HDR Photography Workflow Series: Sharpen like a Ninja

So we are coming to the end. If you’ve just finding this now, you can start at the beginning announcement and move forward through the series at the bottom of each article.  I have never done something like this before in my life and it is a great feeling to show my workflow.  I often wonder what people are doing with their photographs and their creative process. When I look at this picture, I remember standing there with my girlfriend and looking across the water.  We were feeling so great and amazed by the mountains.  We were blessed with a decent sky as well this day.  I feel good looking at it now and I feel that I am doing my best to accurately portray this scene.

In this last step of the series, I am resizing the image for the web and sharpening.  If you’ve used Photoshop or any program in the past, the resizing shouldn’t be too difficult.  In Photoshop, you’ll select “image” from the menu bar and then select “image size.”  I change the Resolution to 72 DPI to get a smaller file size for posting online. I also change the width and height of the image.  I got in the habit from a wordpress theme to resize my images to 950px wide if the photograph is in landscape orientation.  I stick with that now for when I am posting to Flickr.  I can’t bring myself to upload the high resolution image there [my own issue].  Anyways, I resize so that it scales the image appropriately for the 950 width here and if I was using a 16 bit image, I’ll bring it down to 8 Bit – This allows the image to be saved as a JPG.

I am not going to save it yet though.  You’ll probably notice when you do this that the image looks soft.  I always sharpen the image before posting it online.  It really helps out a lot.  This is where you might have to experiment with sharpening techniques.  There are a lot of different ways to sharpen the image and if it’s destructive to the image or not.  For simplicity, why not use a photoshop action? This would make for a fast, easy, non destructive way to work with it.  So, I have a super awesome link over to a Totally Rad Action. Literally, Totally Rad Actions has a sample pack that you can request and they will send you the link to download within an e-mail.  Within the pack is an action called “Slice Like a Ninja.”  If you decide to go this route as well, just follow the link over to Totally Rad and fill out the request. Once you get the e-mail and download the actions, all you have to do is double click the action file and it will load into Photoshop actions for you. In the image below, you can see my actions in the top right corner.

Click on the action to highlight it and then press the play button below it.  In the layers box, you’ll see that a Group Folder with the  description “slice like a ninja.”  You should also see a pretty drastic change in your image.  You’re looking at the image with 100% opacity of this action and layer. The awesome thing about using something that creates this layer mask or group folder is that you can easily change its blend mode or opacity or even delete it if you don’t like it at all.  All without touching the original layer below.

I can’t handle this image at 100%.  Things just start to seem a bit weird to me.  So I started to play with the opacity and came to a stop at 35% opacity.  I felt that this sharpened the image up but not over the top.  This is according to my eyes anyways.  Someone else might see the image totally different. It just gives you a lot of control and you can just test it with an inner feeling as you look at it change.  Once you trust your feeling, you’re in the right spot.

Now that I have sharpened like a Ninja, I simply flatten the image or merge the layers.  If you only have this one layer on top of your original, press command + e on mac or contol + e on PC and it will merge with the layer below. Pretty fast and now you’re left with one layer of an awesome HDR to save for the internet. The best way that I’ve had success with in saving for the internet is shown below.  In the file menu, select “Save image for Web & Devices.”

This menu will allow you to contol the file type – JPG – and the quality and settings.  I leave it at 100% maxium quality.  I do.  I also make sure that the ICCP is checked off because it is supposed to ensure that the colors should look consistent across browsers and sites online.  I want people to see what I was seeing and not some off image by chance.  I can’t explain the technical side of it and if you do want more information on it, I suggest checking out Chromasia because in his tutorials, he goes over things like that in greater detail.

I am left with this image below.  WOOT!  If you click the image below, it’s going to take you over to Flickr.  I am amazed at how great Flickr appears to be for showing your work.  You can get a lot of eyes on your photos and hopefully provide some inspiration or relaxation to a viewer.  Depending on your vision for your image.   Once it’s on flickr, you can use the links created to post it on blogs, forums, emails, and anything you want.  I also have a Zenfolio account but it gets like 3 views per week, at most! I don’t know what is up with that website. I guess I don’t promote it much either. It looked like it had so much potential and we’ll see if it does for me in the future.  Be proud of your HDR Photograph and know that you’re continually growing and gaining experience.   I hope you’ve found this entire series useful in some way.  Thanks!