In order to get the most performance out of photoshop, you should check out the photoshop preferences. Let’s go ahead and explore the most important settings in the preferences window of photoshop. If you are in a hurry then scroll down and do the stuff that is in Black font in order to increase the performance of Photoshop.

Go ahead and open the preferences window. Windows users should go to Edit > Preferences > General or use the keystroke CTRL+K. Mac users should go to Photoshop > Preferences > General or CMD+K.

I am using Photoshop CS3 so if you are using a different version of photoshop then your preferences window will probably look different. But don’t worry, most of the settings will be the same though they may exist on different tabs so click around and explore on your own until you get to the settings that this tutorial talks about. If you are using Photoshop CS and above then you should be okay. Just feel your way around.

The following is not a complete tour of the Photoshop Preferences. I have only covered what I believe to be the most important settings for the average Photoshop User.

General Tab.

Color picker: This setting chooses between which algorithm should be used by the color picker. The options that I have are Windows or Adobe. I set this as Adobe.

Image Interpolation: This option is used to decide which algorithm photoshop uses when resizing an image.

• Nearest Neighbour makes the pixels larger or smaller. This usually makes jaggies more visible.
• Bilinear Interpolation determines the averages of pixels and then creates a new pixel based on the results. This produces almost no jaggies but makes the image blurry.
• Bicubic Interpolation is the default setting and should be a good setting for everyone. It creates sharp edges and not many jagged edges. Photoshop CS and above has two variants of Bicubic Interpolation, the Bicubic Smoother and Bicupid Sharper. Bicubic Smoother is optimum for enlarging images and Bicubic Sharper is optimum for reducing an image. None of these enlarge images very well. They will end up making your images blurry but that is where many current enlarging algorithms are currently. My advice would be to just keep Bicubic Interpolation. If you mainly do image size reductions then you can decide if you would like to set it to Bicubic Sharper.

General Options: Most of these are entirely upto you.

• Automatically Launch Bridge: Check this option only if you use Bridge to manage your images and photographs. If not then launching Bridge automatically will just slow down Photoshop’s start time.
• Auto Update Open Documents: If you use multiple image editing programs then turn this on. It is useful if you use Imageready or another image editor while using Photoshop. If not then never mind.
• Automatically Beep: This is useful if you are using massive images and single photoshop commands take many minutes to complete. Then you can just give the command and do something else and photoshop will beep to let you know that the command is complete
• Dymanic Color Sliders: I would recommend that you check this. When you move sliders, you’ll see the colors change in real time. Other wise they will only update once you change and release the mouse button.
• Export Clipboard: I would recommend that you UNcheck this. This will free up your clipboard and leave more memory free. Only check this option if you copy and paste items from inside photoshop to other programs.
• Use Shift Key For Tool Switch: This is entirely a personal preference. If you leave this CHECKED then you can press for example Shift L to select the lasso tool. While holding the shift button down you can press L agains and again to flip through all the other tools under the lasso tool (Polygonal Lasso and Magnetic Lasso). If you UNCHECK this then you just press L to select the lasso tool and then press L over and over to flip through the lasso tools. You’ll save a nano second if you uncheck this. I prefer unchecking it.
• Resize Image During Paste/Place. I would recommend that you check this. This allows you to free transform an image as soon as you Paste or place an image.
• Zoom resizes window. I leave this UNchecked. If checked then it resizes the window along with the image when zoomed.
• Zoom with scroll wheel. I leave this UNchecked. This is personal preference. I usually resize images with the slider on my Wacom Intuos 3.

History Log: This is useful if you want to save all the steps that you made while creating your images. It will tell you exactly what tool you used and applied which filter and what order you made the changes. This is very useful you are writing tutorials or just want to remember exactly how you made what you made.

• MetaData: This will save your history log in the image itself. This will make the image file size slightly bigger. This information can be viewed in the bridge or any other program capable of displayign image metadata (irfanview)
• Text File. Saves the log into an external text file.
• Both: Saves the log into both the image metadata as well as an external text file!

Interface Tab

Use Grayscale Toolbar icon: This turns the “PS” above the tools from Blue to Gray. If the color is distracting to you then go ahead and check this.

Show Channels in Color: Check this if you want to show individual color channels in color. The default is unchecked.

Show Menu Colors: Check this if you want to show background colors in menus

Show Tool Tips: These are the tips that appear if you hover your mouse pointer over something. If you are a beginner or intermediate Photoshop user then leave this checked. If you find them getting in the way then go ahead and uncheck this.

Auto Collapse Icon Palettes: This will hide your palettes if you click anywhere else. This is useful if you feel that the palettes get in your way. I recommend that you Uncheck this. You’ll save a lot of clicks if you keep this unchecked.

Remember Palette Locations: I recommend that you leave this checked. It will allow you to better personalize photoshop according to your needs. If unchecked then all palette locations will get moved back to default between photoshop runs. This is a useful setting to have for shared computers such as in lab environments.

File Handling

Image Previews: Saving an image preview will increase the file size slightly. This is the thumb nail that appears when you click on an image in File > Open. I recommend setting this to Always Save.

File Extension: I have this set to use lowercase. I am not sure why it would be important for anyone to use upper case. Please share in the comments if you know why saving in upper case would be important for someone other than just a personal preference.

Recent File List Contains: I have set this to 15. You can increase the number to 25. This is convenient if you open a lot of files and want easy access to them from File > Recent Files >

Performance

Memory Usage: If you have RAM to spare then increase this to 70%. This will greatly increase performance. This will reduce the performance of any other programs that you might you using. Your decision regarding this option greatly depends on how you use Photoshop. If you close all other programs and only work on Photoshop then increase this to 70% or 75%. If you use other programs while using Photoshop such as a web browser, Dreamweaver, or any resource hungry program then you’ll probably be better off setting this to 55% to 69%. You always want to give photoshop as much memory as you can for the best performance.

Scratch Disks: The best performance can be achieved if you have two internal hard disks in your computer. The second best performance can be achieved if you have one internal and one external harddisk connected by a fast connection such as USB2.0 or Firewire. The least would be to have one hard disk with free space. So if you have two internal physical harddisks in your computer then set the scratch disk to where photoshop is not installed. Example, If photoshop is on X:\ (or sda1) drive then make the scratch disk on Y:\ (sdb1) drive.

History States: Set this to 30. It’s always useful to go backwards in history incase you make an error. The larger number you set, the larger your files are going to be.

Cache Levels: The default Cache level in CS3 is 6. If you have CS or CS2 then change this from 4 to 6.

3D Acceleration: Always leave this checked.

I hope these tips will help you increase the performance of Photoshop. They certainly have made my Photoshop faster and more responsive. Please feel free to leave any comments below!

Learn how to create smooth curves using the Pen Tool. It is recommended that you follow along on Photoshop while reading this article. This will make the learning experience much more enjoyable

We will create a simple curved line using a pen path. I recommend that you follow along on Photoshop to learn about pen paths. Start by creating a new Photoshop Document (File > New).  

Path Basics

Anchor Points

1. Choose the Pen Tool
2. Choose “Paths” from the tool options from the top.
3. Click and release your mouse multiple times, on random locations, on the new document.
4. The tiny squares at the corners are called Anchor Points. Anchor Points exist to connect different path segments and to modify the way they look.
5. Create another anchor point but instead of just clicking, press and then hold the button down and then drag your mouse cursor any way you want. Drag in multiple directions and you’ll notice that the path segment curves and bends depending on how you drag your mouse cursor. If you drag away from the anchor point then the line gets a greater curve. The curve travels with the straight line no matter which way you rotate it.
   Click on the Play Button to Play
   
6. There are many ways of editing anchor points. If you place your pen tool on an existing anchor point then you will see a Minus sign next to it. That will delete the anchor point. You can place your pen tool on a path segment and you will see a Plus sign next to it. This will add an anchor point on the path segment. You can press ALT and then click on an anchor point to edit your control lines. More details will be posted about editing Anchor Points in a future post because that would be beyond the scope of this short introduction.

1. Choose a brush setting. Set the size and color of the brush. I chose size 15 and color black (#000000).
2. Choose the pen tool.  
3. Click once to create an Anchor Point. Next, Create another anchor point but instead of just clicking, press and then hold the button down and then drag your mouse cursor until the curve looks the way you want it to look. Repeat at other locations for more curves until you are happy with your single smooth curve. 
4. Right click on the curve and choose Stroke Path.
5. Choose Brush from the drop down menu. If you want a constant straight line with constant opacity then uncheck “Simulate Pressure”. Otherwise, leave it checked.

Finally, you can right click and delete the path. If you wish to preserve the path, you can click on View > Uncheck Show Extras. This will preserve the path but you won’t see it on your image. You can bring it back by going to View >> Show Extras. You can access the Paths Palette by going to Windows > Paths. 

The holiday season is fast approaching and people will soon be using Photoshop to create Christmas greeting cards, banners, and flyers. Most of them will probably want to create some pictures of Christmas decorations on those cards. This is a quick and dirty tutorial to get started with creating ornaments

The Magical Color Changing Christmas Ornament

I don’t enjoy doing something over and over. Repetitive tasks get boring so most of the time we should be reusing our work. The following tutorial shows how to make a Christmas Ornament graphic that you can quickly modify in a few seconds.

This is what the end product will look like:

Best of all, if you want to change the color you will just edit one layer and you’ll end up with a brand new Christmas ornament with out losing any of the cool effects.

There.. that literally took 4 seconds.

Let’s Begin

1) Creating the base layer 

Create a new image ( File > New ). Choose what ever settings you like. I chose the 1024×768 preset.

Create a New Layer. Rename this layer and call it “BASE”.

Choose the Layer called BASE by clicking on it in the Layers Palette.

Grab the Elliptical Marquee Selection Tool

If you hold down the SHIFT key and then drag then you will get a perfect circle. Do that now. Shift+click and then drag on your image. Make a nice round selection.

In your color picker,  Choose WHITE as your foreground color. And choose RED as your background color.

Now grab the Gradient Tool ( G ) . When you choose the gradient tool you should notice that the top tool bar changes. You will see a Gradient Picker.

Click on that gradient picker area (in the screen shot above it’s the area with the red to black gradient. After you click on it you should see the Gradient Picker window. Choose Foreground to background. Then inside the circle selection make a diagonal line going from upper left to lower right. Keep trying until your circle looks like the following:

Next, go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. I chose 6% noise, Uniform and Monochromatic.

2) Making it 3D-ish.

Create a new layer. Call it “3D effect”.

Choose the layer called “3D Effect”

CTRL+Click on the layer called “Base”. This will select the circle. Make sure that 3D effect layer is selected. Then go to Edit > Fill > Choose Color in the Use menu > and choose 100% Black as the color.

Now click on the Add Layer Mask button on the bottom of the Layers Palette.

Click on the black colored layer mask next to the 3d effect layer. Choose the gradient tool. Use a Foreground to Transparent gradient. Make another diagonal line inside the selected circle. Keep trying until you get something like this:

You may have to click on delete and try again until you get it looking like the image above.

3) Making the Ring

Create a new layer. Call it “Ring”.

Make a small narrow oval selection on top of the orb and fill it with a color. I chose yellow. It should look like this:

Choose the move tool.

Now press ALT and the up arrow. This will duplicate the selection and nudge it upwards.

Press up until the little ring is high enough.

And the end choose Select > Modify > Contract. Enter in a number like 3 pixels and then fill it with black.

You can also apply a reflected gradient on this ring.

You should end up with something that looks like the following:

4) Making the final Glow

Make a new layer. Call it “Glow”.

Control click on Base. This will select the circle.

Go to Select > Save selection. Name should be Circle 1.

Grab the marquee tool and click and drag the selection slightly to the left.

Now click on Select > Save Selection.

This time in the Channel drop down menu choose Circle 1.

Operation should be Subtract from selection.

Go to the channels palette and click on Circle 1.

You should see something like the following:

Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. I blurred mine 34 pixels. This may be different for you depending on what size you are working with.

Control Click on Circle 1 channel and then go back to the Glow Layer.

Click on Edit > Fill and fill it with WHITE. Finally change the blending mode for this layer to Overlay. Move this layer until it looks good.

5) Changing Colors.

If you want to change the colors of this ornament just click on the BASE layer. Then go to Image > Adjustment > Hue Saturation. Move the Hue slider and the color of the orb will change. All the glow effects will remain.

If you want to download my PSD to check out all the layers then just click the following link:

Ornament.zip ( Unzip it first )

[tags] Photoshop, Christmas, ornament, tutorial, tips, howto, channels, layers, masks [/tags]

Scenario: Imagine that you are working on a Photoshop project where you had to carefully select something. You took about 10 minutes to successfully select something. Then you worked in the selection for another 10 minutes and then you deselected only to realize that you forgot to apply a stroke (Edit > Stroke) to the image. What now? You’ll have to spend another 10 minutes re-selecting.

The whole re-selecting process could have been avoided if you had used Alpha Channels to save your selection.

Selecting an Alien Flower

1) Here I have selected what appears to be an alien flower. It took me about five minutes (I selected in Quick Mask mode). I wouldn’t want to spend another 5 minutes re-selecting it in the future.

Saving the Selection For Ever

2) So now I want to save this selection. With a stroke of genius, I glide my mouse pointer with extraordinary skill all the way to the Select menu. While in this menu I click on Save Selection. Tada! I have successfully saved the selection. I’ll never have to re-select that alien flower ever again.

If you did the same then you should see something like the following window appear:

Enter a name and click ok.

Wait? What Happened?

3) Nothing appeared to happen but if you go to your Channels Palette ( Window > Channels ) then you will see an Alpha Channel. This is the saved selection.

Moment of Truth.

4) De-select the current selection ( Press CTRL/CMD+D). Now if you want the selection to come back then just CTRL/CMD+ Click on the new Alpha Channel (called Alien Flower in this example) and your selection will return. Whew!

Not only will this selection re-use allow you to save time but now you have access to a whole new list of channel features.

Some Facts

5) If you click on the Alpha Channel, the entire image will  turn black and white.

• The areas that are not selected will be black
• The areas that were with in the selection will be white.
• The areas that are translucent or partially transparent will appear as shades of gray.

This view is helpful because you can check if you have errors in your selection. If your selection is fuzzy then you can adjust the levels ( Image > Adjustments > Levels ) or sharpen the selection ( Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen ).

You are allowed to use most of the filters and image adjustment tools in this view. You can use this for your advantage and create lots of fun and useful effects. I’ll try to cover some of these in the days ahead.

You can also use the paint brush, paint bucket, or pencil tool to reshape the selection. If you paint black then that area will get deselected. If you paint white then those areas will get selected. Gray areas will be semi-transparent.

What’s Next?

• Line Art - How to separate the Lines from the Paper
• Spot Colors
• Channel Effects
• and more.

[tags]Channels, Alpha, Tutorial, Tips, Photoshop, Alpha Channels, Howto[/tags]

Please leave a comment

1) Create a new Image in Photoshop with the following settings:

The most important setting here is the Color Mode setting (CMYK).

CYMK stands for:

C = Cyan
M = Magenta
Y = Yellow
K = BlacK

When the CMYK color mode is selected it can be assumed that you are creating an image that is to be used for printing at a printing press. If you take a look at your news paper you should notice that all the images are made up of tiny colored dots. These dots are originally cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. When these are combined they can create almost any hue.

2) After clicking on OK you should find your self on a blank new canvas. Open up the colors Palette ( Window > Color or just press F6 key on most windows machines). You should see the following:

If you dont’ see C M Y K sliders then click on the arrow in the circle on the upper right corner of the Color window and choose CMYK Sliders from the menu. Also make sure that CMYK Spectrum is selected as shown in the following image:

3) In the color window choose the following settings:

C (Cyan Slider) = 100%
M ( Magenta ) = 0%
Y ( Yellow ) = 0%
K ( Black ) = 0%

Make a square selection and fill it with the color that we just made (solid CMYK Cyan). It should look something like this:

Now repeat the process but this time with magenta. Use the following settings:

C (Cyan Slider) = 0%
M ( Magenta ) = 100%
Y ( Yellow ) = 0%
K ( Black ) = 0%

Keep repeating this. Make one color 100% and all the rest should be zero. Make a square with each. In the end you’ll have the following:

4) Finally, open up the Channels Window / Palette. You should see 5 channels. CMYK, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black. Currently, they are all selected, therefore, you see all the colors. Click on the Cyan Channel and the areas with cyan color will turn black. The rest will disappear. Click on Magenta, Yellow and Black and you will notice the same.

If you don’t want it to turn black then go to Edit > Preferences > Display and Cursors and choose Color Channels in Color. Now when you click on a Channel only that color will be visible.

If you press the SHIFT key and then click on two channels then only those selected colors will be visible:

Think of this as ink on a white newspaper. If you put the ink on the paper then the paper will be colored. If there is no ink on the paper then it will appear white.

It is completely opposite for RGB channels. RGB stands for:

R = Red
G = Green
B = Blue

Your highschool art or physics teacher probably taught you that when you add all the primary colors of light then you get white light. And If you shine white light through a prism you get a rainbow effect.

Also if you color the fins of a paper windmill red, green and blue and spin it very fast then the colors disappear and you get white light.

Basically, you can think of RGB channels as being HUGE red, green and blue flood-lights. When you turn on all flood lights you’ll get white light because all the three primary colors combine.

If you only turn on Red light you will only see stuff as red because green and blue will be missing and so on.

Lets try the above steps in RGB mode. Since we went through all that CMYK stuff above I won’t go into as much detail with RGB.

1) Make a new image. Make sure that the color mode is RGB.

2) Open the Colors Window / Palette. Click on the options arrow on the upper right corner and make sure you select RGB Sliders and RGB Spectrum.

3) Make the red value 255, make sure green and blue are 0. Then create a square and fill it with that color. Repeat the process with Green (make green 255 and the rest 0). Then create a square and fill it with that color. Finally, repeat the process with Blue (make Blue 255 and the rest 0). Then create a square and fill it with that color.

You should end up with something like:

4) Choose the Red channel and you’ll notice that it acts completely different than CMYK. Everything turns red instead of the areas with Green and Blue. Green and Blue turn Black.

Don’t forget that we are dealing with LIGHT and not INK. When there is absense of light then that area becomes dark/black. Obvious, isn’t it? When you turn off the lights the room goes dark.

But why is everything else red? The white areas are red?

If you remember from a few paragraphs back when you add red, green and blue together then that forms WHITE. When you only turn on the RED light and turn off blue and green then what will you have left? Red. Turn on green and blue lights back on and you’ll get white again (because they have combined together again).

Now you are the master of understanding basic RGB and CMYK channels.

CMYK = Coloring with INK

RGB = Coloring with LIGHT

Next in the Channel Series:

• Channels! What are they good for?
• Alpha Channels
• Spot Colors
• Line Art using Channels
• And more…

The basics of Layer masks are incredibly simple but very powerful.

As always we’ll go over a simple tutorial that will quickly teach you how to use Layer Mask Basics. I think that actually doing something is the best way to learn. At least doing some thing is much, much better than just reading about it

First, a tiny intro:

What happens when someone wears a mask?

Dumb Question, yeah? It’s obvious that everything behind the mask is not visible and everything else is visible. That’s basically how Layer masks work except that you choose where the mask is and how opaque it is. Simple huh? So let’s follow a quick tutorial.

The Final Result of the tutorial is:

Yeah, so it’s a glass that is behind some rocks but in front of the ocean. Notice that the glass is partially transparent and you can see the ocean from inside it but the straw, slice of lemon and the stem of the glass are opaque. And yeah… I know the image isn’t going to win any awards but it’s great for explaining Layer masks

Step 1: Find two images that you want to combine. Here are the images I used:

Step 2: Open both the images in Photoshop. Then, choose the Arrow / Move Tool. Click on the glass image and drag it over to the image with the guy fishing. You can resize the glass so that it’s not too big or you can leave it the way it is. Your choice. Click here for a short flash video of this step if you are having trouble moving the glass image on top of the ocean image.

Step 3: Choose the layer with the glass and then click on the Layer Mask button. It’s the rectangle with the circle in it.

After clicking you’ll see something like this:

There it is! The layer mask. Currently it is set to reveal all of the image, meaning that the mask is off and nothing is hidden (since it is revealing everything!)

Now we actually use the mask. First let’s think of what we’re trying to do.

• We want just the glass visible so we need to get rid of the background of the glass image.
• We also don’t want all of the stem of the glass visible because we want to give the illusion that the glass is sitting behind the rocks.
• We also want part of the top of the glass transparent because we want the viewer to see through it.

If we used just layers and opacity of layers to accomplish this then we’d end up cutting up glass in lots of portions and messing with the opacity and it would be tedious and really, really annoying and would take a long time. That is why we’ll use the layer mask!

Hmm, you’ll also notice that when you click on the layer mask your colors in the color picker turn to black and white. So here it is… the secret of Layer masks: Depending on what the settings are, the color WHITE shows or reveals the image AND the color BLACK hides or masks the image (We’re talking about the image on which the layer mask is applied, not the layer below it). So on to step 4…

Step 4: Grab your PAINTBRUSH. Choose BLACK and start wildly painting. Paint over the stem so it looks like the rocks are infront. Paint over the background of the glass image. Keep on painting until you only have the glass. Now what if you make a mistake and hide part of the glass? No problem. Layer masks are not destructive so just change the color to WHITE and paint over the glass and it’ll magically reappear. You can basically adjust the brush size, or the shade of
gray and you get way more control than using destructive methods. If you use an eraser you can’t easily undo something you did 20 steps before etc etc.

So here is my version of this step:

I’m not worried about being perfect because nothing is being deleted. It’s all there. Just hit the “X” key on your keyboard and you’ll quickly switch between black and white and you can fix your mistakes. Now after you have quickly erased everything that is not needed just zoom waaay in and with a small brush just fix up the edges so they look good. Be sure to get that area in between that lemon slice .

So now I have something like this:

Step 5: Finally, we need to make the glass a bit transparent. You can do two things. You can a) Set the opacity of the brush to 50% and then paint right over the glass or b) You can change the color of your brush to gray and then paint over the areas you want to make transparent. Using the current settings (i.e White reveals) then if you make your brush dark gray then your glass will be less opaque and more transparent. If you choose light gray then your glass will appear less transparent. Just
paint it gray in the areas where you want it to appear slightly transparent but not in the areas with the lemon slice and straws. If you can’t make the transparent area look smooth (ie. you can see the brush strokes) then just grab the smudge tool and lightly smudge the gray area until it looks good and smooth. You can use any filter or tool on the layer mask and it’ll give you a new sort of effect .

That is all. You have the final image:

I hope I was able to show you how layer masks can make your life easier. This is obviously not the only thing you can do with layer masks so keep playing with this and learn more. If you have any questions then leave me comments below and I’ll try my best to get back to you in a timely fashion.

Notes:

• Layer Masks are one of the easiest features of Photoshop to understand. A Layer mask is just what it sounds like: a mask that goes on a layer. Think of what happens when a person wears a mask. You can see through the holes but not through the mask itself. It’s a great way to non-destructively hide parts of a layer. You will not lose any data and to go back to the original state you’ll just delete the mask.
• You can go to Layer > Layer Masks > Reveal All or Hide All to apply the mask (also you can just choose the rectangle with the circle from the Layers window.)
• Use the “X” key to quickly switch between Black and White (to show and hide)
• Shades of Gray in a layer mask change the opacity of the layer.
• A link icon appears in the middle of the layer and the layer mask. If it is linked then both the mask and layer can be moved together. If it is unlinked then you can independently move the layer and its mask.
• Be sure to click the Layer mask rectangle in the layer window when working with layer masks.
• Commonly, layer masks are used with Text and Gradients so experiment with those.
• I’ll continue updating this page with more tutorials and examples if I can think of any
• Comments, Critiques and suggestions are always welcome.

A new feature of Photoshop CS2 is the Smart Sharpen tool. This tool provides photographers with even more control over their photographs. Unfortunately, this tool is not available in previous versions of Adobe Photoshop, therefore, only users who have upgraded to Photoshop CS2 will be able to benefit from this tutorial. This is the first change in the Filter>Sharpen menu in 14 years! ( Learn about Sharpening Basics by clicking here for part 1 of this series )

NOTE: You can click on all the images to increase their size!

The Smart Sharpen tool can be found by going to the Filter Menu Item and then going in to the Sharpen Menu.

Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.

You will now see a window called “Smart Sharpen”. This window has an option to choose from Basic and Advanced modes. Below that you will see a Settings drop down menu. This settings drop down menu allows you to save the current settings so you can easily get to them later.Below that you will see Amount and Radius.

So far everything is very similar to the Unsharp Mask tool. The difference will now be apparent because of the Remove options. The Remove Drop down menu has three options. These allow you to remove Gaussian Blur, Lens Blur and Motion Blur. Each option triggers a different algorithm that Photoshop uses to remove these specific types of blurs. Finally, if you choose the Advanced Radio button you will be able to see three tabs: Sharpen, Highlights and Shadows. These allow the user to set the sharpness of the midtones, highlights and shadows. This is useful because sometimes you don’t want the shadows to be as sharp as the highlights (or vice versa) .

Let’s go over each option available to us:

The Remove Options

These options allow us to remove blurs caused by the three common types of blurs: Gaussian, Lens and Motion blurs.

Removing Gaussian Blur

The Gaussian Blur is very similar to viewing an image from an out-of-focus lens. If your image has a consistent soft blur with no areas of sharpness then this is the option to use. If the image you are working on is slightly out of focus then applying the Gaussian Blur Removal option will fix that problem. This is very similar to our regular unsharp masking technique. Nothing new here.

(gaussian blur)
(after smart sharpen: remove gaussian blur)

Removing Lens Blur

A lens blur is similar to Gaussian blur but a little different because it is not as soft. The Lens Blur Removal option removes the lens blur while finding edges and not creating obvious halos. This is also useful for images with finer details.

(lens blur)

(after smart sharpen: remove lens blur)

Removing Motion Blur

A motion blur happen when the camera or the subject moves or the camera shutter is open for too long. A faint trail of the subject is formed and there is little sharpness to the image. After choosing the Motion Blur removal option you will see that you are given the option to choose the angle. Just choose the angle that is as close as possible to the direction of the motion blur. The more accurate you are with the angle the better the motion blur will be fixed.

The Motion Blur Removal option works best if the motion blur happens only in one direction. Sometimes the camera may move in many directions and if that happens then the result of this tool is not very great but you can try applying two remove-motion-blur smart sharpens one after the other for each angle in which the motion blur exists.

(motion blur)
(after smart sharpen: remove motion blur)

Advanced Mode

There are times when you might want only some parts of an image sharpened while leaving the rest untouched. There may be times when you want to sharpen parts of an image more than other parts. Put your selection tools back because you probably won’t need them because the smart sharpen tool will take care of everything.

Clicking on the Advanced radio button will bring up three tabs called Sharpen, Shadow and Highlight. The Shadow and Highlight tabs have three sliders called Fade Amount, Tonal Width and Radius.

The main advantage of the Advanced mode of the Sharpen tool is that it allows us to set the sharpness of Midtones, Shadows and Highlights individually. Mainly we’ll be controlling what gets sharpened LESS.

• The Fade Amount controls the strength of the sharpening in either areas that are considered shadows or highlights (depending on which tab you are currently in). If you increase the fade amount of shadows then the dark areas of your image will not be as sharp. If you increase the fade amount of highlights then the light areas will not be as sharp. The higher this setting, the more the sharpness decreases. The lower this setting, the more the sharpness increases.

Here is a demonstration of Fade Amount:

1. Let’s take a look at this Arch thingamajig:

2. I’m going to zoom in to one of the shadows and INCREASE the fade amount to 100%

3. Next, I’m going to DECREASE the fade amount to 0%

4. Did you notice the sharpness of the shadows? When the fade amount of the shadows is 100% then the shadows don’t get sharpened. When you decrease the fade amount to 0% then all the shadows get the full sharpness treatment! Pretty neat!

• The Tonal Width controls which tonal values will be affected by the reduction in sharpness. The tonal width is defined as the difference between the lightest part of the image and the darkest part of the image. The Tonal Width slider determines which tonal values will be sharpened (or not sharpened). If the value of the Tonal Width slider is small then only lightest highlights or darkest shadows (depending on whether you are in the highlights or shadows tab) will be affected by the sharpening reduction. If the value of the Tonal width slider is great then a greater range or highlights or shadows will be affected by the sharpening reduction.

Here is an example:

1. We’ll take the same image again. First I’m going to set the fade amount to 100% (Recall that increasing the fade amount decreases the sharpness). Then I’m going to change the tonal width to 0%. You’ll notice that everything is sharpened despite the fact that the fade amount is 100%. The reason for that is that the Tonal width controls where the sharpness DECREASES. So when you change the tonal width to 0% then the sharpness does not decrease anywhere.

2. Now I will increase the Tonal width to 100% and the sharpeness gets reduced all over the image.

The Radius slider determines which areas are to be considered shadows or highlights. This basically controls the size of the area around each pixel that is used to determine whether a pixel is a shadow or a highlight. A small radius means that small patches of darks and lights will be considered shadows or highlights. A large radius means that large patches of darks and lights will be considered to be shadows or highlights.

Let’s Smart Sharpen an image (Click the images to enlarge) :

1. I’m going to choose the first image I get from http://www.sxc.hu

2. Open up the Smart Sharpen Tool (Filter>Sharpen>Smart Sharpen). Choose the advanced radio button and make sure all the settings in Shadows and Highlights tab are set to zero.

3. Go back to the sharpen tab and adjust the settings mainly to get a good sharp edge. I used the following settings:

4. Now go to the shadows tab. Now we will increase these settings so we can remove as much noise from the shadows as possible. I zoomed into an area with lots of shadow. I used the following settings and it seemed to rid the noise quite well with out loosing sharpness.

5. Finally I went to the highlights tab and removed as much noise as I could from highlights. I also made sure that the image did retain some softness (your preference).

6. The final image and the initial image has subtle differences and most of the time these subtle differences are what really matter.

Here is another example of sharpness correction:

(before)

(after)

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. There are even more sharpness techniques that I will cover in the near future. At this time I feel like creating my next tutorial about something other than sharpness Thanks for readings. Comments are encouraged.

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If you are feeling a bit uncreative then by all means read Julieannes advice by [ clicking here ]

From the article:

2. Listen to what your life is trying to tell you.

9. Take 15 minutes for yourself every day.

14. Keep a Journal

12. Take up an interest in something you know nothing about

This is a must read!

[ Thanks for Creativepro.com ]

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Before and After:

[ Click here to view the sample tutorial ]

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Before:

After:

[ Click here to view the Clouds Tutorial ]

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