The TLR Pro USM panel is the latest digital photography tool from The Light's Right. It takes the basic features of the Photoshop USM command and extends them to provide a powerful, yet easy to use sharpening tool.

The TLR Pro USM panel integrates well with Photoshop. You can dock it with other Photoshop CS4 panels, like the Adjustments panel.

The TLR Pro USM panel is only compatible with Photoshop CS4 and later. It relies on technology from Adobe Labs that was not available until CS4. In fact, the TLR Pro USM panel relies on not just one but two emerging technologies from Adobe Labs: the Adobe Panels SDK and Adobe PatchPanels.

With Photoshop CS4, you can preview changes to your photograph as you make adjustments to the Unsharp Mask settings. Effective sharpening relies on more than USM settings. Layer blend mode, layer opacity, and especially the Blend If settings from the Layer Style palette can have a significant visual impact on the overall sharpening effect. With the TLR Pro USM panel, you can preview the total sharpening effect from all these settings. You can, for example, make USM adjustments and at the same time adjust the Blend If settings and then with a single click, see the total effect on your photograph.

Another benefit of the TLR Pro USM panel is support for custom presets. Third-party sharpening plug-ins tend to offer predefined sharpening settings. Most tools offer little flexibility for refining their settings. They might allow the user to adjust layer blend or layer opacity or select from a handful of settings, but the actual USM settings are hidden in the code. Regrettably, most third-party tool manufacturers for Photoshop plug-ins do not believe in open source.

All of the settings with the TLR Pro USM Panel are right there in the open. You can start with one of the predefined presets, modify the settings, and then save your own preset. This makes the TLR Pro USM panel helpful for capture sharpening, creative sharpening, etc. You can create presets that are "tuned" for your particular digital camera or scanner.

Features

There are two views: Basic and Refine Settings. Basic Settings focus on the USM essentials plus layer basics for blend mode and opacity. You can also select a preset from the Basic Settings view.

Refine Settings view has all of the features of the Basic Settings view and adds access to Blend Ifs. This is a powerful feature. The Blend If sliders can have a very strong impact on the sharpening effect. You can use them to taper off the effects in the extreme shadows and highlights.

You can easily swtich between Basic Settings and Refine Settings by clicking the small button in the lower left corner.

The TLR Pro USM panel can be docked like the Adjustments and Masks panels that ship with Photoshop CS4. Just load it and drag it over where the other panels are docked. After that, when you open Photoshop, the TLR Pro USM panel will be there.

The TLR Pro USM panel works with RGB, CMYK, Grayscale, and L*a*b modes. Few Photoshop plug-ins support L*a*b or even CMYK. With L*a*b mode, Lighter Color and Darker Color will be substituted for Lighten and Darken blends. Lighten and Darken are not supported for images in L*a*b. The sharpening effect with L*a*b mode is applied just to the Lightness channel.

There are five small buttons at the bottom of the Basic and Refine panels. From left to right, they control the following:

1. Toggle Basic / Refine Settings.
2. Add Layer Mask.
3. Invert Mask.
4. Toggle Layer Visibility.
5. Apply Settings.

There is also a fly-out menu. The About Box is accessed from the fly-out menu. You can close the panel from the fly-out panel, too.

Settings are not automatically applied as they are changed by the user. There are many possibilities, and applying sharpening effectively is typically done through simultaneous adjustment to several settings. Just press the Apply Settings button in the lower right corner to apply the settings.

The TLR Pro USM panel uses Smart Filter technology. This speeds the application of sharpening adjustments. You can adjust the zoom of the photograph and see the full sharpening effect with this panel as you make adjustments. You can also toggle off he sharpening layer's visibility from the panel to see before/after effects.

If the active layer is named TLR Pro USM, the settings will update the Smart Filter layer when they are applied. Otherwise a new layer is created.

Full preview of sharpening adjustments is more flexible with the TLR Pro USM panel than it is with the USM dialog in Photoshop. With Photoshop, you can change the USM settings but other adjustments, like Blend If settings, are inaccessible simultaneously. Not so with the TLR Pro USM panel. You can easily view the total sharpening effect as you make USM adjustments with the TLR Pro USM panel.

The panel supports both "sticky" settings and presets. There are several presets that ship with the panel. You can add others. Presets save all of the details -- USM settings, layer blend, layer opacity, and Blend Ifs. To make a new preset, there are just a few steps:

1. Adjust the settings.
2. Give the preset a name in the text box.
3. Click on the button for Add Preset.

You can also delete presets that you add. The default presets cannot be deleted.

If you want to change the settings for one of your presets, simply delete it and then add a new preset with the same name.

If you select a preset and then customize it, the preset will change automatically to (None). When there is no active preset, the last settings become sticky. They become the default the next time Photoshop starts. If a preset was active, those will be the defaults.

As a convenience, the TLR Pro USM panel includes some layer mask functionality. To add a layer mask for even more control over the sharpening effect, there must be an active selection. This can come from another tool, like the TLR Edge & Surface Masks action set or the scripts in the TLR Professional Mask Toolkit. Then press the button for Apply Layer Mask. The TLR Pro USM panel can also invert the current layer mask and toggle layer visibility on and off.

Installation

Adding the TLR Pro USM panel is easy. There are four files. Just add them to the Plug-Ins\Panels folder under your Photoshop CS4 installation.

If you want to keep your panels nicely organized, you can add them to a subfolder. Here's an example of the Plug-ins\Panels folder with subfolders for each CS4 panel.

If you did all of this with Photoshop running, exit Photoshop. Otherwise, fire up Photoshop and go to Window | Extensions. You should find USM as an option tere. Click on it, and the panel should open. You can now dock it, if you prefer.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are owed to John Nack and Bernd Pareides from Adobe and to Dr. WooHoo for their technical suggestions and comments.

Download

Comments and suggestions for future releases are appreciated. Feel free to use the comment system. The TLR Pro USM panel is the foundation for future CS4 panels from The Light's Right.

You can download TLR Pro USM panel by clicking here . . .

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