Tutorial: Sharpening - Part 1: High-Pass Sharpening

HDR photo taken in Masuria, Poland. There was a lot of dust (caused by the car which passed a few seconds before) over the lake when the sun started to set what created this haze like effect.

In this short post and in posts later, I will try to write a few words about sharpening in Photoshop. As it is rather complicated task which one can approach many different ways I will divide this tutorial into a few parts (each of the parts focusing on a different sharpening method).

Today I will talk about one of the most popular sharpening methods known as the High-Pass sharpening.

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Is Egypt really a paradise?

For many tourists Egypt is like a paradise - warm sea, very nice hot weather without rain. There are many interesting and famous things to see like the pyramids for instance. Underwater life is very rich so it attracts divers from all around the world (myself included). For those who prefer on-surface water activities surfing is an option to go due to a wind which in some places (eg. in Dahab) is present almost whole year. If you don't like water you can also go riding a horse or quad in the desert. Or you can do a million other things.

But tourism is just one face of Egypt. The other is poverty you can come across if you go deeper into some cities. The contrast is really huge and striking. Every time I'm in Egypt and take a photo like the above it makes me really sad because people living there deserve a much better life.

I took this photo in Dahab, Egypt with a Canon 70-300L telezoom lens.

Here is EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 70-300L IS USM
Focal length: 277 mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter speed: 1/320 s
ISO: 500

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Dramatic clouds

Another photo from the same location as yesterday. I had some very dramatic and dark clouds over the mountains. It was also getting late. I hope this photo indeed looks quite dramatic and dark.

Here is EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 10-22 USM f/3.5-4.5
Focal length: 22 mm
Aperture: f/16
Shutter speed: 1/2 s (for the "normal" exposure photo)
ISO: 100

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Horse Riding in Dahab

It was getting dark when I took this photo in Dahab, Egypt hence dark tones. I wanted to give it painterly look and hope I succeeded in doing so. I shot 3 RAWs using -2; 0; +2 sequence from a tripod.

Here is EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Canon 10-22 USM f/3.5-4.5
Focal length: 22 mm
Aperture: f/16
Shutter speed: 1/40 s (for the "normal" exposure photo)
ISO: 800

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Only glass separates us

Another one from the ZOO. Although shooting through the glass means failure in most of the cases this was an exception as it is the glass that makes this shot.

Here is EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 70-300L IS USM
Focal length: 300 mm
Aperture: f/4
Shutter speed: 1/400 s
ISO: 100

Location:

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The Family

I took this photo in Dahab, Egypt with a Canon 70-300L telezoom lens. Despite very high ISO (3200 - I had to use such a high value because it was getting pretty dark) the noise is hardly noticeable. I'm really satisfied with this photo. I like both tones, composition, reflection and also it tells some story in my opinion.

Here is EXIF data:
Camera: Canon 5D MK II
Lens: Canon 70-300L IS USM
Focal length: 300 mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter speed: 1/100 s
ISO: 3200

Location:

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Photomatix Pro 4.2 released

Hi,

I'm finally back from Egypt with a lot of nice photos which I will post in the next few days. However, today there is no photo but I have some news on Photomatix Pro 4.2.

Photomatix Pro 4.2 has been finally released on 30th April 2012! I wrote about changes in Photomatix Pro 4.2 some time ago but since they related to the first beta here are they again:

• Many changes related to preset thumbnails
• Addition of 20 new built-in preset thumbnails (eg. 3 more black & white presets, a few realistic and artistic ones, creative ones)
• Ability to toggle between normal (as in 4.1 and earlier versions) and large thumbnails size. This makes it much easier to decide between the presets
• Ability to display preset thumbnails in two columns so more thumbnails appear on one page
• Ability to import presets with just one click. In the "My Presets" tab just click "Import Presets..." select files and you're done :) No more need to manually copy the presets into the Presets directory. So if you had problems importing my presets for instance you can now do it easily.
• Ability to group presets into categories, eg. I now have categories like Winter, Warm, etc. It makes selecting appropriate preset a lot easier.
• Preset thumbnails should load a bit faster now.
• Addition of Finishing Touch window. This window, which by default shows when the tone-mapping/fusion finishes, allows you to make basic edition of your photo including contrast curve adjustments, color saturation adjustments, sharpening. Finishing Touch can be also used from Batch Bracketed. Just open Batch and then "Naming & Output Options".
• Redesigned GUI in case of Windows version. Now the windows have custom title bars which in my opinion look a lot better than default OS ones used in previous release
• Differences between preview and final image has been minimized.
• Instead of size ratio like 1/4, 1/8, 1/16 etc. now there are zoom buttons.
• Improved multi-monitor support
• New processing method Fusion/Realistic (available only in the Batch Bracketed photos for now). It should work especially well for real-estate photographers.
• All EXIF and GPS data should be now properly transferred from the source images. 

This version is free for all users who bought 3.0 or higher and it can be downloaded here.

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