Creating Stunning Monos 3

clipped from www.digital-monochrome.co.uk

Contrast increasing using USM

The unsharp mask [effectively a high pass filter] is used to sharpen and image, something the name does not suggest, sharpening will help to emphasize texture and detail, it is a crucial part of the editing process especially in monochrome work, this tutorial is based on using Photoshop.

USM sharpening works by using a slightly blurred version of the original image, this is then removed away from the original to find the presence of edges, using the USM filter increases the contrast giving the look of a sharper image, in this tutorial I will also show how USM used at higher than normal amounts will not only appear sharper with better contrast but will make the image pop so to speak and bring out detail, it is best used selectively using layer masks to give greater control within the images, a word of caution, if over used it will increase the pixalization and give haloing to edges, do experiment with the settings and and when using your brush tool vary the amount of opacity when painting back.

This example is an untouched image straight from Raw image with no USM applied

This is the converted image

Now look at the sky and foreground on this image, it lacks contrast and is flat looking.

In the Photoshop dialogue box below I have set the Amount to 68, Radius to 50 and threshold 0, but as said previously do experiment, next you need to copy the image by pressing Cntrl J and have two layers present in the layers palette as shown.

Here's the USM applied at the settings above, you will see the image now looks over sharpened and has accentuated the edge contrast to much resulting in halos especially where dark pixels meet light, plus added pixel clumps are now present in the clear sky region.

The next part is to apply a layer mask by pressing Alt on your keyboard, keeping it depressed and clicking the add layer mask icon in the layers palette, this masks the USM effect out, we need now to paint back the effect using a soft brush with the foreground colour set to white in the tools palette, remembering to avoid painting where light to dark areas meet, on the white clouds I have used brush opacity at 100% and not applied it to the blue area of the sky or the middle foreground trees and houses, if USM was painted to those areas it would start to "block" the shadows up and give a blotchy appearance in the plain sky, if any white areas start to bleach out just change your foreground colour to black and carefully paint the USM out, or you could lower the brush opacity by 50% in those particular areas.

Here's the image with USM selectively applied as described above

The next part will be to open the shadow regions using levels, move the middle slider to the left to open the shadows, then add a layer mask to hide the effect and painting back the lighter areas where required, flatten the image, open levels again, darken the blue sky area by moving the middle slider in Levels to the right, add a layer mask and paint back the darker area.

The final stage is to apply USM to all the image at a low amount but same radius IE : amount 14% radius 50% threshold still at zero, plus adding a touch of Dodge and burn to further enhance the contrast.

Here's the finished result, as you can see only three types of edit used, [I]USM, Levels plus Dodge and Burn,[/I] the image now has four important elements to achieving a good black and white image, contrast, clean whites, deep blacks and texture.

Finished image