TLR Texture Sharpener is a new creative sharpener from The Light's Right. Emphsize the word creative. This is no routine sharpening action intended to be used on every photograph. This sharpener is special. It's designed to emphasize rough textures, like weathered wood, stone, brick, fabric textures, and the like.

You might not use this sharpener all that often, but you'll be glad to have it available when you want to emphasize surface textures with some extra sharpening.

This is no simple sharpening action that creates a layer and applies USM sharpening. This is a sophisticated sharpening tool for Photoshop CS3/CS4 that combines applies USM sharpening six times, using a luminosity fade each time.

The basic idea, using multiple rounds of USM sharpening with luminosity fades, belongs to Jeff Schewe. I modified his idea by adding highlight and shadow protection, using a Smart Filters layer for maximum flexibility, and wrapping it up in a Photoshop action.

How It Works

The TLR Texture Sharpener uses the Photoshop CS3/CS4 Smart Filter feature. There's a little known property of Smart Filter layers. The layer can have a blend mode. So can the individual filter effects. In addition, each filter effect can be faded.

What this means is that one layer does the job of six USM sharpening layers with the TLR Texture Sharpener:

• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 100,0.5,5 and Fade to Luminosity 50%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 500,0.5,3 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 500,1,3 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 500,5,3 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 100,5,0 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.
• Unsharp Mask filter (USM) is applied at 100,10,0 and Fade to Luminosity 25%.

You're left with one layer, not six. The opacity is set to 65%, which makes it easy to adjust the effect without altering the filter settings. Blend If sliders protect the extreme highlights and shadows. A Luminosity layer blend avoids color shifts. And, because the action uses the Smart Filter feature, you can easily adjust the filter settings, making the effect easily customizable.

This is one creative sharpener where you will likely want to adjust the effect. At the 65% default opacity, the effect can be pronounced. For the sample photo with weathered barn wood and straw, I reduced the opacity to 25%.

Creative sharpeners are typically applied with a brush. There is a layer mask filled with white by default with all Smart Filters layers. You can use the Brush tool with black as the foreground to paint the sharpening effect out selectively. Or, you can fill the layer mask with black and then use the Brush tool with white to paint in the effect.

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