Wednesday Q&A - Photoshop - Sharpening By A Nose

It's nice when a photo op walks right up to you.  That look on the face of the deer in today's image kind of says to all.  It was a stare down to see who would move first (and in which direction).  I had just dropped the missus off at work and was leaving the companies property when I saw this deer munching on some foliage.  I slowly stopped the car and even slower I turned my head.  Didn't want to spook her.  She looked up, turned her head and looked back at me.  I hit the button to lower the window and she just watched the window go down.  Still looking at me.  I reached into the back seat and grabbed my camera bag.  Fiddled around getting the camera out and changing to a longer lens and she was still just looking at me.  I took several shots out the driver's side window and she just stood there looking at me.  By now I was thinking this girl might be daring me.  "Come on out of that car and you'll get a deer hove up your a$$."  Not being the brightest photographer, that's exactly what I did.  Slowly pulled the handle on the door, equally slowly swung the door open and dropped one foot to the pavement.  She still just stood there looking at me.   I put the strap around my neck and rose out of the seat.  Finally was outside the car and she was still doing the stare down thing.  I looked down to make some adjustments to the camera.  That's when she started her charge.  Thankfully it was into the woods and not at me.  Pulled the camera up to my eye and snapped off a burst of shots of her white tail bouncing into the forest.  To find out how the shot was finished, hit the "Read More".

The crop, in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 (LR4) is about 50%.  The original had more of the body, more room above the head and a little more room left and right.  The crop is strictly to make the image a little more powerful.  The overall image was sharpened using LR4's Clarity Slider.  A very short trip over to Adobe Photoshop CS6 (CS6) to use the Sharpen Tool (no keyboard shortcut - it's grouped with the Blur and Smudge Tools)  on the eyes and nose (snout ??) and back to LR4.  The big "improvement" to the tool was introduced with CS5.  Bryan O'Neil Hughes did a quick little video back when CS5 was introduced.  He had it in his "Hidden Gem" series of tutorials.  Check it out.  The "tagline" on the YouTube video is "it just works".  I'll agree to that.  Have a good day.