You may have noticed, when looking at commercial shots of people used for print advertising, that the images often have a very nice, crisp, and clean and simple post processed look. So in this quick workflow I am going to teach you how to achieve this post processed finish in Photoshop. The technique I am going to show you also combines a way of sharpening your photos and reversing the soft looking appearance that digital images often have when shot with a DSLR camera because of the Anti-Aliasing Filter (also known as low-pass filter) which is built directly into the hardware of most DSLR camera bodies.
Before we start the workflow, I would like to mention that this method is best used on high-res images only because if you apply it to low-res images then they tend to look over sharpened. So I normally perform this workflow only on a high-res image taken directly from the camera and then I downsize it later for any digital or web use I might have for the image once I have completed this process. You can download a high-res copy of the photo I will be working with here by right clicking on this link and saving the image to your computer first so that you can follow along with this tutorial to see if you can achieve the same final result. Below shows an original version of the image I will be using from the download link above, but in low-res form:
Note that I am using Photoshop version CS6 for this workflow. So the screenshots below are from CS6, but if you are using another version of Photoshop your layers and menus should still look nearly the same.
Step 1 – Got to the layers palette and copy the Background layer. You can do this by clicking on the Background layer once to activate the layer and then pressing the keyboard shortcut command “Ctrl + J” if you are using a Windows computer or “Command + J” if you are on a Mac. After you copy the background layer it should look like this with the new layer named “Layer 1” appearing above the Background Layer:
Step 2 – Then, with Layer 1 selected and active, go to the layer blend mode drop down menu and select “Overlay” and then set the layer opacity to 20%.
After you do that, your image should now look like this:
You can also set the opacity on this Overlay blend layer to more than 20% if you want deeper, richer tones, and a more dark looking level of contrast.
Step 3 – Then click on the Background layer again to make it active again and copy it one more time by pressing the keyboard shortcut command “Ctrl + J” if you are using a Windows computer or “Command + J” if you are on a Mac. After you do that Photoshop will give you a new layer called “Background Copy”. Then click on the Background Copy layer with your mouse and drag it up within the layers window to place it at the top of the row of layers. Once you do that your layer hierarchy should look like this:
Then make sure the Background Copy layer is active by clicking on it once and then go to the Filter drop down menu from the main menu area at the top of the program window in Photoshop and select Filter, Other and then High Pass like so:
When the High Pass dialogue box opens set the Radius to 5.5 and click OK:
Then set the layer blend mode to “Vivid Light” on the Background Copy layer and set the opacity to 30% like so:
Then once you do that your image should look like this:
You can also put the opacity higher than 30% if you want even more pronounced crispness and detail.
Now, you can basically stop here as this is the end of the workflow and you now have a nice crisp and finely detailed commercial looking, post processed image. Also, there will be no further need to sharpen the image if you downsize it to low-res for web use. As you can see, the image above which has been downsized, and with no added sharpening, already looks plenty sharp from using this post processing workflow.
Now I am going to take you one more step further in the workflow to desaturate the image a bit to make the image colors a bit muted. This is a popular finishing technique often used in commercial post processing too these days.
Step 4 – Got to the bottom of the Layers window and click on the circular icon for the adjustment layers menu. Then when the menu pops up select “Channel Mixer”:
When the Channel Mixer box appears click on the “Monochrome” check box. Then go to the layer Opacity on the Channel Mixer layer and set it to 35% like so:
After that your final image should look a bit desaturated like this:
It is not recommended, but if you would like to attempt this workflow on a low-res image of your own then you can follow all of the same workflow steps above and on the Background Copy layer (after you have applied the High Pass filter to the layer). Now instead of setting the opacity to 30% try setting it to about 15%-20% and that might work out O.K. and not end up looking too over sharpened for a low-res image.
If you would like to download my completed high-res PSD file containing all the layers from this tutorial then you can download the full PSD file by clicking here.
Also, if you have any questions or thoughts to add to this workflow please feel free to post them below.
Wow, this is so straightforward and simple yet effective! Thanks so much for sharing these techniques, I don’t see many others doing this.
Couple questions. I’m sure you shoot in RAW – do you process these in LR or ACR before bringing them into PS? I’m asking because these techniques seem similar to ACR adjustments. What’s the difference between highpass and basic sharpening in Adobe Camera RAW? The overlay trick seems to have the same effect as adjusting curves – how is this different? And what about the channel mixer – this looks like simply decreasing saturation or vibrance.
Obviously these techniques do different things than what I likened them to (at least in a different way), but is there an inherent advantage of using them versus just using the sliders in ACR or LR?
Thanks again for all the great info – also really enjoyed your speedlight article. I go to art school for photography and was up reading it at 3am last night, lol.
Thank you for your comment James. And I am pleased to hear you are enjoying the blog.
I strictly use ACR. But as a matter of preference, I like doing certain things in Photoshop itself rather than in ACR. Especially sharpening because I feel that I have much more control in Photoshop than in ACR.
In general, there aren’t always such large differences in terms of results doing things one way or another in Photoshop. There are often 5-6 different workflows that one can use to achieve very similar results in Photoshop. So it often comes down to a matter of preference and what methods you are used to or familiar with rather than the advantage to using one technique versus another, that is in most cases. So yes, you can perhaps use things like a curves layer to get the same effect as a blend mode overlay layer with varying opacity. But the one reason I like blend layers is it allows me to see different effects on a photo very quickly without trying to manually try so many different things myself using adjustment layers. I hope this helps.
Thank you. This is very helpful. I am currently using unsharp mask, but will give this a try.
Cheers
Hi Marc. Thanks for this excellent and interesting tutorial. So this workflow would be primarily used for studio shots of people, right? Does it have applications in other types of photography? There are so many ways to sharpen – the high pass filter, unsharp mask, smart sharpen, sharpen in luminosity mode, etc., that it’s hard to know what method’s best for different types of photography. What do you use in, say, landscape photography?
Cheers.
Your welcome Lawrence. These tutorials are a bit challenging to put together sometimes since I need to make sure I show screen shots of all the steps along the way.
I think this workflow can be used for any type of photo though. You just have to experiment a bit with different shots and see how you like it. But it is not just a sharpening process. It does other things too and so I don’t really use it if I just want to sharpen a photo. It gives a certain crispy look to the image. You just have to experiment and compare this workflow to regular sharpening on the same image and then you will be able to see the subtle differences better.
Personally, I mainly use Smart Sharpen for sharpening most everything. I found I get the most consistent results with that one sharpening filter. I sometimes also only sharpen certain areas of a photo by copying the background layer, then sharpening the copied background layer, then adding a mask to the sharpened layer and then mask the sharpening to just apply to the parts of the photo I want.
This is also a way of preventing certain areas of a photo from getting over sharpened if it has very fine detail that starts to look jagged at the edges of the detail. This can happen especially with things like leaves and small rocks in a landscape photo.
Sometimes it is nice on portraits to just sharpen the eyes too and nothing else using a mask. It makes the portrait really pop that way.
I hope that helps. Best wishes.