Dumping Your Data

The first question is easily answered. There are three methods available to remove the files from your memory card. The first is to transfer the files wirelessly through your app. The second option is to connect your camera through a cable, such as USB. The third and recommended way is to transfer the files directly off the card using a card reader. This is the fastest way to “dump” your data, and it doesn’t require you to use up your drone batteries while you are doing it.

Most aerial cameras use microSD cards. These tiny cards can be placed into an SD adapter and treated like an SD card. Many devices, such as the MacBook Pro, come with SD card slots that you can plug the card into directly. Alternatively, an external Micro SD or SD card reader works just fine.

If you are shooting on multiple cards, then investing in a good card reader is a great idea. I use the Lexar UR2, which supports UHS2 and can transfer from three microSD cards simultaneously. Always use Class 10 or faster cards. I talk about cards in chapter 2.

Where Are You Putting It?

The second part of the equation is where you are putting the images. You are transferring your images to a hard drive. This could be a spinning platter or an SSD (solid state drive). It could be an internal or external drive. All of this really depends on your workflow. Personally, I move my photos and videos onto an external hard drive. I shoot a lot of footage and need flexible storage, so I use an array of external drives. I am a big fan of using external RAID drives because of their size and redundancy. I also look for speed, so a Thunderbolt connection is great. USB 3 is OK, but it’s 4.8 Gbit/s. Avoid USB 2—it’s a lot slower. USB 4 is the same speed as Thunderbolt 3 and 4. Thunderbolt 3 and 4 are up to 40Gps and on it will go. Get the fastest drive that fits your budget. For photos, this doesn’t matter as much as it does for video.

Where Is It?

This is where digital asset management comes into play. There are many management systems you can use. The important thing is to be consistent. Whatever management system you use, make sure you stick to it so that you don’t accidentally delete important files. Have a system for cataloging your downloaded files. You can sort the main folders and subfolders by camera, by date, by location, or some other way. Beware with multiple MicroSD cards, because of the file naming on DJI drones. They restart numbering on each card after formatting. You can use continuous file naming, but after 999 it restarts. It’s not uncommon to have multiple images with the same filename.

Personally, I sort by camera and location. I have a main folder, called Drone. I then sort by location: country, state, city, and finally, specific location. If I shoot the same location multiple times, I create a numbered folder for each shoot; this prevents me from accidentally overwriting other files with the same name. This is where I dump all the files when I come home from a shoot.

The second and most important part of organization is metadata. File-based management has its limitations, but metadata is far more powerful because of how quickly it makes finding files; it also leads to better version control. I use Lightroom to catalog all my footage and images. I have a catalog for all my aerial photos and videos. I then create collections and subcollections. These collections are based on locations. I also add keywords to the photos as I import them. Keywords and collections make it really easy to find images later on for processing. A lot of the information, such as dates, times, and GPS coordinates, can be useful and are written into the files.

You can also use smart collections in Lightroom to automatically create collections for things like HDR images and your processed images. For example, I made a smart collection that automatically includes all TIFF and PSD files for this book. All the images I have processed in Lightroom and Photoshop appear in this collection, which saves me the time of digging around trying to find things.

Catalog

The catalog is where you save all your photo information. Lightroom doesn’t actually store your photos. It knows where they are and creates a reference to them. It keeps a little text file for each image in its database (known as an XMP). Lightroom is just a database that lets you change settings. This text file contains the EXIF information that the camera writes, such as shutter speed, time of capture, and so on. It also stores the metadata that you add, such as keywords, and it contains the Develop settings—the things you change in Lightroom, such as the brightness, contrast, gradients, etc. When you look at a photo in Lightroom, what you are seeing is the program reading the text information and displaying the photograph accordingly. You change this information by moving sliders.

The database is called the catalog. You can have multiple catalogs in Lightroom, but you can open only one at a time. I created a catalog where I keep all my aerial photos separate from my other photos.

When you want to view all the photos in your catalog, make sure to click All Photographs at the top of the Catalog panel in the Library module. If you don’t choose All Photographs, you won’t see all your photos and you may think some are missing. This is our home base (Figure 6.3).

Scroll down a little bit and you will see the Folders panel. This shows the actual location of the physical images on your computer’s hard drive or external drives. If you want to change the location of photos, don’t change them on the drive, because Lightroom won’t know where you’ve moved them. If you drag the images from within the Folders panel, you can relocate them and they will also change physical location on the drive. To summarize, move the indexed files inside Lightroom, not on the drives themselves (Figure 6.4).

Collections

There are many times when you don’t want to sift through all your photos. Maybe you want to look at photos from a particular shoot or from a specific location. This is what collections are. Collections are sets of photographs from the entire library. It’s a great idea to make collections, because you can quickly group photos together. When you click a collection, only the photos in that collection will show (Figure 6.5).

To make a collection, click the little + button on the collection and type in a name. If you have photos selected while creating the collection, you will have the option to include these photos in the new collection. If you don’t have any selected or choose not to add selected photos, you will have a blank collection (Figure 6.6).

Photos can easily be added to collections by dragging them into a collection from Grid view or from their folders. You can add a single image or multiple images.

When you add images to collections, they do not move from their original location; you are just grouping them together in Lightroom.

TIP You can drag a folder from the Folders panel into the Collections panel and a new collection will be created with the photos from the folder

Keywords

Keywords will help you find your photos. You add keywords through the Keywording panel on the right side of the Library module (Figure 6.7).

Finding Images in Lightroom

All this fancy metadata doesn’t mean much if we don’t have a way to use it later.

Keywords and other metadata can be searched by using the filter bar in Lightroom. Choose View > Show Filter Bar, or press the / key (Figure 6.8).

Choose a criterion from across the top: Text, Attribute, Metadata, or None (to turn off filtering). If you want to search the entire library, select All Photographs from the Library panel or select a collection to restrict searching to the photos in the collection.

ATTRIBUTE

A useful option on the filter bar is Attribute. I use this all the time to quickly display all the video files. There are a number of different ways you can filter attributes (Figure 6.9).

At the far right of the Attribute panel in Figure 6.10 are three buttons labeled Kind. Click the last one, which is a little filmstrip icon. Now all the photos will be hidden and all that remain are the video files—that’s a huge time-saver!

Basic Edits in Lightroom

Lightroom is a great place to start making adjustments to your images. The adjustments in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) are identical. This means you can start in Lightroom and if you choose to open a photo in Photoshop as a Smart Object, you have direct access to your Lightroom adjustments from within ACR. This also means that the following tutorials will work in either Lightroom or ACR. Also, ACR and Lightroom aren’t restricted to the RAW format. They also work with the JPEG, TIFF, and PNG formats. RAW is the preferred format to shoot because there is more information and dynamic range in a RAW file. Also a RAW file supports a 16-bit color depth, whereas jpg is limited to 8-bit color.

Fix the Lens

The first thing we need to do is remove the distortion from the lens. GoPro cameras usually have more distortion than many of the others, but all wide-angle cameras have some distortion. Lightroom has built-in profiles for most of the cameras you’ll be using. If it doesn’t, try something similar and see how it looks (Figures 6.11A-6.11C). The newer DJI Drones have built-in profiles, so there is no need to apply a lens profile to them; in fact, no profile will show if its built-in.

1. Switch to the Develop module at the top of Lightroom. (I have collapsed the left panel by clicking the arrow in the margin to provide more working space.)
2. In the right column, scroll down to the Lens Corrections panel.
3. Click on Profile. Choose Enable Profile Corrections.
4. Choose the make of the camera. In this case, it’s DJI. Many other manufacturers are supported, including GoPro.
5. Choose the model of the camera. Once you do this, the profile will be applied and you should see a reduction in lens distortion (the fisheye effect) and vignetting (darkening of the edges). Under Model, you may not see your exact model, so try using something close. Currently, the Phantom 3 FC300X seems to work well for all Phantom 3 and Phantom 4 cameras.

Crop and Straighten

The next step is to straighten the image. Sometimes your gimbal isn’t correctly leveled, or perhaps the wind blew it off a little. If this is the case, the best place to straighten is the Crop & Straighten panel (Figure 6.12).

1. Click the Crop icon at the top left of the Develop module.
2. Click the Level icon in Angle.
3. Drag the tool along the horizon line. This straightens the horizon.

You can also manually drag the corners to change the rotation of the image.

This is also the place that you can crop the photograph to remove distractions or to change the composition if you so choose.

Color Correction

Because the color of ambient light changes based on the time of day and on whether it’s sunny or overcast, we often need to correct the overall color of the photo. Sometimes the color can be spot on, but we might want to warm it up a little or adjust it creatively.

Here is how to correct the color in a photograph (Figure 6.13).

1. Under the Basic panel in the Develop module, click the Eyedropper tool.
2. Move it over an area that should normally display as a neutral gray or white. Usually gray works best because often the white is blown out. You will see a grid that identifies the exact color under the eyedropper.
3. Click the gray to apply the color correction. If you don’t like it, try clicking a different area.

COLOR CORRECTION TIP Near the end of the day, such as at sunset, try looking for a gray area that is in shade. This often produces the most natural results.

You can also slide the Temp slider to make a manual color correction.

Tonal Corrections

We are now going to move on to the tonal corrections. This is where many people begin their editing. To see what they are missing by not starting with a corrected image, look at the before and after images as they look thus far.

Tonal corrections are achieved by adjusting the brightness of the image. The brightness can be broken into three main areas: shadows, midtones, and highlights. These tonal corrections can be made to make the photograph look natural, or they can be pushed to extremes for image enhancement and exaggeration. Feel free to choose the style that you prefer. All of this is going to happen in the Basic panel in Lightroom (or ACR).

SHADOWS

The Shadows slider enables us to recover detail in the very dark areas of a photograph. Be careful not to overdo this, as you can easily end up with a faux HDR look. Not all photos will need shadow recovery. Move the slider to the right to open up the shadows and reveal details (Figure 6.16).

Adjusting the Shadows and Highlights sliders will reveal more of the dynamic range that was captured but hidden in the RAW file (or, to a lesser extent, in the JPEG file). Use of these sliders will reduce the contrast of the photo and make it look a little washed out. That’s OK. Don’t worry about contrast yet; we will get to it soon. Also keep an eye out for noise. If you open up shadow areas too much, you will see speckled noise appear in your photograph. While a little bit is acceptable, too much will ruin the image.

EXPOSURE

The Exposure slider adjusts the overall brightness of an image. Even though it affects the entire image, it’s where you can tune your midtones (the grays). Sometimes I begin with the Exposure slider if the image overall is too dark or too bright. Whether I begin with Exposure or wait until after Shadows and Highlights, I always check it at this stage of the adjustment. It’s a balancing act. To adjust exposure, move the Exposure slider to the left to darken or to the right to brighten. In this case, I barely moved the Exposure slider, because not much adjustment was required (Figure 6.17).

WHITES

At this point we are looking at setting the contrast of the image. What is contrast? High contrast is having clean, bright whites and deep blacks in the shadows—more of a punchy image. Low contrast is akin to looking out a dirty window. The picture can look faded.

You could move the Contrast slider to the right to add more contrast, or to the left to reduce it and increase dynamic range. I rarely move the Contrast slider because I prefer separate control of the highlights and shadows. By using the Blacks and Whites sliders, I can choose high contrast in the shadows but low contrast in the highlights.

There are two ways to use the Whites slider. If there are highlights or areas of white that have turned milky or gray, moving the Whites slider slightly to the right can clean these up and produce clean, crisp highlights. This is its main use. A secondary use is in a situation in which we need to recover more highlights than the Highlights slider was able to; moving the Whites slider slightly to the left will bring out more detail. Since there are very few pure whites in this image, this works well (Figure 6.18).

BLACKS

The Blacks slider is where you push the darkest shadows, without detail, into pure black. This gives the most contrast punch. An image without true blacks can look washed out and lacking body. Move the Blacks slider to the left to darken the shadows (Figure 6.19).

When an area of shadow is solid black with no details, or when highlights are solid white with no details, it’s called clipping. Usually the goal is to show as much detail as possible, (while keeping it tasteful). You usually want to set the Blacks and Whites sliders to add contrast but avoid clipping your image. Here is a tip to help you do that: Hold down the Alt key (Option key on Mac) and move the Blacks or Whites slider. The image will initially appear blank white. As you move the slider, areas of the image will start to appear. These are the areas that will be clipped if you apply the slider. Use this technique to quickly identify when clipping will begin to help you choose how far to move the sliders (Figure 6.20).

This little trick also works with the Exposure, Shadows, and Highlights sliders. Figure 6.21 shows an image that is adjusted right to the clipping point using the basic adjustments. It produces a very natural result, which is preferable to some people. In our example, we have slightly exaggerated the details, which is something I personally like with the small cameras on the Phantoms and GoPros. With the Inspire Pro (X5), I go for a more natural result because the sensor detail is better. How far you move these sliders is entirely up to you, of course, and we all have different preferences.

TEXTURE

The texture slider is the newest of the three sliders. This is really great for revealing surface textures. A little bit of this adjustment can add dimension and make an image feel like it has touchable depth. It’s also worth noting that using a negative number can smoothen textures. In the past, people have used negative clarity to smoothen textures, but it’s a practice I never cared for, because of the artificial appearance. With texture it now works quite nicely. Notice the subtle textures on the tile roof and water in this image.

CLARITY

Clarity was the first of the presence tools introduced to Lightroom and Camera Raw. It was introduced at a time when the grungy Faux HDR look was all the rage. This tool increases midtone contrast. It adds fine halos in the midtone region, thus making the image pop and appear to have more definition. Be careful with this tool because it can make a photo pop, but it can also make it look over-processed very easily. Most of the time, I opt for texture over clarity, but it certainly has its place if used subtly. Overuse and your images will have that 2010s grungy faux HDR effect. If that’s what you are aiming for, go for it. Otherwise just be gentle.

DEHAZE

Dehaze was released with the most fanfare of the three tools. It was first revealed as a “sneak” at Adobe Max. It has been marketed as a miracle tool to reduce glare and haze in an image. While it does a remarkable job of doing what it was intended to do, I have found it has an even better use. Adding some Dehaze can bring out texture in clouds in a way no other tool does. I love to pop clouds with this tool. When you use Dehaze, note that it crushes the blacks. Usually you can compensate by moving the Blacks slider to the right.

VIBRANCE AND SATURATION

The Saturation and Vibrance sliders increase or reduce the amount of color. The difference is that Vibrance looks for areas with a low amount of color and boosts those more than areas that already have a lot of color. This allows you to add color without clipping the existing color in the image. A little vibrance in skies, water, and sunsets can go a long way (Figure 6.30).

Gradient

When shooting outdoors with lots of sky, you will find it’s very common to get a very bright sky against a dark foreground. This is understandable as the sky is basically one large light source. The challenge is to darken the sky down enough to see the clouds and sometimes the sun (sunset, sunrise) whilst keeping the foreground legible. Later on, we will look at the more advanced techniques of HDR and Exposure blending. For now, let’s look at the simplest of solutions. We will create a gradient to make the sky darker.

1. Click on the masks icon (1). Choose the Linear Gradient from the menu that appears (2).
2. You will see a mask panel appear—this shows the gradient mask.
   • TIP   You can drag the Masks panel to the side panel and dock it if you like (Figure 6.33).
3. Figure 6.34 shows the panel docked
4. To apply the gradient, click and drag on your image. A rubylith color will appear. Because everything in Lightroom is nondestructive, you can reposition the gradient at will.
5. In the Gradient adjustment panel, darken the sky area. Notice just the rubylith area of the mask is adjusted.

For skies, I always start by reducing the Highlights slider to reveal cloud detail and sky color. At this point, change the exposure to a pleasing level. On brighter skies such as this one, you can slightly reduce the whites. Be careful not to overdo the whites or your skies can look unnaturally gray.

Using AI Tools to Darken the Sky

In Lightroom 2022, there was a huge update to the masking tools in Lightroom and Camera Raw to include some AI (Artificial Intelligence). These tools are called Adobe Sensei. This tool can automatically detect subjects and skies in images. They are perfect for selecting key areas of photos and selectively adjusting them.

The most common one you will encounter is the sky selection.

Let’s use this photograph of a yacht returning to Newport Harbor at sunset. We can see some nice reflection in the water, but this image could be enhanced by making the color in the sky really pop.

1. Choose the Mask.
2. From the dropdown, choose Select Sky. You will see Sky under the Mask tool and the sky will be selected in your image.
3. Make the appropriate adjustments to make the sky pop more. The main two adjustments are the same as we used in the gradient. Lower Highlights and exposure.

TIP Sometimes reducing dehaze slightly can really bring out the details in clouds. This particular image didn’t need it.

You can see here, the sky is darkened.

However, part of the water was also selected.

You can refine the AI selection to fix it because it isn’t always perfect.

Here is how to refine a selection.

1. Click on the Mask in the Masks panel. You will now see two buttons, Add and Subtract.
2. Choose the Subtract button—this will make a new mask that will undo portions of the existing mask.You can choose any of the tools from the Subtract mask (or the Add mask, if you want to add to an existing selection).
3. Choose the brush option.
4. With the brush, choose the size and density. To simply paint away the existing selection, turn the density to 100.As you paint on the mask, you can paint away the areas that you want to remove.
5. When you have finished making the edit, choose the close button to close the Masks panel.

A nice final touch that can look nice for sunset shots is to slightly warm up the Temperature.

This brings back the color I saw at the time of shooting.

Making the Subject Pop

Another AI tool is Select Subject. This is one you won’t use as often for drone photography, but for those low shots it can be a really powerful way to pop your subjects.

Here is a photo I shot at Eaves Movie Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with a phantom 4 pro. I just love the incoming storm in the background. It would be really nice to brighten up this old western church just a little bit without affecting the wonderful sky, or the grass in the foreground.

Click on Masks and choose Select Subject.

Lightroom will now select the church. I know it’s like magic. The AI actually analyzes the photo and knows it’s a building.

Increase the exposure very slightly. It’s worth noting, that a small adjustment can go a long way.

The result is a brighter, cleaner-looking building, while the rest of the image is unchanged.

Adjustment Brush

The most powerful tool for local adjustments is the Adjustment Brush. This tool allows you to brush on the adjustments wherever you like. You can apply the basic adjustments to any portion of the photo. Here is a good way to use it.

Make your global adjustments to the image in Figure 6.56. We want to add some details to the shipwreck but not to the rest of the image.

1. Click on the Masks button and then the Adjustment Brush to make it active (Figure 6.57).
2. Adjust the Size, Feather (softness), Flow (painting opacity), and Density (overall opacity) settings (Figure 6.58).
3. Turn on Auto Mask if you want to detect edges and paint inside the lines; otherwise, turn it off.
4. Paint over the object you want to adjust. (Figure 6.59).
5. Make your desired adjustments to the masked area. Note, I added a little bit of texture (Figure 6.60).
6. The result is shown in Figure 6.61.

Noise

You could think of noise as film grain; the difference is that some people find film grain pleasing because it’s a natural by-product of the way we used to make images. Noise is just bad, and it’s not an attractive type of grain. Noise is a by-product of the sensor working hard and trying to capture details. There are three main causes of noise:

• Shooting in a low-light situation. Noise will especially manifest in the shadows.
• Shooting with the ISO turned up high. Many quadcopter cameras will show noise at any ISO higher than 100. Try taking a few test shots to find out at what ISO the noise becomes unacceptable on your camera, and then avoid going above that number. When the ISO is turned up, it boosts the sensitivity of the sensor, which produces noise.
• The sensor getting hot. If you are shooting a lot of video without any cool-down time in between shots, you might start to see noise.

Figure 6.62 displays noise. It’s not always easy to see the noise until you zoom in close.

In Figure 6.63 you can clearly see the noise. It’s widely recommended to view images at 100% for noise reduction and sharpening. There are two types of noise: color noise and luminosity noise. Color noise is when the grain on the images contains colors that don’t belong. This is the easiest type of noise to reduce, and usually a very small amount of color noise reduction will do the trick.

In the Detail panel, look for Noise Reduction. Slide the Color slider to the right until the grain color looks even and the colored speckles are gone (Figure 6.64).

The second type of noise is luminosity noise. This is the grain structure that appears—the tiny dots everywhere. I chose this particular image because it’s easy to see the side effects of noise reduction in the tire tracks in the sand. Move the Luminance slider to the right until the noise is reduced or gone. Play around with the Detail and Contrast sliders to restore as much detail to the image as you can. It’s really a compromise between the level of acceptable noise and the loss of fine detail in your photo. In this case, I got quite heavy at 100%, maybe too heavy, but I wanted you to clearly see the difference (Figure 6.65).

Zoom back out and you can see the effect the noise reduction had on the entire image. This should look pretty decent for a social media post or online viewing, but for print, you may want to reduce the Luminance slider a little bit. Don’t forget that we haven’t applied any sharpening yet, and that will bring back some detail; sharpening is covered at the end of this chapter (Figure 6.66).

Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic Aberration, otherwise known as color fringing, is a result of the different colors of light at different wavelengths hitting the lens and sensor. An easier way of explaining it is to look at a photograph at 200% magnification. Figure 6.67 displays color fringing as a purple halo around the white bows of the catamaran.

In the Lens Corrections panel, click the Color tab to reveal the Defringe tools. Select the Remove Chromatic Aberration check-box, and adjust the Amount slider to reduce or remove this problem (Figures 6.68–6.69).

Radial

The Radial adjustment is immensely useful when it comes to focusing the viewer’s eye on a portion of a photo. This works a lot like the Gradient tool, but it works as an oval or circular shape that can be any size, angle, or location. Adjustments can be applied to the inside or outside of the elliptical selection.

In Figure 6.70, the island looks interesting, but the bright background competes for attention. We want to darken the surroundings without the rest of the image being affected, like shining a spotlight on it (Figure 6.71).

1. Apply a mask and choose Radial adjustment. Drag the radial shape.
2. Select Invert Mask so that the outside of the radial is affected.
3. Darken up the exposure.
4. Adjust the feather so it’s nice and soft.

Figure 6.72 shows the result.

Vignette

One of the quickest ways to add a professional touch to a photo and draw the eye into the image is the use of a vignette. I’m sure you have seen them many times. What was once considered a flaw of the lens is now a popular effect. A rounded lens receives more light in the center than around the edges, which causes a darkening effect. There is a Vignette filter in Lightroom, but we aren’t using it for this creative vignette. Instead, we are using the one in the Effects panel in the Develop module.

Whereas a regular vignette is applied to the original shape of a photo and can be cropped out, a post-crop vignette will fill the image, even after we crop it or change its shape.

Let’s take a look at the components of a vignette (Figure 6.74). The actual vignette you use will generally be much subtler, but in these examples, the settings are turned all the way up so you can clearly see what each setting does.

• Amount: To the left is darker; to the right is brighter. In this case, it’s all the way to black.
• Feather: Softens and blends the edges. Here, it is all the way down and shows a hard edge.
• Roundness: From a rounded rectangle shape all the way to a circle.
• Midpoint: The size, from just in the corners to most of the image.

Here are some real-world settings and application of the vignette. You will notice I use these on a number of images in the book. After we apply the effect, notice how it draws you into the photo and adds an almost subliminal border to the image.

Creative Use of Dehaze

I mentioned the Dehaze adjustment already. Now I want to share a couple of useful creative applications of this effect. These aren’t effects you will use often, but they are nice to have tucked away in case you need them. We can use them in conjunction with the Gradient tool to add or decrease atmosphere. An additional use for dehaze is bringing out details in clouds; it works really well for this. You almost always have to move the blacks slide to the right a little bit to compensate for dehaze.

Add the Gradient tool and zero it out.

Add just a little bit of Dehaze and see how it gives the sky and clouds a boost.

We can also produce the opposite effect by reducing Dehaze, which will create some fog in the image.

In this example, we added a gradient and reduced the Dehaze slider. You can also use Lightroom masks to protect the subject. Here we subtracted from the gradient and chose select subject. This excludes the subject (boat) from the gradient.

Sharpening Workflow

Whenever you’re doing any sharpening, make sure you’re viewing the photograph at 100% view so you can see the details.

The Amount slider determines how much sharpening is applied. Start with this slider; otherwise, nothing else will do anything (Figure 6.81).

Hold down Alt/Option to get a preview as you slide the Radius slider. Adjusting the radius will determine how bold the sharpening applied to the edges will be. Sharpening is achieved by adding contrast around the areas of detail. Too much and you will start to see halos around the edges. Figure 6.82 shows a small radius.

With a larger radius, as in Figure 6.83, you can see what the Radius slider does to achieve sharpening.

Adjusting the Detail slider will bring out textures and lower contrast details. Holding down Alt/Option provides a preview of the detail areas that are being sharpened. Be careful—too much detail and a moiré pattern will start to appear on the image (Figure 6.84).

Finally, the Masking slider will help you keep the sharpening effect while reducing noise or moiré that may have been introduced. Hold down Alt/Option as you move the slider to see where the sharpening will be applied (white areas) and where it will be masked or hidden (black areas). A zero amount will result in no masking and the preview will be solid white. An amount of 100 will result in no sharpening to the image at all and a solid black preview. To prevent the introduction of noise, find the amount where the edges and areas of important detail are being sharpened while larger areas without detail are being masked (Figure 6.86).

In Figure 6.89 you can see an area of the photo at 100% with sharpening applied. Be sure to examine different parts of the photo to make sure the sharpening is pleasing throughout the image.

Figure 6.90 shows the full image with no sharpening applied.

Figure 6.91 shows the entire image after sharpening. It might be difficult to notice at full size. You want the sharpening to make the image crisp, but you don’t want it to look like it was obviously manipulated.