changer like this (Erik Kuna’s the one who got me using it, and everything he said about it is true).

It’s an AI-powered plug-in, so they essentially fed more than one million images into a computer and told it, “This is what a sharp image looks like, this is what a blurry image looks like, and this is what an image that has motion blur looks like,” and out popped this amazing code. When I open the plug-in, I let it analyze the image and determine what’s wrong with it on its own. It shows me a side-by-side before/after of the image, and I click OK. I don’t mess with the sliders (there aren’t many if you actually want to mess with stuff, but I generally don’t).

I’ll give you a couple of tips that will help you get even better results from the plug-in. One is to turn off the default sharpening and noise reduction that both Lightroom and Photoshop apply to RAW images. If you look in Lightroom’s Detail panel or the Detail panel in Camera Raw, you’ll see that, by default, the Amount slider is set at 40 for Sharpening, and the Color Noise Reduction is set at 25. Set both of those to zero before sending the image to Topaz. The reason is: when they put those 1,000,000+ images into the AI computer, they didn’t have any sharpening or noise reduction added, so you’ll get the best results if you send your images to Sharpen AI the same way they were originally sent to create the sharpening AI code. You can create a preset in Lightroom (or Camera Raw) to zero out those two settings before you take your image over to Sharpen AI.

Another tip is for when you have a situation such as a photo of a bird where the body is sharp (the eyes, beak, etc.), but there’s motion blur in the wings. If you decrease the image size by 50% before you apply the sharpening, then apply the motion blur correction, it works much better. With today’s huge sensors, along with the fact that you’ll probably be sharing the image at 1,080 pixels on Instagram or your online portfolio, image size won’t be an issue. Also, if you do make this size reduction, to get the best results, change the Resample method in Photoshop’s Image Size dialog from the default Bicubic to Bilinear; otherwise, any mild artifacts in the image may become exaggerated. But, again, you only need to do either of these in this specific wildlife photo example.

If you want to try this plug-in (you should), you can download a demo version from topazlabs.com /sharpen-ai. If you decide, like me, you can’t live another day without it, it’s $79.99, but I found a discount coupon online (just doing a quick Google search) that gave me $12 off (so it wound up being $67.99). Let me know what you think over in the KelbyOne Community once you get a chance to give it a try.

Lastly, I announced my 13th annual Worldwide Photowalk, and I’m excited that we’re doing it in person this year. The official walk date is Saturday, August 13, 2022, and we’re again expecting to have walks in more than 1,000 cities worldwide. To find a walk near you, head to worldwidephotowalk.com. (If there’s not a walk already organized near you, maybe you should organize one? Just hit the Lead a Walk button at the top of that page.)

Here’s wishing you super-sharp images, a great photowalk this month, good health, and safe travels. ��

All my best,

Scott Kelby KelbyOne President & CEO Editor & Publisher

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Photoshop User Magazine is produced using Adobe Photoshop CC 2022 and Adobe InDesign CC 2022. Korolev, Factoria, and Priori Sans are used for headlines and subheads. Acumin Pro and Korolev are used for body copy. Each issue we feature cover art by a KelbyOne Member

This issue’s cover is by Michael Mammen, an IT consultant and certified Microsoft and Adobe Instructor. Based in Denmark, he’s self-taught, with a passion for all photography. Back in 2003, when he first started his photography hobby, traveling was a huge part of it, but over the past years his photography has revolved more around his family, especially his kids. Michael uses Lightroom and Photoshop for postprocessing. To learn more about Michael, turn to page 17.

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