"Always do everything in Basic first"

Ken, since you are new to Raw shooting/processing, have you seen our RAW Conversion Thread?

If not, read the thread Intro, check out some of the projects, get inspired, and jump in and play!

Make sure you do not adjust any of the basic sliders after adjusting the tone curve. The basic sliders appear to work on the various areas (shadows, highlights, etc) base on the raw histogram histogram, so if you tweak the tone curve first, the basic sliders may not be working on the area you think they are working on.

For instance, the contrast slider works by pushing everything that is darker than 50% luminance to the left and everything that is lighter than 50% to the right. If you start with an underexposed image (everything pushed to the left) and then apply contrast, it will push the entire image to the left. If you were to pull the right end of the point curve to the right first and then adjust contrast it will still make the entire image darker as the contrast adjustment is working on the base histogram and does not see the curve adjustment.

On the other hand if you adjust the exposure first, then the contrast slider will work on the adjusted histogram and increase the contrast rather than darkening the image.

tonylong wrote in post #15732749
Ken, since you are new to Raw shooting/processing, have you seen our RAW Conversion Thread?

If not, read the thread Intro, check out some of the projects, get inspired, and jump in and play!

I always have the clipping and have seen the RAW Conversion thread..... sooo inspirational. I have pretty good grasp on the basics except for sharpening that I am digging in to now. My pix have taken a great leap forward YEAAA!

kenstogie wrote in post #15739494
I always have the clipping and have seen the RAW Conversion thread..... sooo inspirational. I have pretty good grasp on the basics except for sharpening that I am digging in to now. My pix have taken a great leap forward YEAAA!

Write yourself an action to run Edge Mask Sharpening--it's a game changer. If you have no clue about anything I'm talking about let me know and I can get you started, or perhaps even give you my action to download for yourself.

Uh action?? Haven't really gotten into them. Can I do that in PSE 11?? My understanding of actions are that they are basically a recorded set of .... well actions.... that can be applied to a photo, saved and applied to another photo 5 mins or 5 months later.

The thing that made me wonder how useful actions would be (if I got the concept right) is why apply the same "actions" to two photos because each photo is different, just like each snowflake.

People really like them and know that i may not have a grasp on them that's just where i am at right now.

Actions can be designed with "break" points during the workflow, points at which the activity will pause and allow you to change certain parameters. So you can combine a general workflow with individual adjustments as needed.

tzalman wrote in post #15741023
Actions can be designed with "break" points during the workflow, points at which the activity will pause and allow you to change certain parameters. So you can combine a general workflow with individual adjustments as needed.

Yes, and this is precisely what I do. I don't have any actions programmed to adjust things that would be unique from image to image; they are there to take care of the "heavy lifting."

For example:

In my action I wrote for edge mask sharpening, I set it so that I manually adjust the following based on the image (meaning I am prompted with the dialogue to enter values):

-Levels adjustment to create black/white mask parameters
-Gaussian Blur amount
-Final Unsharp Mask adjustment

Now for the badass part; with one single click the action does ALL of the following automatically:

-Creates a new channel
-Renames it "Edge Mask"
-Selects the composite RGB, copies and pastes into the new channel
-Reselects Edge Mask and runs the Find Edges command
-Inverts the Edge Mask channel
-Launches the Levels command (then I figure out correct settings)
-Launches Gaussian Blur command (again I enter correct amount)
-Relaunches Levels command to tweak Edge Mask
-Switches back to composite RGB, then back to the Layers panel
-Automatically switches to the topmost layer, then does a Stamp Visible of all layers
-Renames this new top layer to "Edge Sharpening" and changes the blend mode to Luminosity
-Loads the Edge Mask channel created earlier as a selection
-Launches the Unsharp Mask command (I figure out correct settings)

Not too shabby now, is it? You should see the one for luminosity masks, but it would be about twelve times longer and would take me too long to type out every step (that one btw has no manual input from me; it's fully automatic).

Discovering the power of actions was one of my top 5 Photoshop big moments, and is CONSTANTLY in use for me; any time I do the same thing more than two or three times in a week, I'll just end up writing an action for it.

Randy

Since Ken has PSE11 (not CS6) then he will be seriously "impaired" in working with actions. Some developed in Photoshop can be "shared" with Elements, but...especially he can't record one.

Well, since this thread is about working in Camera Raw, what I'm wondering is whether PSE11 has the Sharpening tools in ACR that the fuller versions have?

While an Edge Mask action is certainly nice I don't understand why you'd use it when you have better edge sharpening functionality built into Adobe Camera Raw's (and Lightroom's) Sharpening panel. The Masking slider in the Sharpening Panel applies edge sharpening just as well as any action.

Incidentally, Unsharp Masking is nearing obsolescence as a sharpening technique since it was designed primarily for images that were digitized through scanning. Current "best practice" is to use Smart Sharpen since it was created specifically for images obtained directly from digital cameras.

It is important to use Smart Sharpen in Advanced mode with the Remove drop-down box set to Lens Blur instead of the default Gaussian Blur. The default is set so that it will appear familiar to users transitioning from Unsharp Mask sharpening but it doesn't give the best results. By switching to the Advanced mode you can control Shadow and Highlight sharpening by using the Fade and Tonal Width sliders to specify exactly how much sharpening is applied.

RandMan wrote in post #15741458
Yes, and this is precisely what I do. I don't have any actions programmed to adjust things that would be unique from image to image; they are there to take care of the "heavy lifting."

For example:

In my action I wrote for edge mask sharpening, I set it so that I manually adjust the following based on the image (meaning I am prompted with the dialogue to enter values):

-Levels adjustment to create black/white mask parameters
-Gaussian Blur amount
-Final Unsharp Mask adjustment

Now for the badass part; with one single click the action does ALL of the following automatically:

-Creates a new channel
-Renames it "Edge Mask"
-Selects the composite RGB, copies and pastes into the new channel
-Reselects Edge Mask and runs the Find Edges command
-Inverts the Edge Mask channel
-Launches the Levels command (then I figure out correct settings)
-Launches Gaussian Blur command (again I enter correct amount)
-Relaunches Levels command to tweak Edge Mask
-Switches back to composite RGB, then back to the Layers panel
-Automatically switches to the topmost layer, then does a Stamp Visible of all layers
-Renames this new top layer to "Edge Sharpening" and changes the blend mode to Luminosity
-Loads the Edge Mask channel created earlier as a selection
-Launches the Unsharp Mask command (I figure out correct settings)

Not too shabby now, is it? You should see the one for luminosity masks, but it would be about twelve times longer and would take me too long to type out every step (that one btw has no manual input from me; it's fully automatic).

Discovering the power of actions was one of my top 5 Photoshop big moments, and is CONSTANTLY in use for me; any time I do the same thing more than two or three times in a week, I'll just end up writing an action for it.

Randy

RandMan wrote in post #15741458
-Creates a new channel
-Renames it "Edge Mask"
-Selects the composite RGB, copies and pastes into the new channel
-Reselects Edge Mask and runs the Find Edges command
-Inverts the Edge Mask channel
-Launches the Levels command (then I figure out correct settings)
-Launches Gaussian Blur command (again I enter correct amount)
-Relaunches Levels command to tweak Edge Mask
-Switches back to composite RGB, then back to the Layers panel
-Automatically switches to the topmost layer, then does a Stamp Visible of all layers
-Renames this new top layer to "Edge Sharpening" and changes the blend mode to Luminosity
-Loads the Edge Mask channel created earlier as a selection
-Launches the Unsharp Mask command (I figure out correct settings)

Not too shabby now, is it? You should see the one for luminosity masks, but it would be about twelve times longer and would take me too long to type out every step (that one btw has no manual input from me; it's fully automatic).

Discovering the power of actions was one of my top 5 Photoshop big moments, and is CONSTANTLY in use for me; any time I do the same thing more than two or three times in a week, I'll just end up writing an action for it.

Randy

That's a tremendous time saver, sweet.

Maybe some day, I would have no problem dropping the $$ for it but want to really learn PSE first. I gotta mortgage and kids and blah blah blah. I can pull an education discount on it though. My next purchase probably will be LR4. I am quite impressed with the results the folks around here are getting out of that.

I am on the learning kick right now. Sucking up as much info as I can (this forum is great for that thank you btw )and using PSE every night for an hour or soo with all the RAW stuff I have already taken.

Double post sorrry.

PixelMagic wrote in post #15743390
While an Edge Mask action is certainly nice I don't understand why you'd use it when you have better edge sharpening functionality built into Adobe Camera Raw's (and Lightroom's) Sharpening panel. The Masking slider in the Sharpening Panel applies edge sharpening just as well as any action.

Incidentally, Unsharp Masking is nearing obsolescence as a sharpening technique since it was designed primarily for images that were digitized through scanning. Current "best practice" is to use Smart Sharpen since it was created specifically for images obtained directly from digital cameras.

It is important to use Smart Sharpen in Advanced mode with the Remove drop-down box set to Lens Blur instead of the default Gaussian Blur. The default is set so that it will appear familiar to users transitioning from Unsharp Mask sharpening but it doesn't give the best results. By switching to the Advanced mode you can control Shadow and Highlight sharpening by using the Fade and Tonal Width sliders to specify exactly how much sharpening is applied.

Good info there! Although I rarely resort to PS for sharpening, it's good to know what the best approaches are!

You're welcome Tony.