Nice image. It's almmost like the sprig is a snowflake itself. Wondering if you mgiht sharpen a hair more? Or does that happen on the upload?

Thanks for your comments. Unsharp images seem to be my specialty. I'm not sure why. Either I haven't learned that particular skill in Photoshop yet, or it's my camera/lens/eye or some combination therein. The number one comment I get is unsharp images. Yet, they do appear in focus to me (though not the same crispness as other images I see).

roberta,
how do you resize for web?
if you do it with photoshop, what is your workflow?

v.t.

Yes, with Photoshop. I work in raw and do the initial exposure, shadows, etc. adjustments there, then open into Photoshop. I may or may not make further layer adjustments there. I always try to work with adjustment layers rather than altering the original. I have experimented with sharpening before and after resizing. I've tried using Smart Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, and the High Pass filter. Never seem to achieve the same level of sharpening as I see in other images.

In the drop down of the Image Resize dialogue box, Bicubic is selected. Could this be part of the problem?

sharp...unsharp... I don't care, this is fantastic. I may suggest a levels adjustment ...there doesn't seem to be any real black in this image.

As for sharpness, I don't recall your kit, but know in my case the problem stems from inexpensive glass, not from problems in Photoshop. We really can't fix that sort of problem in software. I think we have to PAY for really sharp pictures. (damnit!)

Yeah, that is what I suspect is the case. I don't have pro quality glass, nor can I afford it now or in the near future. So I make do with what I've got and put up with comments about not being sharp enough.

Hey Roberta,
I suffer similar feelings about sharpness and have beentrying to figure out if it's my process, my glass or just my life! But I hope you took no offense at my comment =:>O

Nope, no offense at all. In fact, this is a good discussion in which I wish others would chime in with their opinions on sharpness (in general not necessarily in reference to this image), and more importantly, their sharpening techniques.

@roberta
which photoshop version do you use?
with cs2 you should use bicubic sharpen when the image has to be smaller. bicubic smoother if the image has to be bigger than the original.

another method is to use the unsharp masking in LAB mode in the luminance chanel and then convert back to RGB.

if you want, send me the original to see if I can get it sharper :)
mail to vernon.trent@xoverip.info

Just following along with the tutorial on sharpening and I tried it out with an image I posted previously. Made a difference for sure, so i will keep at it. At my age, I am definitely an old dog trying to learn some new tricks!
Thanks Vernon for your knowledge and Roberta for your candidness.

I did send the shot to Vernon. Thank you Vernon for your offer. But I also just tried playing around myself and, yup, makes a big difference. I've got that pop that I'm looking for.

So what's the reasoning for the lab color trick? What does it do that sharpening in RGB doesn't?

I googled a little for you and found this one very interesting and saves me a lot of time to explain the same :-)))
check out this link
www.bythom.com/sharpening.htm
the most interesting part comes at the midldle of the page :-)
give it a try!

cheers,
v.t.

more about sharpening and specially resizing/resampling for printing

www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/instant_photo...
www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding...

the net is full of such "pearls". search, grab and try. soon you'll find your own workflow which is the best for you and your images :-)))

ok, here you go :-)
do you recognize your shot?

www.xoverip.info/tbd/roberta_sh_color.jpg

steps done:
sharpenned in 3 steps.
from full size to the half (3456 -> 1700px) unsharp mask 200, radius 1px, 0 threshold

from the half to the endsize (1700 -> 750px) unsharp mask 120, radius 1px, 0 threshold

last sharpen in LAB. "eye control" what looks best.

:-)

Wow. Thanks for the info. ANd thanks Roberta for allowing...

as you can figure, the image is more brilliant... pure nature :-)

the wall version :-)
www.xoverip.info/tbd/wall.jpg

developped from raw, 4 additional layers for tonal adjustments incl. curves, saturation and sharpening.
matted and framed :-)

Wow. Thanks for all of this. It's very generous of you to do. I can see this is something I'm going to have to spend some time on, and just experiment. But it is possible to make my images pop like those I admire so much. That pleases me to no end!

I've done 2 quick versions playing around with sharpening. www.uncommondepth.com/delete/shadows2.jpg and www.uncommondepth.com/delete/shadows3.jpg . I prefer the first one because it represents the softness of the snow more than the second example. I did do some curves, levels, and shadow control adjustments to the second one in addition to the sharpening. I think I just went too far with all of it. Practice.....

Thanks again Vernon. :-)

Well done, both of you. Thaks for letting me (& others) eavesdrop=:>/

Thank you for the tutorials and the samples, they were very informative.

n.p.
glad to help :-)

Vernon, Nice job :)

Ok. I stand corrected maybe we can afford sharp pictures afterall. Thanks to Vernon and Roberta for a wonderful example of how Vazaar can work!

Yeah... this thread was really nice to watch. Lot's of good conversation all around. ;)