Sharpening in Picasa

I've found Picasa to be an extremely convenient and easy to use tool for organising photos and carrying out simple edits.

I've found, in some cases, its sharpening (one pass, not more - a second one is usually horrible) to give a very subtle, yet to my eyes, pleasing result that so far, despite much experimentation, I simply cannot reproduce with USM settings in Elements 5.

Its 'Fill Light' function, while having nothing at all in the way of adjustments other than the one slider, often brightens up the frame in a way that leaves the colours subjectively very fresh, and again I haven't been able to achieve the same thing in Elements.

And it's a real pain on the occasions I need to use features that Picasa doesn't have, to have to swap between the apps.

I don't doubt that it's just my inexperience with Elements, but if anyone happens to know how to closely approximate these effects in Elements, I'd be grateful for some pointers.

i have to confess that i too am a picasa convert

I resent the "expectation" that there is of people shooting digital to then spend hours on each frame tweaking and airbrushing - picasa allows me to correct levels very slightly (most shots of mine need nothing) and then one pass of the sharpen tool and I'm happy

I use Picasa - mostly to create Albums and gift CDs

I haven't looked too much into the sharpening of Picasa, but you might find it's a High Pass Sharpen (which is often nicer than a USM). A quick outline in PSE:

* Flatten the image into one layer
* Duplicate the layer (you now have two copies)
* Run the Filter / Other / High Pass
* Pick a value that just shows the detail appearing (everything else will be grey)
* Click OK
* Desaturate the layer (Ctrl-Shift-U... I think!)
* Change the Layer's blend mode from "Normal" to "Overlay" (or "Soft Light" for a softer effect)
* Adjust the Layer opacity to suit.

(I like to use this before outputting a web image - a High Pass radius of something like 0.7 to 0.9 and Overlay mode works a treat!)

Interestingly, if you INVERT the grey layer it becomes a "High Pass Soften" which can be useful too!

HTH!
Matt

It helps very much. That's great - very subtle indeed, and very much the sort of thing I was looking for. Not a technique I'd come across. And pretty easy to do too.

Thank you!

you see somehow I knew that Matt would have the almost perfect answer


Nice work! Have you considered writing "the book" on PS? To go with the one one flash, Bokeh, etc etc


awesome knowledge base

LOL!

There's another piece of knowledge too...
Once you've got the ovelay layer done you might want a little more "ooomph".
* Select the layer and run "Brightness/Contrast" on it.
* Push up the contrast a little and it will exaggerate the sharpening (somewhere around +10 say)

Matt

Hey, slow down. There's already a list, and it doesn't need adding to.

G