(Editing) SHARPENING / SMOOTHING ADJUSTING

Click here to show the Sharpening / Smoothing Effects Screen.

If you want to take an image and enhance it's sharpness or to smooth out grainyness, you can do so by clicking on the button that looks like 2 horizontal lines (one being more sharp than the other). This button is located on the "Quick Tools" panel.

If you want to Sharpen or Smooth a bunch of photos all at once, you can do so with the Batch Feature.

Once you are in the Sharpening / Smoothing Effects screen, there are many controls you can use to sharpen or smooth the image. Before we discuss these controls, you need to understand how sharpening works.

WHAT IS SHARPENING:
Sharpening is the process of taking contrasting parts of the image and making them MORE contrasting. So for example: Let's say you had a light gray pole next to a pretty dark background. Then as you increase the sharpening you will notice that the edge where the gray meets the dark background becomes more contrasted. The gray becomes whiter and the dark background becomes blacker. So basically it accentuates the edges and thus it appears more crisp and sharp. Same thing with freckles etc.

HOW TO SHARPEN:
There are 3 sliders to control the sharpening:

The 1st slider indicates how much sharpening to apply. As you slide more to the right the more noticable the image becomes sharpened. Typically the 3rd notch from the left is the best setting (not too sharp, not too blurry).

The 2nd slider controls the amount of CONTRAST that you will see along the edges.

The 3rd slider is a little more interesting. This controls WHAT AREAS are considered for sharpening. As you slide the slider to the right, more and more of the image is sharpened. As you slide it to the left, less and less is considered for sharpening. In order to determine the area for sharpening, the image is searched for areas that have sharp changes in color. So, if you move the slider all the way to the left, then only the areas with dramatic color changes will become sharpened. For example: If your image was a face on a green background, then only the EDGE around the face would be sharpened, because the inside area of the face doesn't have any dramatic color changes. Everything is pretty much the same flesh tone color.

WHAT IS SMOOTHING:
Smoothing is the process of taking an image and blurring it so that it looks out of focus. It's the opposite of sharpening. Photo Jockey has SMART smoothing. This means that pixels in an image that are near the same color as the pixels NEXT to it are SMOOTHED with those adjactent pixels. IE: Someones skin will become more blended and smoother looking. Also, pixels that are much different in color than the pixels next to it are NOT SMOOTHED at all. This means that the edges of freckles are not blurred. So the resulting image is a face looking more smooth, yet detail still kept sharp. Of course there is a checkbox to not use the SMART method.

HOW TO SMOOTH:
There are 3 sliders to control the smoothing:

The 1st slider indicates how much smoothing to apply. As you slide more to the right the more noticable the image becomes smoothed. Typically most of the way to the right is the best setting.

The 2nd slider controls the amount of SMOOTHING that you will see.

The 3rd slider is a little more interesting. This controls WHAT AREAS are considered for smoothing. This is called SMART smoothing. As you slide the slider to the right, more and more of the image is smoothed. As you slide it to the left, less and less is considered for smoothing. In order to determine the area for smoothing, the image is searched for areas that have sharp changes in color. So, if you move the slider all the way to the left, then only the areas with little color changes will become smoothed. For example: If your image was a face with freckles, then only the normal skin would be smoothed (freckles remain sharp). If you slide all the way to the right, then practically everything is smoothed and not much SMART action taken. In fact it would be similar to checking the "Equal Smoothing" option.

Equal Smoothing. This checkbox allows you to bypass the SMART smoothing logic and to just do smoothing equally across the entire image.

WHAT IS THE PREVIEW WINDOW FOR:
As you sharpen or smooth the image, you can move the crop window around the image. The crop window is located inside the image on the right side of the window. As you MOVE the crop window, it shows that section of the image in the smaller Preview Area beneath the sliders. While your mouse is DOWN on the crop window, the Preview window will NOT show any sharpening. When you lift UP on the mouse, then you see the sharpening occur. This is handy to see just how much sharpening or smoothing is going on. You may need to slide the ZOOM control to 200% or MORE to see the effects of the sharpening.

TROUBLE SHOOTING:
The most common problem is that you move the top 2 sliders to the right and you see NO SHARPENING or SMOOTHING in your image. Having the 3rd slider NOT all the way to the right can cause this. This causes less area to become sharpened.

ONCE YOU ARE DONE:
If you have a series of images that need the same sharpening, you can click the "Previous Settings" button to set the sliders to the SAME positions as they were set to on the last sharpening/smoothing that you did.

When you are done, click ACCEPT and then save the image by clicking on the floppy disk button. Otherwise, click the CANCEL button to NOT make any sharpening changes.


TIP:
You can check and uncheck the "Turn Adjustments Off" option so that you can qucikly see how your sliders are affecting the image.

HINT:
You can create a 3-D appearance in your photos with the smoothing. Imagine a flower with a grassy background where everything is sharp. You can give a more 3-D appearance by drawing a region around everything but the flower, THEN blur the region using Equal Smoothing. This produces a very nice 3-D effect. For more details about 3-D effect, click here.



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