Adobe Lightroom

With all the marvelous things Photoshop Lightroom does, one thing it really doesn’t do is professional-level image sharpening. That’s something for which we still have to jump over to Adobe Photoshop. However, if you don’t mind spending just a few minutes in Photoshop now, you can make this process almost fully automated from here on out, which will save loads of time in your daily workflow.

Step One
We start this process in Adobe Photoshop, so go ahead and open a photo in Photoshop that could use some sharpening. We’re going to create an action here in Photoshop. Photoshop’s Actions feature is basically a step recorder that records your steps as you perform a particular task. Once you’ve recorded your action, you can apply that recording (those same steps) to a different photo automatically—and much faster, which is why actions are ideal for repetitive tasks such as sharpening.

Step Two
To create an action, choose Window > Actions to display the Actions palette. Click on the Create New Action icon at the bottom of the palette. It looks just like the Create a New Layer icon, and is circled. Clicking this button brings up the New Action dialog box. Give your action a name (let’s call it “Luminosity Sharpening” for this example) and click the Record button. Notice that the button doesn’t say OK or Save; it says Record because it’s now recording your steps.

Step Three
Now that you’re recording, choose Filter > Sharpen, and choose Unsharp Mask. When the Unsharp Mask dialog box appears, enter 120% for Amount, 1.0 for Radius, and 3 levels for Threshold; then click OK. This setting adds a nice snappy amount of sharpening to your photo.

Step Four
Now choose Edit > Fade Unsharp Mask to open the Fade dialog box. From the Mode pop-up menu, choose Luminosity. We’re doing this so our sharpening is applied only to the luminosity of the photo (the detail areas) and not to the color in the image. By avoiding sharpening the color in the photo, we avoid some of the color halos and color artifacts (annoying little color specks) that sometimes appear when you sharpen the full-color image. The result is that we generally apply more sharpening without damaging the photo, so this is a good extra step.

Step Five
Press Command-S (PC: Ctrl-S) to save your photo and then Command-W (PC: Ctrl-W) to close the photo. Now that the photo has been saved and closed, go back to the Actions palette and click the square Stop Recording button at lower left on the palette. That’s it—you’ve created your action. Next, we turn the action into a droplet by choosing File > Automate> Create Droplet.

Step Six
You’re probably thinking, “What’s a droplet?” I’ll explain that in the next step (it’s easier to explain then). For now, just follow along with me in the Create Droplet dialog box. At the top of the dialog box, click the Choose button, choose your Desktop as the destination for saving your droplet, and name this saved droplet “Unsharp Mask.” In the Play section of the dialog box, choose Luminosity Sharpening (the named we gave our action earlier) from the Action pop-up menu. You can ignore the rest of the dialog box, and just click OK.

Step Seven
Now look on your Desktop. You’ll see a large arrow icon, pointing to the name of the droplet. Here’s what a droplet does: If you drag-and-drop a photo that’s on your Desktop, or in a folder on your computer, right onto this droplet (a JPEG, TIFF, PSD, etc.), the droplet automatically launches Photoshop, opens that photo, and applies the Luminosity Sharpening action to that photo you dropped. Then it saves and closes that sharpened photo automatically (because you recorded saving and closing as part of the action). You also can create batch actions, so that you can drag-and-drop an entire folder of photos onto the droplet and it will process each one automatically. Cool stuff.

Step Eight
Now that we’ve built our Unsharp Mask droplet in Photoshop, we’re going to add that droplet to our Lightroom workflow. Go back to Lightroom and choose File > Export. When the Export dialog box appears, go down to the Post-processing section. From the After Export pop-up menu, choose Go to Export Actions Folder Now.

This pop-up menu lets you choose what happens to your exported photos once they leave Lightroom. We’re going to add something to this list in the next step, but to do that we have to get to the folder on your computer where Lightroom stores all this stuff, and the quickest way to get there is to have Lightroom bring up the folder for us, which is what we’re doing in this step.

Step Nine
When you choose Go to Export Actions Folder Now, it brings up the main folder with all of Lightroom’s extras (such as the Export Actions folder).Now, take that Unsharp Mask droplet on your Desktop and click-and-drag it into the Export Actions folder. If you look inside that folder, you’ll see the droplet you just dragged in there. Now you can head back to Lightroom and close the Export dialog box.

Step Ten
In Lightroom, select a photo that you want to export from Lightroom as a JPEG, and that you want sharpened in Photoshop before you send it to a client, burn it to CD, etc. Choose File > Export. When the Export dialog box appears, choose Burn Full-Sized JPEGs from the Preset menu at the top, as a good starting place. In the Export Location section of the dialog box, choose the destination folder for your saved JPEGs. Then give your photo a name, and choose your JPEG quality setting. Finally, in the Post-processing section at the bottom of the dialog box, from the After Export pop-up menu choose Unsharp Mask (your droplet). When you click Export, your photo will be saved as a JPEG; then Photoshop will automatically launch, open your photo, apply your luminosity sharpening, and save and close the photo, so it’s fully sharpened and now ready to send to your client.