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Setting the black and white point, with Levels, is something that every image needs. You can also take care of it during RAW conversion.
Something else that almost every image needs is sharpening. Digital cameras blur the image slightly to capture it. To really get sharp images we need to reverse that. There are a ton of different ways to sharpen your images. Using USM (unsharp mask) or SmartSharpen in the filter pallet are both good ways but they can also intensify noise. Here's a trick that I sometimes use.
This type of sharpening should be your last step and should be done at the images final size; i.e. don't sharpen the image at 4000 x 3000 if you're going to resize it to 800 x 600....
Open the image in PS, go to the Layer menu and duplicate the layer:
With the new layer selected, go to Filters/Other/High Pass
Select a pixel size between 5 and 10 for most images. This is one of your adjustments that you can play with.
Next go to the Edit menu and select "Fade High Pass."
in the Fade dialog select "Luminosity"
Now go to the layer pallet and change the blend mode of our new layer to "Overlay"
Finally, you can adjust the opacity of the new layer to suit your taste. About 50% works well on this image.
Setting the black and white point, with Levels, is something that every image needs. You can also take care of it during RAW conversion.
Something else that almost every image needs is sharpening. Digital cameras blur the image slightly to capture it. To really get sharp images we need to reverse that. There are a ton of different ways to sharpen your images. Using USM (unsharp mask) or SmartSharpen in the filter pallet are both good ways but they can also intensify noise. Here's a trick that I sometimes use.
This type of sharpening should be your last step and should be done at the images final size; i.e. don't sharpen the image at 4000 x 3000 if you're going to resize it to 800 x 600....
Open the image in PS, go to the Layer menu and duplicate the layer:
With the new layer selected, go to Filters/Other/High Pass
Select a pixel size between 5 and 10 for most images. This is one of your adjustments that you can play with.
Next go to the Edit menu and select "Fade High Pass."
in the Fade dialog select "Luminosity"
Now go to the layer pallet and change the blend mode of our new layer to "Overlay"
Finally, you can adjust the opacity of the new layer to suit your taste. About 50% works well on this image.
