Photoshop_User_February_2017

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photoshop user

› february 2017

052

KRISTINA SHERK

Retouching Magic

your checklist for amazing online images

There’s nothing more frustrating than looking at an image you took in Photoshop that looks amazing,

only to upload it to your website and see completely strange color changes appear. You think to your-

self, “It didn’t look like that when I was editing it in Photoshop; why are the colors so wonky now that

I’ve uploaded it to the Web?”

Your website is priority one, two, and three when you’re

a photographer. It’s your trademark and brand to anyone

looking to hire you, and it’s essential that the images that

represent your business on your website look perfect. Here

are my top three tips to make your images appear in a

league of their own once they’re uploaded to your website.

1. SHARPENING
   It’s quite a wild time in the world of computer screen resolu-
   tion. Since the debut  of the Apple Retina Display and the
   more recent 4K monitors and the adoption of UHD (ultra-
   high definition), the race to more pixels is well under way.
   That’s why it’s important for you as a photographer to be
   well-educated on your website provider’s default image set-
   tings. This information is hugely important when uploading
   your images to your website. You’ll want to make sure that
   you’re manually sizing and cropping your images to your
   website’s specifications and not checking the box, which
   resizes your images automatically upon upload.
   After sizing your images in Adobe Photoshop or Light-
   room to the correct dimensions and dpi (dots per inch),
   it’s time to sharpen. Here’s your dinner-party factoid: The
   Unsharp Mask tool in Photoshop hasn’t been updated since

Photoshop version 1! Needless to say, while I do use Photo-

shop to selectively sharpen certain areas of my images, for

your overall Web image sharpening, I’d rely on the much

newer algorithm behind Adobe Camera Raw’s (ACR) or

Lightroom’s Sharpening sliders in the Detail panel. 

Since your images have already been resized to Web

dimensions, in Lightroom tap your Z key to zoom your entire

image to 100%, rather than using your detail preview box

located in the Detail side panel. Make sure your zoom set-

ting is set to 1:1 to ensure that you’re looking at a true 100%

zoom.  In ACR, press Option-Command-0 (PC: Alt-Ctrl-0) to

zoom in to 100%.

The first slider in the Detail panel is the Amount slider,

which is responsible for overall sharpening. Use this to

find a point of sharpening that looks best for your image.

The Radius slider determines how far away Lightroom or

ACR should look for a contrasting pixel to decide whether

or not to add more sharpening to that area. My sugges-

tion would be to leave the slider at 1.0 for the majority of

your images.

Think of the Detail slider as the protection slider, protect-

ing you from over-sharpening. As you increase the Amount

slider, you should also increase the Detail slider to protect

your image against sharpening artifacts and the dreaded

halo effect.