Using a sharpening workflow in Photoshop CS2

Controlling the tonal range

One of the keys to a successful multipass sharpening workflow is to concentrate the first round of sharpening on the midtones while protecting the extreme highlights and shadows. It’s so much easier to do this using a sharpening layer that we don’t even try to use a nonlayered sharpen.

The trick to controlling the tonal range is to use the Blend If sliders in the Layer Style dialog box—choose Layer Style>Blending Options from the Layer menu, or double-click the layer’s tile in the Layers palette (see Figure 4).

The Blend If sliders let you control which tonal values in the overlying (sharpening) layer get applied to the underlying layer (and, conversely, which tonal values in the underlying, unsharpened layers are affected by the sharpening layer). Bruce thinks of the overlying layer as a ton of bricks suspended over a basket of eggs (the underlying layers). The top Blend If slider controls which bricks fall, and the bottom Blend If slider dictates which eggs receive the impact. (If this makes no sense to you, don’t worry—Bruce often thinks of things in weird ways.)

Figure 4 shows some typical settings for the Blend If sliders for initial midtone sharpening. Depending on the image source (film or digital), and the amount of noise present, you may find that the shadow values need to be set higher or lower, but the basic principle is to set the bottom sliders to protect extreme highlights and shadows, and the top sliders to apply most of the sharpening in the midtones.

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