USM for portraits

[JohnT]

For those of you who do quite a bit of portrait work (not necessarily headshots), would you mind sharing your Sharpening settings, or at least something to start with? My prints are coming out softer than I'd like.

[Daniel Bates]

I use 80 / 1 / 0 on nearly everything I shoot, and sometimes LCE (15 / 50 / 0 ish) beyond that. For big prints, the eyes get their own treatment.

[my3peas]

most of the time it's 75/2/3 for me and LCE at either 14/40/0 or 10/20/0

:)

[srwatters]

For other than headshots, I tend to favor CS3 smart sharpening at 100 - 120% @ 0.4 - 0.6 pixel radius. For headshots, I rarely sharpen other than the iris and that gets some special sauce

[JohnT]

Thanks, y'all!

Scott, I just tried that SS setting in CS2 (120, .6) and it works great. I wish I'd known about that on this last run.

Special sauce = proprietary blend?

[theophilus]

Make sure you use the "lens blur" setting in Smart Sharpen. If you use "gaussian blur" it is exactly the same algorithm as USM.

[srwatters]

Originally Posted by theophilus

Make sure you use the "lens blur" setting in Smart Sharpen. If you use "gaussian blur" it is exactly the same algorithm as USM.

Have you done empirical testing on this or do you have a reference? I've done a little research and don't find a reference concurring with your statement. I'm not disagreeing, just looking for evidence.

[JohnT]

I've always used "Lens Blur" with SS due to it being recommended by Scott Kelby in one of his books and a couple of tutorials by someone else.

[theophilus]

It's in the video tutorial on sharpening from www.radiantvista.com

[Duffy Pratt]

You should also consider sharpening on a separate layer in luminosity mode. If you can't be bothered with that, try sharpening just the red channel for a portrait. You can generally hit it a little harder in the amount and still get good results.

Duffy

[JohnT]

Originally Posted by Duffy Pratt

You should also consider sharpening on a separate layer in luminosity mode. If you can't be bothered with that, try sharpening just the red channel for a portrait. You can generally hit it a little harder in the amount and still get good results.

Duffy

Thanks, Duffy. Sharpening on a separate layer in luminosity mode is the way I've been doing it, but I've been too conservative with it for prints. I got some prints back the other day with Scott's recommended SS settings, and they look great. The parent was very pleased. I'll give the red channel a try and see what happens.

[ambidawn]

I'd love to see some before and afters with the sharpening tool that you tried.