Photoshop Software provided with Nikon Coolpix 4500- (1 Viewer)

Does anyone know of an idiots guide to using the photoshop package supplied with the Coolpix 4500?
I am having great difficulty in trying to sharpen my pictures - but then I'm an idiot hence the question!!!

Hi Chris,
did you get 'Elements'?

Hi CJW,
Yes I did.

Hi Chris. Amazon sell a book called "Photoshop Elements2 for Dummies" price at £9.90. I found it very useful. Hope this helps. John.

I can't comment on 'Elements', but in the full Photoshop you'd be looking for a tool called 'Unsharp Mask' (under Filter Menu/Sharpen).

If you do find something similar in Elements, don't expect miracles; it's really meant to compensate for slight softness introduced during scanning, and can't correct a picture which is simply out of focus. Garbage-in-garbage-out, an' all that.

I don't know how sophisticated the options will be in Elements, but my advice to Photoshop beginners is to ignore the 'radius' and 'threshold' controls in the Unsharp mask, and just fiddle with 'amount' (most folk make a mess with radius and threshold and then forget what the default settings were!). Slide the Amount control right up to its highest setting to see what you DON'T want to achieve, and then take it back to your desired level. Finally, toggle the 'undo' key to compare before and after and assess the effect.

Sorry if this is no help at all for Elements users...

Al

Thanks John N & Al Downie - info much appreciated.

HI Chris

I use Elements 1.0 and was advised to use the following settings and to repeat the process three times (not sure why)

In Elelments click filter menu/sharpen/unsharpen mask

set Amount at 125%
set Radius at 0.2 pixels
set Threshold at 0 levels

hope this helps

Doug

Hi Chris
I’ve checked out the West Sussex libraries catalogue on line and they have 95 Photoshop titles on their shelves 8 or 9 of them are for Elements, I’d have a look to see which one suits you, before parting with any pennies. Good luck.
Regards Glyn

The unsharp mask in Elements (filters/sharpen) is the same as in the full Photoshop system

The radius and threshold settings are vital to getting the right results

In layman's terms the mask exagerates the difference in contrast between different areas of tone in the image (similar to 'accutance' in conventional photography, if you are familiar with that)

Radius is the 'width' of the effect in pixels - generally, more than one pixel wide is only used to try to rescue a 'less than perfectly sharp'(!) image, with less than one pixel being used for more normal unsharp masking.

Threshold is the difference in tone before the masking comes into effect - very low numbers will make an apparently smooth area look 'gritty,' i.e. skin tones or a blue sky which seem to be the same colour but actually vary very slightly in tone over an area need higher thresholds than areas with lots of small detail

If you 'check' the 'preview' box you can see the effects before applying them

It's often recommended to apply the effect incrementally - that is, if you want an amount of 100% then apply 50% twice or even 33% three times

I use 100%, radius 0.5 and threshold 7 as a starting point but freely alter these to suit each individual image and I strongly recommend anyone to experiment with the settings to see what they like first - if you don't like it just make sure you haven't 'saved' it until you are completely happy

Adey

Adey Baker said:

- if you don't like it just make sure you haven't 'saved' it until you are completely happy

Adey

Click to expand...

Just a small recommendation from a non-expert. I always do this sort of work on a copy of the original. Then if (when!) I mess up I can always go back.

Sorry to join in late, and if I missed what I am about to say then sorry. Going on Robin's excellent recommendation, when making a "copy" save it as TIFF. This way the image is not compressed when you make changes and save it again. Then when you re-save as a JPEG, you will have less compression, hence, less quality loss.