Sharpening for the Web

Here is something that I've known about for some time, put it on my list of things to learn and do, but haven't taken the time to just do it until now...sharpen my images for the Web.

Some of us, me included, don't post SOTC (straight out of the camera), full-size images on the Web. That means you have to resize them using Photoshop, Lightroom, or whatever your image editing software of choice is. Resizing an image also means resampling the image from one dimension to another, say 2832x4256 (12MP) to 683x1024. When you resample an image this way, that is downsampling, you are reinterpreting the pixels and you are losing data! There's all sorts of names for the phenomenon that goes on when you do this, ringing, aliasing, blurring, artifacts, etc. There are also all sorts of algorithms that can be used to resample your images and each has a pretty significant impact on the quality of your image.

I won't go into a a long technical discussion about resampling algorithms and sharpening algorithms. You can read up all about them on the Web if you are interested. Instead i'll just show you a workflow that I'm using now that creates great looking images from your full-sized images for the Web. Perfect for Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and the like.

1. After you prepare you image and have completed all your post processing, export or create a full-sized JPEG of your photograph. Then open the JPEG in Photoshop. Here is the original, full-sized JPEG of the image I'll be working with here (Click on the image to see it full-size).

2. Resize your image to your new dimensions. Here I am sizing this to 683x1024 for the Web. Select Bicubic Sharper (Best for reduction) for the resampling algorithm.

3. Now that your image has been resized and resampled, it's time to apply some more sharpening to try to reel in some of the detail that has been lost. For this I use the Unsharpen Mask... Filter. I typically try amounts from 200% to 400% and a radius of 0.3 pixels and leave threshold at 0.













4. Now your image is ready for the Web!


Here's a comparison between the unsharpened image and the sharpened version after resizing the images. Roll-over the image with your mouse to see the sharpened version.

These images are zoomed at 300%. Notice the difference in texture of the football and the sharpening and detail in the face. While there are some visible artifacts in the sharpened version, remember we are viewing this image enlarged at 300%. At 100% you won't be able to see these (see the next image below).

roll-over with your mouse to see the sharpened version

Here are the two final images, again for comparison, now at just 100%. Roll-over with your mouse to see the sharpened version.

Can you spot the artifacts now? I don't think so.

Which one looks better? The sharpened version if you ask me.

This is my nephew btw. I can see much better detail in the football, his face, his hair, his tattoes, his shirt, and his pants. The overall effect isn't obviously noticeable but it results in a better looking image. Isn't that the point? So now you can create great images for the Web and have everyone envious asking "how do you take such great photos?"

roll-over with your mouse to see the sharpened version

TIP: Using your pop-up flash as a commander

I recently got to see Joe McNally and David the Strobist Hobby in action when the Flash Bus Tour stopped in Philadelphia. Man, they make things look so easy. It was an amazing time to see these two pros and living legends in action.

Joe McNally is a big proponent of Nikon CLS/i-TTL, so he's been using an SB-800/900 Speedlight or even the pop-up flash as a commander. No news here right? We all know as well that you can set your Speedlight so that it does NOT contribute to the exposure of your scene. But it will still produce some visible light via the pre-flash that can land you in a snafu because you've got a "blinker" on your hands. What's the alternative? Radio triggers? SU-800 since it's IR and not visible light? Remote cord so your commander is off-axis and not going to be in your subjects direct line of vision? All good options. But what about if you are using your pop-up flash as a commander and that's all you've got?

Electrical tape.

Just grab a small bit of electrical tape and cover up your pop-up flash, not entirely, but enough that it hides the direct visible light that would usually fire directly into your subjects eyes and thus cause them to blink. For me on my D700, the tape acts like a curtain and light spills out the sides and bottom from behind the tape and this is what allows you to still trigger your Speedlights. I've successfully tested this, indoors, in a variety of situations. Just as long as you get the sensor on the Speedlight to point towards you, it works.

I'm sure there are situations that this would inhibit things and outdoors could be out of the question for this but its a cheap alternative to the other more costly alternatives.

eBook - Guy Tal's Creative Landscape Photograph

I am currently reading Guy Tal's Creative Landscape Photography eBook. Guy Tal is a very talented landscape photographer and writer based in Colorado but ventures outward and explores the vast and scenic West. Check out his images. I'm sure you'll agree he has a very bold and sharp style in his wonderful collection of photographs.

About his new eBook then...

Guy's thoughts and techniques on landscape photography come across as being very intelligent, thoughtful, and driven. He presents some real structure and actual exercises to use that will "exercise your creative muscle", as he says. They are in fact very concrete and sound ideas that you can use immediately. The eBook is well designed with text and example images flowing nicely from page to page. It is in Adobe PDF format and 86 pages. I'm mainly reading it on my Nook Color so anyone with a similar tablet should have no problems.

I'm about half way through and overall its been a very good read and great value at only $9.95. I'm sure i'll have more to say once I've digested all the content but until then, if you are looking for ways to improve your creativity and landscape photography, pick up Guy's eBook.

Don't take my word for it, landscape and nature photographer's Darwin Wigget and Sam just published a review of their own on Guy's new eBook.

White Vignettes

I like vignettes. I almost always apply a little or a lot to my images. In CS5 and ACR, I use the Lens Correction feature but I almost always turn the vignette correction slider all the way to the left to turn it off. I generally use vignettes to darken down the edges of my images to draw attention and focus to the center. On one occasion, I used a white vignette instead with this photograph of a tree during a winter storm. There was snow on the ground and the snow was falling fast and the usage of a white vignette, instead of a black vignette, really helped to simplify the composition and reinforce the mood; a dreamy winterly scene.

So if you like vignettes as well, don't forget they can go the other way too!

tree in winter storm

Borders, Revisited

I decided to again revisit borders with my images. When I just last spoke about borders and their impact on the success of a photograph, I was just beginning to experiment with them. I have quickly realized their benefits, even with images posted on the web, however, I wasn't completely satisfied with my initial tries at it.

I wanted this time to use borders and mimic their appearance of when a print is matted and framed. We all view so many photographs on the Internet now. When was the last time we walked into a gallery or spent the time, money, and effort to carefully print,matte, and frame an image? The end result is so much more inspiring and vivid compared to what I now think of as an unfinished product, that is what comes out of our camera and maybe goes through a few edits.

So here is the finished product, so to speak:

The double borders and white matte really isolate this image from its surroundings. Even when viewed on the web, don't you agree? I added a caption as well. For me, I like to have a bit of more information about any image that I see. Perhaps a name or a location. Something that helps me to associate the photograph or helps to tell the story of the image. I was undecided on whether to add my name or my blog URL as well. Both seemed too much. So I settled on just my name. Feels odd to see my name like this but at the same time I feel proud to share images.

Again I used Photoshop and the same techniques as from before by simply adjusting the canvas size. This time to get the multiple borders I did it in stages. First the inner black border by increasing the width and height of the canvas size by 20 pixels and setting the canvas extension color to black. Then I added one inch to the width and one inch to the height of the canvas and this time setting the canvas extension color to white. Finally I added one more inch to the canvas height and used black for the canvas extension color but this time I set the anchor to top center so that only the bottom end of the canvas received the one inch extension.

Setting the Anchor point

When I took the original photograph, I was enamored with the location and subject. The circular pool of water set the stage for the small and whispy-like waterfall that cascaded over brightly-toned weathered rocks that were cut into various slabs and layers. A beautiful pine angled overhead and would stand out against the clear blue skies of the afternoon. I had high hopes for the photographs that I took here. I used several 3-stop ND filters to be able to drag the shutter long enough to blur the water. I also used a 1-stop hard ND grad to tone down the bright sky. Even with this setup, the rock wall was still mostly in shadow so some fill light adjustment was necessary in ACR to bring them out.

I'm not fully satisfied with the final composition and overall tones in the photo though. I used my new Sigma DG 105mm polarizer on my Lee filter kit. The obvious dark band in the sky is seen because of the polarizer and shooting in a direction that would combine polarized and non-polarized sky. The sun was to the left of me at roughly 10 o'clock. I'm not sure if I needed the polarizer at this point. We were in bright afternoon light and I was hoping it would tone down on the reflections off the rocks and the water. Because of all this, I decided to convert the image to black and white.

There is also a lot of dead-space in the upper left part of the frame. If I had moved right, the pine tree would be covered by the rock ledge. If I had moved left there would be more tree and bracken to contend with above the falls that would have just blended the two together. So I compromised and settled on a composition.

Here is the unfinished photograph before the final editing:

25mm f/16 4sec

In the end, by being creative with the framing and converting the image to b&w, I ended up with an image that I now enjoy.

TiltShift Generator

I've always been intrigued on the novelty of using a tilt-shift lens to create a miniature-look for a photograph. That would not be the sole reason for me to try to justify purchasing an expensive tilt-shift lens such as the Nikon PC-E 24mm. I'd like to add this lens to my collection because of its ability to control depth-of-field for landscape images without being constrained to using small apertures. I'd also like to explore a technique from Darwin Wiggett where he uses shift to then stack two images together to create larger images for expansive panoramics by stacking two images horizontally or by creating a square-like crop with two images stacked vertically. Check out this his blog and this page for more information about this technique.

In the mean time, I found this nifty little application from Art & Mobile that allows you to take any image and put the miniature-look on it. Find it here.

I used the Adobe AIR version of their application. Here are the before and after images:

before

after

I'm seriously lacking any more images right now to play around with this fun little tool I'll have to get out and keep this in mind when shooting or when I have my camera handy. That is, until I get the real tilt-shift lens and then I get serious, lol.

Borders

I've never spent any time, up until now, thinking about borders. Even when I've had a few of my photographs printed and framed, again, I haven't thought much about borders. I've considered the frame or the matte, which is a kind of border. However, I never considered actually applying a border to the image itself.

On the web, and even when printing your final image, a border can be very important. It can help with conveying the message of your photograph. With a border, you may be saying, here is where the image begins and ends. Other borders may help accentuate a specific feeling or mood.

So I've worked on a new image of mine and this time I created a border that I felt helped to reinforce the dream-like mood.

I created this border in Photoshop by selecting the perimeter of the image and then while in quick mask mode I used a splatter brush to draw the edges of the border. Next I added some Gaussian Blur to soften the brush strokes and edges. Then, I simply filled this area with white. I refined the overall thickness of the border by re-adjusting the canvas size of the image. This framed the image in a broken and hazy-like border that to me matched the dream-like feeling of the photograph.

Here's the same image without any border.

Which do you prefer?