Too PS'd?

[f/stopblues]

I have this photo from my R2A and Nokton 50/1.5 and I really wanted to show the contrast and texture in the scene. I ran it through PS, played with the levels and did a 10% unsharp mask. I'm nearly illiterate in Photoshop, so I wanted to know if this is too over the top? I haven't tried to print this in the wet darkroom yet, but do you think I can get this look that way? Thanks!

 

[aizan]

decrease the radius, maybe?

 

[Todd.Hanz]

it appears a little over sharpened, jaggy, etc. Look to see if your scanning software has a sharpening filter and turn it off then sharpen in PS only.


Todd

 

[f/stopblues]

I suspected that.. Is this one easier on the eyes? I cut out all sharpening and just adjusted levels. This is a $100 flatbed with negative adapter by the way..

 

[smileyguy]

I would agree that it may be a bit over sharpened but the first thing that I noticed is that it was a little too contrasty. I noticed the bottom of the photo looks a little blown out and there is no detail in the darkest areas: the pipe and the black patch in the middle of the pic. I would play a little more with the channels in levels and maybe even try Channel Mixer in monochrome mode and see what you get. There are a thousand and one ways to get to one result in PS so just play and see what you end up with.

 

[jano]

Second one looks a little better -- the first was oversharpened.

It will be difficult to obtain an "contrasty" result with this image because the tone is fairly uniform throughout. You put the dark areas to black but there isn't much white in the scene. Play a little with brightness/contrast, try to use some masking, and if that doesn't work, pull out the ol' dodge/burn tool. There's a way to get very fancy dodging/burning using an adjustment layer, but I don't want to overwhelm you now with stuff.

Jano

 

[skipc]

Why not post an unsharpened version of this image for us to look at and provide specific advice? ...skip

 

[derevaun]

A good starting radius for unsharp mask is the reciprocal of your zoom ratio (e.g. at 50% zoom, 2 pixels). For the amount, it starts to get hard to see the effect under 50%, and over 100% is quite drastic.

I use curves instead of levels--it helps prevent flattening the shadows and highlights. To add contrast, make an S curve; the opposite to reduce it.