SHARPENING PORTRAITS

[biggin]

when you sharpen portraits is it best to sharpen the whole image or just the person in the photo. I am looking for different takes on this issue and how people isolate just the subject in photo for sharpening.

[mgbeach]

I think it's pretty much a case-by-case situation. Often I'll do a slight gaussian blur on a duplicate layer to smooth out skin tones and background then erase back down to the areas that should be sharp (eyes, hair, clothing, etc). Then I'll sharpen the bottom layer so those features "pop" a little more. Generally I use USM at a low radius (.1-.4), 0 threshold, and high amount (200 +)

[CyberPet]

Depends on the skin (old person, young person, good skin, bad skin, etc) but you can always add a slight USM and then work up some more sharpness on eyes, hair, etc. There's different techniques, but the technique described by mgbeach can work without the guassian blur too (i.e. duplicate the untouched background layer), and add sharpness on the background layer for eyes, hair etc (i.e use USM) and then on the untouched layer above it, use the eraser tool to "reveal" the sharp eyes, etc, with a soft brush.

[biggin]

hey cyberpet what determines the type of brush such as the soft brush you spoke of. I know I don't sound to smart but I just want to see what other ways people use, maybe those way would work for me better than the way I use now! Anyway thanks for your input. By the way do you find that this Sh__!#@! really can take up all of your life. Ever since I got my 20d I am either outside taking photos or inside processing them. Rough life huh?

[CyberPet]

No question is too stupid. I call those with fuzzy edges "soft". If you just see "strokes" when you check the different brush sizes, you can go to the little popup-menu on the side of the brush picker and select to show the brushes as small thumbnails. That shows a lot better which are "hard" and which are "soft". You can always change the diameter and the "softness" on the fly too... if the brush is not big or small enough.