I've produced a large handful of CS4 panels. The latest have been so-called "Pro" sharpening panels. There's one for capture sharpening, another for output sharpening, and a third for overall USM sharpening.

Doumentation is still limited. That's something I need to work on. Some videos, too. I was thinking of trying for a brown bag session, next week maybe, to discuss the sharpening panels.

I intend a few more "Pro" sharpening panels. Those will be creative sharpeners. One for portraits that will use an edge mask for sharpening and a surface mask for skin smoothing. Another will be for landscapes. A third will be for textured surfaces or to give photos extra crunch. I'll also add a "Pro" panel for creative blurs, where you can choose the type of blur, etc.

That will round out the panels in a similar way to te TLR sharpening actions and scripts. A whole "kit" of "Pro" sharpening panels.

The panels can be used with sharpening in one pass, two passes, three passes, or more. You just need to select the "right" panel for the kind of sharpening you intend.

Let's start with the TLR Pro Capture Sharpening Panel. It is intended to provide a gentle first sharpening pass to reverse the effects of digital capture. If you sharpen in your third-party RAW software, in ACR, in Lightroom 2, etc. then you should not use the TLR Pro Capture Sharpener. Only use it for the "first" pass of sharpening. If you sharpen elsewhere and then use the TLR Pro Capture Sharpener, the sharpening effect will compound and you can expect visible sharpenng artifacts in the end.

It's OK to sharpen in ACR or Lightroom 2. Both have improved in that regard. For most photographs, you'll get perfectly fine results with capture sharpening in either tool. It's convenient to do capture sharpening during RAW conversion.

The advantage of the TLR Pro Capture Sharpening Panel is control. You have control over all of the significant settings that have a visible effect on apparent sharpness. You determine the amount of sharpening, the type of sharpening, and where the sharpening gets applied. All of that is done with a Smart Filters layer, so you can easily adjust the effect anytime.

Some users prefer to use something like ACR or Lightroom for most of their photographs and reserve the TLR Pro Capture Sharpening Panel for critical work. That's an excellent compromise. Convenience when you can and more control and flexibility when you need it.

Remember, though, that although the TLR Capture Sharpening Panel has a lot of settings, you can easily save your own presets.

The TLR Pro USM Panel is intended as a general creative sharpening panel. If you prefer a two-pass sharpening technique, you might want to begin with this panel. You can easily add a layer mask and then apply the sharpening effect to those features that will benefit from some additional sharpness. For single pass sharpening, the TLR Pro USM would probably be your preferred choice.

One creative sharpening effect available with the TLR Pro USM panel that I like very much is the LCE preset. LCE stands for Local Contrast Enhancement. It works a lot like Clarity in ACR or LR. Michael Reichmann (from Luminous Landscape) and Thomas Knoll (the guy who created Photoshop) thought of the idea. It is USM sharpening with low Amount and high Radius. It works like a haze reduction filter. It's great for giving most photographs some extra "pop."

The sharpening effect with the TLR Pro USM Panel is stronger than the capture sharpening panel, but you'll find that the effect of the presets is not nearly so strong as unadorned USM sharpening. Scary sharpening artifacts result from applying the wrong sharpening (a bad choice for Radius), too much sharpening, or applying it in the wrong place. The TLR Pro USM panel applies sharpening on a layer, reduces the opacity of the layer, and further restricts it from the extreme highlights/shadows. The results from this panel are a lot more sophisticated than just canned USM settings.

You can get the full USM effect, if you want. Just set layer opacity to 100% and whack the BlendIfs to 0,0,255,255.

The TLR Pro Output Sharpening Panel is tuned for different resolutions, paper types, and output devices. It combines both USM and High Pass sharpening. As with the other "Pro" sharpening panels, you can create your own presets. You can also adjust the effect to suit your particular output device.

I'm sure other questions will come up. I'm very interested in hearing about user experiences and suggestions for improvement. So, feel free to add your comments. :)

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