Sunday, February 11, 2007

Sarah's Portrait by Puan Mama Sarah


PMS took this portrait of Sarah around two days ago. Actually, Puan Mama Sarah has been delving herself into photography lately. She's been taking lots of photos and learning camera settings (all of you beware!). Unlike me, Puan Mama Sarah has extremely steady hands and I notice that her pictures turn out sharp even with relatively slow shutter speeds.

Anyhow, the above is just an experiment in using the Unsharp Mask in Photoshop. I read today that Canon cameras apply anti-aliasing to the images to maximise colour accurise and reduce Moire effects. However, the anti-aliasing gives the photographs the classic Canon's "smooth" effect. I have ALWAYS thought Canon's images are less sharp compared to Nikon's - and now I know why!

Canon's official website recommends sharpening JPEG images in Photoshop starting at the following values:

Amount: 300% (300% is huge !!!!)
Pixels: 0.5
Treshold: 0

However, there's also a video tutorial on their website on how to fine tune sharpening. The above image of Sarah is an example. Notice that although I sharpened Sarah's portrait by 300% there's not much noticeable noise and the texture on her face is relatively smooth. The secret is simple - use a high treshold value (around 5-10).

Link here
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3 comments:

Ajzie said...

Great job! Credit to Mamasarah.

Anonymous said...

you better be ready Ajzie, puan mama sarah seems to have the eye for photography. match that with her steady hands and you have a potent combination.

Anonymous said...

wow..mamasarah shud join the mothers at our forum and share her photos then! :D