Quick Tip: “Option” key when sharpening in Lightroom

Sharpening is a crucial step in your digital workflow, however my experience is that it is also one of the most misunderstood. Every digital image requires a certain level of sharpness (or unsharp mask) applied to it, the reasons are quite technical and they revolve around the pattern in which the pixels are arranged in your digital cameras sensor.

Sharpening is best applied only to the edges of your subjects and usually you want to take care not to apply it on areas with smooth backgrounds such as sky or sunset/sunrise gradients. Using Photoshop this required the creation of masks to make sure you were applying the sharpening selectively, and this oftentimes was a real chore.

Luckily for those us that are Lightroom users, we now have a much easier way to apply sharpening and apply it correctly and with some assistance.

Sharpening is applied within the “Develop” module in Lightroom. Once in develop mode make sure to zoom in to 100% by pressing the “z” key on your keyboard.

When you are ready to apply sharpening to your images the proper method is to zoom in to 100%, then position your image so that you can see the most important part of your image, the area where sharpness is most critical. In most cases when shooting wildlife this will be the eyes.

Viewing an image at 100% within the develop module

As in the example above I positioned this Pronghorn such that I can clearly see its eyes and the outline of the head.

In this image I want to apply sharpening only to the Pronghorn and not to the background so what I need to do is create a “mask” that selects only those areas with edges, this mask controls which areas of the image sharpening should be applied to. Lightroom provides a very simple way to create this mask. Once you are at 100% hold down the “option” (or alt key on PC), and start sliding the “Masking” slider under the “Sharpening” section.

As you slide that masking slider you will notice that your image will change and the display will show you a black and white outline of your image. As you slide that slider notice that the areas in your image that are smooth gradients and that contain no edges turn black, while the edges are delineated with white. What you are doing is simply telling Lightroom to selectively apply sharpening to those white areas while leaving the black areas untouched. Adjust that slider until you have a good outline of your subject as in the image above.

Next adjust the Radius and detail in the same manner (holding down the option or alt key). Here what you will see is an “embossed” version of your image, which will help in selecting the best setting that highlights the details in the image you want to sharpen.

Adjusting Radius

Adjusting Detail

At last you now want to adjust the amount of sharpening to apply. You will find that since you created a mask and are selectively applying sharpening, you can in fact apply a significantly greater amount of sharpening without degrading the image.

You can use the same technique (holding down the option or alt key) when adjusting the amount of sharpening, Lightroom will display a black and white version of your image, to allow you to more easily discern the amount of sharpening you are applying. I however prefer to do this with the original color image, it’s at your discretion.

Adjusting the amount of sharpening while holding down the option or alt key

As with anything else, there is the possibility of over doing it. So be careful and be judicious with your sharpening.

As always, if you have any questions or comments use the comments section below or you can reach me via twitter at http://twitter.com/jpons.

Juan