In Part 1 of this post I covered image sharpening in Adobe Photoshop. Today, more and more photographers are migrating the bulk of their image-editing work to Lightroom, thanks to a more streamlined interface, and features that are tuned to photographers, not general graphics.
While it might seem that sharpening would be the same in both Lightroom and Photoshop, there are some significant differences between the two. Yet the goal is the same – make your image as sharp as you want without showing visible signs of the sharpening process.
Sharpening in Lightroom is a two-stage process. Because you’re not dealing with image sizing until you output the image, you can’t wait until this point to go to a Smart Sharpen or Unsharp Mask type of dialog. In Lightroom, you do your sharpening in the Develop module, going for optimal image sharpness. Then you can do a final sharpening on output (this last step is optional though).
To get started, select the image you’re working with and do all of your adjustments for color balance, tone curves, and saturation. In Lightroom, the initial sharpening is done through the Detail panel in the Develop module (Figure 1). Amount, Radius, and Detail are essentially the same as the Amount Radius and Threshold controls in the Unsharp Mask dialog of Photoshop.
Figure 1
A new slider is available in Lightroom though, Masking. Like the name implies, Masking essentially hides the sharpening effect in areas of smoother tones. Rather than describe how these work, let’s take a look at the controls in action. Lightroom makes it easy to see what your adjustments are doing by holding down the Alt key while making adjustments
NOTE: In order to see what changes the Details panel adjustments are making, you need to be viewing your image at least at 1:1, or 100%.
With the Amount slider, you’re controlling how strong the adjustment is going to be. Hold down the Alt key while moving the slider. Your image will switch to grayscale. By hiding the color information, it makes it easier to see how the adjustments are affecting your image (Figure 2).
Figure 2
Your goal here is to enhance the overall sharpness of your image without creating obvious artifacts, particularly on high-contrast edges. Once you’ve found a starting point that feels right, move on to the Radius slider (Figure 3).
Figure 3
Radius controls how wide the edge contrast enhancement extends, with higher numbers making for a wide adjustment. As you drag the slider while holding down the Alt key, you’ll see the image shift to wider, bolder lines. I tend to keep this setting as low as possible. With finely detailed images, you can use a very narrow radius to maintain the natural look of your subject.
Detail, like Threshold in Photoshop, controls how much difference there needs to be in neighboring pixels before they’re considered an edge that should be enhanced. With the Alt key held down, changes to this control will look similar to the Radius control (Figure 4). Your goal here is to keep the smoother areas of your image looking smooth to avoid an artificial look.
Figure 4
The final control is what sets Lightroom apart when it comes to image editing. With the Masking slider, you are essentially painting a mask on your image, and like Photoshop, areas that are black have the effect hidden, while white areas show the adjustment at full strength. Areas of gray show varying degrees of the adjustment based on the shade of gray (Figure 5).
Figure 5
As I mentioned earlier, these adjustments are done prior to image sizing and choosing your output type, which seems contrary to normal methods. Lightroom does a very good job of tuning these adjustments to the output size though, making this work well. There is a further step you can take with specific output sharpening though. These options are found in the Print module and Export dialog. They’re presets that can’t be altered, and they make subtle changes to your image based on paper type (Figure 6), with three different levels of sharpening. I find Standard to work well for most images, but I’ll select Low for portraits. I’ve never found an image that I would use the High setting on though.
Figure 6
In Export, you can choose between Screen or Print (useful for those times you’re sending your work out for print). Once again, Standard and Low work well, but I avoid High (Figure 7).
Figure 7
More on Sharpening
If you really want to know the ins and outs of sharpening, Real World Camera Raw by Bruce Fraser is a great resource. It only covers Photoshop, but many of the techniques apply regardless of what application you use, and Bruce does a great job of explaining more advanced techniques like luminance sharpening.
