photoshop elements 2 and the unsharpmask

[biggin]

Can anyone give me some pointers on using the unsharpmask in ps elements 2.I need ideas on settings for photos of people such as the percent of sharpening,threshold and radius. I know different taste for different people but what I am trying to figure out is how much sharpening to use if I send the photos out to online photocompanies to print the actual photo!

[tim]

This book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735714118/qid=1107206467/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/102-6261175-6757758?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) will tell you what you want to know, i'd post what he says but i'm at work right now. It's a very worthwhile book.

[MTalley]

There are dozens (aye, maybe millions) of different answers to this question, even aside from personal preferences. Things like how the photo will be displayed or printed, at what size, and so on.

Anyway, given all that, for portraiture, I typically start out at about 160%, 0.3 and 0, respectively (as you go from top to bottom on the sliders). Look at the photo at an even percentage of size (i.e. at 50% or 100%) to see the effects. If you are at 33%, you'll get pixellization from the photo being unevenly resized for display on the screen.

Make use of the "Preview" checkbox in the Unsharp Mask dialog. Click it on and off, on and off, doing a before and after comparison.

[biggin]

hey MTalley those are basically the same settings I used with my g3 but now I have the 20d and those do not sharpen enough. I do not want to over sharpen and get back a bunch of bad photos when I send them in to get printed! Thanks for your help. By the way should you use higher amounts of sharpening for photos with more pixels than photos with less pixels?