Advanced Sharpening and Noise Reduction in Photoshop

MORE: http://www.HiDefColor.com/?p=364 This Sharpening procedure creates stunning high definition images on press while reducing unwanted image noise.

Basic sharpening techniques in Photoshop CS5 create unnecessary noise in midtone sections. This Sharpening procedure creates stunning high definition images on press while reducing unwanted image noise.

• Now the sharpening amount, 4:07, in Unsharp Mask, is how much the adjoining pixels are affected. I like to go real high on this number, anywhere between 150 and 200. For this tutorial, I'm going to select 200 and it's a high number but keep in mind we're only affecting those images in the selection itself.

• You'd want to keep the radius, in Unsharp Mask, anywhere between half a pixel to one to one and a half. If you go any thicker, you'll create a severe halo effect around your images.

• Our threshold, in Unsharp Mask, determines which pixels are sharpened and which are not. A higher threshold value means that there's a huge contrast difference between pixels that are affected

If you're getting Red Edges, 3:56, or getting the opposite areas sharpened, see this VIDEO on what you need to adjust: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8SWiSlOznI&feature=plcp

Image: Monte Nagler