Scottes
24th of May 2004 (Mon), 18:56
Some time ago CDS had mentioned that noise removal plugins would remove detail, often undesirably from detailed subjects. He described using the History Brush to get those details back, and I was enlightened. I started to play with this last night and found it to be very useful for many processing tasks. Sharpening was one area that instantly came to mind.
First we start with an original image:
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_Org.jpg
Cropping and levels adjustment were already done. This obviously needs some sharpening. So I sharpened it:
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_AS.jpg
Well, that's OK, but those water drops don't look so great. In fact they're fairly distracting because they stand out so much. So I'm going to tone everything down, leaving just the sharpening on the osprey.
First take a look at the History Palette. (Click on Window, then History if it's not visible.) Note that I have two steps so far - I Duplicated the image (Image... Duplicate) so I wouldn't mess up the original. And then I Sharpened. I used the Intellisharpen plugin from Fred Miranda.
Notice the little box next to each step. Hover the mouse cursor over it like I did...
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_hp.jpg
Clicking in this box "sets the source for the history brush." That is, everywhere you paint with the History Brush will be "erased" back to that point in time. So I'm going back to a point before the sharpening. So everything the history brush touches will be "de-sharpened" - it will simply have the sharpening removed.
I going to choose the history brush. Click on it in the toolbox, or simply press the letter Y.
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_tb.jpg
I'm going to start with a large brush, and I'm going to set the hardness to 100%. The large brush will let me cover area quickly, and the hardness will completely "erase" the sharpening right up to the edge of the brush.
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_br.jpg
Setting the hardness lower would let you "unsharpen" a little at a time. With a very low hardness you'd erase just a bit every time you passed over an area - several passes will eventually get to a complete erase. This is great if you want some sharpening to remain, but it's a little trickier because you might pass over some areas once and other areas several times.
By the way, I use Brush-Size Cursors because I like to see exactly where I'm going to be working. If you don't have Brush-Size Cursors enabled, click on Edit... Preferences... Display and Cursors and check the box.
So you've got yourself set to a large brush, so just sweep around areas. Sometimes it's hard to see where you've been, so be sure to cover everywhere. Don't come too close to the subject - you'll switch to a smaller brush and get closer.
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_bb.jpg
Now make the brush smaller by pressing "[" a few times. That's a heck of a lot quicker than using the brush palette above. The "[" key goes smaller, and of course "]" makes the brush larger.
Since the brush is smaller you'll want to zoom in. You can click on the Zoom tool, or use the easier way by pressing the Z key. Even easier is Control+ (control-plus) to zoom in, or Control- (control-minus) to zoom out.
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_lb.jpg
Zoomed in with a small brush you can get closer to the subject to erase the sharpening. To move around you can use the scroll bars on the edge of the image, or click the Hand tool (or press H) and click, hold, and move the mouse. The fastest way is to hold down the spacebar - the mouse cursor will turn into a hand, and you can click and drag to move the image around. This spacebar trick works with almost every tool, so you don't have to switch to another tool just to move the image around.
So, that's it. Sharpen, set the history source to the step before the sharpening, grab the History Brush and de-sharpen away!
To re-cap for comparison, here's the sharpened version that didn't look so great:
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_AS2.jpg
When done with the History brush, the osprey is left sharpened while everything else has been de-sharpened:
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_SS.jpg
Now doesn't the osprey just pop a bit more?
You can use this trick for many things - sharpening and noise removal immediately come to mind.
But how about faking Depth of Focus? Take an image and do a light Gaussian Blur 4 or 5 times. It will look *way* too blurred. But set the History Source back before you started blurring. Use the History Brush and de-blur the closest subject. Now set the History Source forward one step (the first Guassian Blur), and de-blur the next-closest subject - it will still be a little blurred, but not as much as the rest of the image. Keep doing that until you've left the background completely blurred, but different subjects are slightly less blurred.
Finally, Photoshop lets you do things in many different ways. There's many ways to re-create this "selective sharpening" process. But maybe you learned a little about the History Brush, and maybe you learned a few quick key presses, too. Any way, I hope you enjoyed this.
Re-cap of quick keypresses used:
"Y" - History Brush
"Z" - Zoom Tool
"H" - Hand Tool
"Control+" - Zoom In
"Control-" - Zoom Out
"[" - Make Brush Smaller
"]" - Make Brush Larger
"Spacebar" - Press to change to Hand to move image around
First we start with an original image:
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_Org.jpg
Cropping and levels adjustment were already done. This obviously needs some sharpening. So I sharpened it:
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_AS.jpg
Well, that's OK, but those water drops don't look so great. In fact they're fairly distracting because they stand out so much. So I'm going to tone everything down, leaving just the sharpening on the osprey.
First take a look at the History Palette. (Click on Window, then History if it's not visible.) Note that I have two steps so far - I Duplicated the image (Image... Duplicate) so I wouldn't mess up the original. And then I Sharpened. I used the Intellisharpen plugin from Fred Miranda.
Notice the little box next to each step. Hover the mouse cursor over it like I did...
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_hp.jpg
Clicking in this box "sets the source for the history brush." That is, everywhere you paint with the History Brush will be "erased" back to that point in time. So I'm going back to a point before the sharpening. So everything the history brush touches will be "de-sharpened" - it will simply have the sharpening removed.
I going to choose the history brush. Click on it in the toolbox, or simply press the letter Y.
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_tb.jpg
I'm going to start with a large brush, and I'm going to set the hardness to 100%. The large brush will let me cover area quickly, and the hardness will completely "erase" the sharpening right up to the edge of the brush.
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_br.jpg
Setting the hardness lower would let you "unsharpen" a little at a time. With a very low hardness you'd erase just a bit every time you passed over an area - several passes will eventually get to a complete erase. This is great if you want some sharpening to remain, but it's a little trickier because you might pass over some areas once and other areas several times.
By the way, I use Brush-Size Cursors because I like to see exactly where I'm going to be working. If you don't have Brush-Size Cursors enabled, click on Edit... Preferences... Display and Cursors and check the box.
So you've got yourself set to a large brush, so just sweep around areas. Sometimes it's hard to see where you've been, so be sure to cover everywhere. Don't come too close to the subject - you'll switch to a smaller brush and get closer.
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_bb.jpg
Now make the brush smaller by pressing "[" a few times. That's a heck of a lot quicker than using the brush palette above. The "[" key goes smaller, and of course "]" makes the brush larger.
Since the brush is smaller you'll want to zoom in. You can click on the Zoom tool, or use the easier way by pressing the Z key. Even easier is Control+ (control-plus) to zoom in, or Control- (control-minus) to zoom out.
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_lb.jpg
Zoomed in with a small brush you can get closer to the subject to erase the sharpening. To move around you can use the scroll bars on the edge of the image, or click the Hand tool (or press H) and click, hold, and move the mouse. The fastest way is to hold down the spacebar - the mouse cursor will turn into a hand, and you can click and drag to move the image around. This spacebar trick works with almost every tool, so you don't have to switch to another tool just to move the image around.
So, that's it. Sharpen, set the history source to the step before the sharpening, grab the History Brush and de-sharpen away!
To re-cap for comparison, here's the sharpened version that didn't look so great:
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_AS2.jpg
When done with the History brush, the osprey is left sharpened while everything else has been de-sharpened:
http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/5128_SS.jpg
Now doesn't the osprey just pop a bit more?
You can use this trick for many things - sharpening and noise removal immediately come to mind.
But how about faking Depth of Focus? Take an image and do a light Gaussian Blur 4 or 5 times. It will look *way* too blurred. But set the History Source back before you started blurring. Use the History Brush and de-blur the closest subject. Now set the History Source forward one step (the first Guassian Blur), and de-blur the next-closest subject - it will still be a little blurred, but not as much as the rest of the image. Keep doing that until you've left the background completely blurred, but different subjects are slightly less blurred.
Finally, Photoshop lets you do things in many different ways. There's many ways to re-create this "selective sharpening" process. But maybe you learned a little about the History Brush, and maybe you learned a few quick key presses, too. Any way, I hope you enjoyed this.
Re-cap of quick keypresses used:
"Y" - History Brush
"Z" - Zoom Tool
"H" - Hand Tool
"Control+" - Zoom In
"Control-" - Zoom Out
"[" - Make Brush Smaller
"]" - Make Brush Larger
"Spacebar" - Press to change to Hand to move image around