- Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs.
In this video, I want to show you a really cool trick
to sharpen the right way your photo.
There is a huge mistake that I see a lot
of photographer doing,
where they oversharpen globally their photo.
This is killing incredible photos.
Every Wednesday, I coach dozen of photographers,
and I see this mistake coming up almost all the time.
That's why I had the idea to make this video.
I'm gonna show you a three-step formula
to locally sharpen your photos.
It's gonna take your drama to the next level.
It's a little trick, but I use it on every photo
that I sell out to my galleries.
This is something that I see a lot of people not doing.
So let's do it.
Follow me, you will see, simple but amazing.
(angels chorusing)
Okay, so I will show you the three simple step
using this photo of Big Sur that I shot years ago.
It's one of my favorite, you know, photo of this area.
This is called, I think, the Julia Pfeiffer Beach,
beautiful beach.
It's like a little cove
and you have a little waterfall there, which is really cool.
So you see what I see a lot of people doing
and because I, you know,
I have a live coaching every Wednesday
where I coach other people in their retouching,
and I see so many people doing this.
They have, well, worse is when they takes texture
and clarity all the way.
So the whole photo looks like super oversharpened.
It's like, ah, it's in your face details.
But I see a lot of people doing that.
And I can tell you from working with my galleries,
that's not the way to go.
I also see people not using clarity.
What they do is just boost the texture,
and they also like boost or sharpen like this.
I don't know if you can see it,
but it's like, everything is super sharp on the photo.
I don't know on the video if you can see it,
but, you know, even if they don't add the texture
or the clarity, oversharpening just looks so fake.
You know, you're gonna ruin,
I've seen so many beautiful photo being ruined by that.
So I'm gonna show you three simple steps.
It's very short.
You will understand the concept.
And I want to show this to you on this photo of Big Sur,
because Big Sur is an amazing area.
This is Julia Pfeiffer Beach.
I love the cove.
I love the waterfall that's there.
It's just, wow, it's an incredible place.
And the time that I was there,
I had just this incredible, incredible sunset.
It's really one of my favorite landscape.
I wanted to share this with you.
So, okay, this is what I do.
Step number one.
Step number one is I always look
what ISO I shot the photo on.
So you see, in this case, it was ISO-200.
So when it's ISO-100, ISO-200, what I do
is I go here at sharpening.
First, I noise reduction and usually anything
that's above 100, I would, you know, because it's 200,
I would probably go to about 15 of noise reduction,
because 200 ISO is gonna bring about noise.
This was an old, this was I think shot
with my Canon 5D Mark II, so it was a bit of a noisy camera.
Great camera for colors, but a little bit noisy.
So I usually do about 15 noise reduction,
and I do my famous number, which is I take 100 and I divide.
Sorry, I take 100 and I take out
what I put in noise reduction, so 15 in this case.
I'm gonna go up about 85.
Voila.
So that's good.
And now, so that's the first step,
so that's like your basic sharpening.
The next thing that I do is I make sure that my masking
is at like 50 or 60.
See, masking and I'm holding down the option key,
so you can see anything which is black,
is not gonna get sharpened.
So I don't want to sharpen the sky.
I don't want to sharpen anything, but where there is detail.
So I usually put my masking all the way to 64
and that gives me like a basic sharpening.
Like, that's just the base, base, base, right?
But if you want to give an extra punch,
here is the magic secret.
Please don't tell anybody.
I'm just curious.
Please share this video.
By the way, subscribe to this channel
if you're not subscribed yet.
I try to make one to two videos per week.
And if you can smash the like button that would really help
because other people can see the videos.
That would be really nice.
And leave me a comment.
Tell me what you'd like to learn.
I need inspiration.
Okay, so here we are.
So here is the secret.
The way I do it is what I call local sharpening.
You see, if everything is super sharp in a photo,
you're not helping the viewer.
So what I usually do is very simple.
Once I've got my basic sharpening, I take a brush.
And on this one, you can go a little crazy.
I'm gonna double click on effect.
I'm gonna add some texture, a little bit of clarity,
and a little bit of sharpness.
So a lot of sharpness, clarity, big brush,
and I'm gonna make sure the flow is all the way to 100,
and the density all the way to 100,
and feather all the way to 100.
And then I'm just gonna sharpen these trees here.
I'm gonna sharpen here, these rocks here a little bit,
maybe here and voila.
Step number three, very simple.
So now this is very sharp.
Then I'm gonna create a new brush,
and I'm gonna do the opposite.
Minus texture, minus sharpness, minus clarity.
And I'm gonna unsharp those clouds, for example,
or even things which are a little far away
like the sea and the clouds.
And now, it's gonna be hard for you to see,
let me zoom in if you can see it.
But you're gonna have like very sharp trees and rocks,
and like a much more fuzzy sky.
And that's giving you, when you do your print,
that's gonna give an additional contrast.
You know, you've got contrast of colors,
like blue against red and green.
That's one contrast.
Then you've got the contrast of luminosity,
what is really dark with what is really bright,
and now you've got contrast of what's really sharp
and what's a little bit out of focus,
and that's the way to get great prints.
So remember, step number one, basic sharpening.
You do a bit of noise reduction.
You deduct that from the number 100.
Step number two.
Take a brush, and you sharpen just the foreground elements
with a bit of clarity and sharpening,
and then you do the reverse for the back.
And voila, simple.
By the way, if you want to know how I retouched this photo,
or how I do my pro retouching, check out this video
that I did a couple of weeks ago on the Musee d'Orsay,
one of the most famous museum in Paris.
Really cool sunset.
I show you my whole retouching workflow.
The video starts now.
Thank you very much.