Razor Sharp - Sharpening and workflow for Social Media 

"Tag it as Mesa Arch and be done with it." Love it! 👍

TK Actions or Jimmy McIntyre's Raya Pro 4 will do all this in the blink of an eye, but thanks to Nick, we know what those actions are actually doing. This is a super useful video. Thanks Nick.

Wow, now I must re upload all my photos to the web. What a big difference, huge thanks!

You always explain things so much better then most!

Video saved to my photography folder !! Awesome !! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 thank you !

I absolutely love the new videos you are putting out.

Nice! I commented on your "Instagram Goes Dark" video asking if you had any tips for uploading to IG and I ended up with a whole video on the subject just a couple weeks later! Thanks! It was really helpful and in-depth. If only I had known you were cooking this up! I learned a lot from this so thank you. My images on IG always get a ton of artifacting no matter what I do. I was starting to wonder if maybe the more followers or engagement you have the more "bandwidth" IG gives your images. I'm excited to try these tips. You would be surprised how bad some of the other videos on this are because there is a lot of misinformation. One other tip I found that you didn't mention is to use a .JPG compressor (like JPEGMiniPro) to compress the image as small as you can so that the IG compression algorithm doesn't do as much to it. Also I wonder if that Topaz AI software that Mark Smith did a video on would help eliminate some of the artifacting from sharpening and what that would look like once uploaded to social media. Oh, and the only thing you mentioned that I wasn't sure about was you said that on IG the max size is 1920px on the long-edge but it is actually a 1080 px width max. The height of an image can be up to 1350px. I got that info from their help page (help.instagram.com/1631821640426723). Then again, they also allow aspect ratios beyond what is listed on that page so the sizing may be different too. Who knows? What I am sure about is that this video was super helpful and informative! Thank you again, Nick.

I'm new to Instagram. Thanks for the tip on using Google Drive for getting photos from a Windows desktop to the iPhone. That resolves a lot of frustration. And the tips on sharpening for web are new to me and much appreciated. Keep up the good work!

I'm new to your vieos, but have learned from every one I've watched including this one. Had no idea about this. Thanks so much.

I like that your vids are right to the point . Like steak and potatoes. No dancing around with goofy ass music. Swinging your arms around etc. 🤣

Another worth full video. Again and again Nick, thank you thank you and another thank you so much for your effort making this kind of video. I hope to see you in Canadian Rockies one day 😉

Great video Nick, great explanation of the process we all need thanks for sharing 👍

No one has commented on this...Between timestamps 00:07:57 and 00:08:03 there is an extra layer that appears in the layer stack. A third copy of the underlying layer? Where did this layer come from? Is there an additional sharpening step that was left out?

Great Video Nick. Like you, I use TK for all my sharpening and exporting. One shortcut to your manual process. If you select Image - Duplicate in PS it gives you the option to just duplicate the merged layers only.. same as doing the stamp then copy and paste.. but faster..

Thanks mate! Very helpful and clear explanation. Keep it up! Have a good one.

Awesome as always! A big thank you, Nick.

Hi Nick. Thanks for video! Perhaps you know this, but in new versions of Photoshop you can use / and * to divide or multiply the number of pixels by the desired amount. Directly in the field for resizing, for example, "600/2" and Photoshop will create a picture of 300 pixels

Thanks Nick. Just tested it out. Certainly makes the images look crisper. Cheers for tips 👌👌🙂

Appreciate the education you share. Now to put it to use so I can climb another rung👍

Another great video Nick! Been using TK actions for a long time, definitely worth the money!

Nick, I came back to this vlog to refresh my memory and discovered that I don't understand it. In PS, you resize a new file to 4096, sharpen, mask out oversharpening, make a copy of the sharpened layer with mask, put them in a group, check for halos, and resize to 2048. What was the second copy of the sharpened and masked layer for? Did you intend to do a second sharpening on the 2nd copy at 2048? Thanks if you have time to come back to this. Your channel is great!

Hi Nick, loving the vids, keep up the good work! One tip I have for you (that you may already know!): instead of doing a calculation of 2048x2 or 1080x2 or [whatever longest size of the photo is]x2, increase the size by percent, and type in 200. That should double the size of the picture. And then reverse it at the end by typing in 50% to make it half the size again. HTH

Hi Nick. Outstanding tutorial. Huge thanks.

Thanks. I use TK7 to sharpen for web. I don't have to give it much thought. I'd like to see your process for sharpening for print.

Thanks for sharing Nick!👍🏽

This was a big help. Thanks Nick!

Great vid Nick- thank you.

Always enjoy your videos Nick. I appreciate your attention to detail. I just consider that to be way overkill for Instagram. 99.9 percent of ppl on Instagram would never notice a difference. I think the average view time of a photo on instagram is a few seconds. I tend to like photos that dont look perfect.

Teaching us well, you are... Jedi Master

Thx for these interesting tips! (and all the others BTW...) I'm using Raya Pro and I think the action "resize/sharpen" works quite similarly.

Have you seen the new sharpening technique from the new lumenzia version? How does it compare to this in ? Better or worse?

Photoshop does rock and the TK7 panels rock even more! But I'm in the process of switching to Capture One and Affinity Photo (because Adobe no longer rocks) and one of the biggest headaches I have is trying to work out how to replace the TK7 panels :(

Seriously excellent Nick, seriously 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺

Good stuff! Thank you!!!

Nick !!.. thanks for sharing!

Thanks Nick! Super Helpful! What about Raya Pro? I´m using their sharpening no edge, but the highlights are getting sharpened. I need to exclude the highlights! Thank you! That´s eye-opening! Greetings from Germany :)

BTW. My extension includes an option that duplicates the image automatically if checked.

You are awesome 😁👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

Great tutorial. I do have PS, but unless it's a special image case, I tend to stay in Luminar, or starting now ON1 (so LR basically). I know you prefer the PS method, but I'd love to know if you have any best practices for working with sharpening and just LR or similar?

Thanks Nick for another great video, but I seem to have missed what you did on your second pass of sharpening. At about 8 minutes in, (what I assume is) a second sharpening layer appears without explanation?

Great video brotha! Thank you.

Great explanation! Also high five for the ESO install lol

Nice vlog nick enjoyed this

Great topic to go over!

Hi NP... I know this is kind off a very old video.. But I wanted to know weather You STILL use the same procedure for exporting the image or anything different nowadays.. TIA..

Thanks Nick !

Would you employ this technique when submitting images that will be displayed on a digital projector?

Thanks Nick - once again this is great advice. Do you have a specific flow for prepping your images to go out to a print lab? Just curious what level of sharpening you do then, and how you deal with colour space.

This is one of those videos which is way to advance and not needed for me, but I did watch the whole thing.

Great video Nick! I never knew all that about sharpening. Let me ask you this. I see so many Ps vlogs using TK actions or Lumenzia, or others. I bought your Ps tutorials a while back, and am still learning. It's tough letting go of that Lr crutch. But every time I watch something on RU-vid they're using these actions. Should a person buy these? If I don't know enough how to use Ps to its fullest potential, how can I make the best decision on which product to buy? Which ones would you recommend? *confused*

can you repeat that one more time ? lmao thanks for getting this one out there im going to try it now!

Kudos for your Photoshop knowledge and skills. I would also use this as exhibit A as to why I don’t use this overly complex tool. All that work to sharpen? Not for me.

Thanks for this. Now need to translate it into Affinity Photo speak. 😃

Just FYI that first step will it just be easier to duplicate and then flatten all layers?

“Atta Boy” 😍

📝💯

I'm thinking given the size images my camera produces (4928 on the long edge) I can skip that first resize or is there some magic in having it exactly 2x the final output?

Hi Nick, not sure but do you have a tutorial on exporting photos for printing on photopaper. Thank you

Hey! I was wondering with your ps skills why dont you record your own actions?

Thanks Bro!

Hi Nick! Would it be possible for you to do a quick tutorial on how to add the fuzzy edges that you put on the sides to the vertical images that you put on instagram? Normally people put white or (now with dark mode) black borders. But I prefer the edges that you put on them, since they are way more pleasant for users who has instagram in light AND dark mode. Thanks in advance!

You got a Fuji?

Nick can you share your workflow for doing large prints.

Nice video, well explained with bts information (I like that). You use 2048px ob the longest edge correct?

I don't stress too much about the sharpness of my photos on social media. The longest anyone really looks at a photo on their feed it like 0.3 seconds and I promise they're not examining the sharpness. I'll take a little more time when it's going on a webpage for full size viewing or something

Does the Nik Collection have similar options? I downloaded it when it was still free; but I'm just now getting into Photoshop editing, much less plug-in use. I now hang my head in shame; then await your reply. Thanks as always!

Hey Nick, where is Michelle Shainblum?

Non-photoshop user . . . eyes glazed over :)

Legend

Do you use the same technique when you send a file off to print?

That was way over my head. I don't know Photoshop that well yet. I think I need to find a college course for Photoshop and Lightroom. I know Lightroom a lot more than Photoshop.

Keep mind that "save to camera roll" will slightly change your picture. not by a lot it will. If you want a 1:1 copy of your image you either AirDrop it or use Send Anywhere. Best regards

Thanks Nick! I needed this! This is totally going to speed up my workflow for posting to the web. @naturebypamfitzpatrick

If you’re supplying someone like a real estate with images for their site, is this the same process?

Thank you! Have you ever tried Gimp?

What file format you use when you export for web? ...i use a plugin which can post to instagram from lightroom but many times results are unpredictable because i do not have much control. If i export as jpeg quality falls also.

I use TK Actions to save for the web but never used this approach of selecting the side and opening a separate image with that mask. If you choose save with extra sharpening is that the same as what you are doing here? I will start using what you show here if it is better to allow sharpening while protecting the dark and minimizing haloing. Thanks for this video.

I saw so many vids where they said that instagrams long end is 1350 px

How do I get TK Actions though?

FFS, how the hell am I supposed to remember all that? I have always enjoyed taking a few images but once I received my transparencies back from the lab I just binned the rubbish and then sat back and enjoyed the good shots. Now, whilst recognising and thoroughly enjoying the fantastic advancements in the gear that I use, I find I'm having to spend more and more time sitting in front of a computer screen pretending to know what the f... I'm doing when in actual fact I obviously don't really have the faintest idea!! Modern photography is so different from how I learned. Incidentally, although I'm probably a bit of a Luddite, I genuinely embrace digital capture and am not one of these old fogeys or 'super trendy bright young things' who believe that film is the only way to go. I would never go back to the bad old days of film for shooting wildlife; I just wish I could handle the computer side of it a bit more easily. 😬😬

Tag it as Mesa Arch and move on! 🤣🤣🤣

Nice try, but you lost me.

You're razor doesn't look like it's very sharp to me. Just sayin'.

Another excellent vid Nick :)

Thanks for sharing Nick!👍🏽