shots from today, advice needed

brocksta · 27 Jul 2006 at 14:09

Just been on a quick round of golf with my bro, got some shots on the way but after processing them, ive realised i had my camera's ISO set to 800!!! :mad:

Anyway here are a few, if anyone could advise me on how to sharpen them up a bit i would be grateful!

1. this is one of the least noisy, but still pretty bad

2. this one is terribly noisy but i liked the shot.

brocksta · 27 Jul 2006 at 14:11

ive also realised that on pretty much all my shots i have found this:

is it a bit of dust on the back of my lens or something? how do i get it off?

Cuchulain · 27 Jul 2006 at 14:15

I'd worry more about the lack of subject matter than the sharpness, I tend to use either unsharp mask or smart sharpen in Photoshop unless it's a noisy image in which case I'll use Noise Ninja and sharpen it along with the noise reduction.

Mohain · 27 Jul 2006 at 15:26

They don't look that noisey to me. For dealing with noise you can try Neat Image, which is free. Noiseware pro is better, but costs. Noise Ninja is supposed to be good, not sure if there is a free version tho...

General sharpening for web I tend to use is amount = 100%, pixels = 0.3 or 0.4. You can do this to a duplicate layer then bring the unsharped layer back in with the opacity slider. Each image is different however and will need different sharpening, with architecture shots you can use amount = 200% to 300% ish. Portait shots might only need amount = 70% with selective sharpening on the eyes etc.

There are loads of methods for sharpening out there but this will give you a good start.

Belly · 28 Jul 2006 at 10:51

Mohain said:
There are loads of methods for sharpening out there but this will give you a good start.

Yes and there is always more than one way to skin the cat. I use unsharp mask if I'm in a hurry, but I also like using the high pass filter.

(Duplicate the layer, Filter other high pass - adjust the slider until the colours start to come through (if using colour of course), change layer to Hard or Soft Light (experiment with others) and reduce opacity to suit yourself you can merge layers if you so wish. It works for me.

I believe it is possible to set up an action which pauses at the High Pass Filter stage so you can adjust each shot individually?