Microstock Photography

100 Technical Issues: Killing the Gremlins

need a little sharpening tweak. In Photoshop, use Unsharp Mask

(Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask) at a setting around radius 0.6

to 1.2, amount 50–175%, and a threshold of 1. Figure 5.17 shows the

Unsharp Mask fi lter in action on the cover photo. Play around with

the settings to achieve the best result.

If you have to apply more sharpening than the maximum suggested,

then the image might simply be too unsharp to salvage.

If you only want to sharpen a selected part of your image, not the

whole of it (to avoid emphasizing noise in shadow areas, for example)

then you can use the same techniques I suggested above when using

noise-reduction software so that you only apply sharpening where it

is needed. Do be careful not to overdo sharpening. Too much can be

as bad as none at all.

There are a number of specialized sharpening programs available

to purchase, some of which operate as plug-ins or actions within Pho-

toshop or other image editors. Links to examples are included in the

appendices.

Note that some traditional non-microstock libraries, like Alamy,

warn against applying any sharpening at all. Each library has its own

FIGURE 5.17 Dialogue box from Photo-
shop CS3 Unsharp Mask. The original image,
from the cover of this book, is already pretty
sharp, so not much extra sharpening is
required. © Douglas Freer