Reduce image size and sharpen - Photoshop Action?

[Paul Iddon]

I have my own workflow which is as unique as probably everyone else's on the forum

However - an important part of showing our images comes from the reducing the edit sizes down for the web, and retaining (or improving) the sharpness so they still look bloody marvellous!

Now then - I use 2 actions in PS - one to reduce the size of my original TIFF files (which I save separately) followed by a one to take the image down to web sizes and sharpen them up for forums/Facebook, etc., at the same time.

The question I ask is: Does anyone have their own creation (an action for Photoshop) or do you use one from the internet created by another photographer?

Or something else....

Paul.

 

[Chris Summers]

I mostly use Lightroom for editing and exporting images, even if I may have done some editing mid stream in another program like Topaz or Luminar Neo. I export them and choose the size and resolution I want for the SM platform I'm going to post them on. I also select "Sharpen for Screen" at that time to punch them up a bit. But I like your idea of creating the actions in PS.

 

[Rob2563]

Hi All
After editing in LR I normally upload a copy to PS and maybe do a few more tweaks and export the images at the size required which is mostly just for my local photo club, at the highest JPEG image quality and sharpening for screen , I don’t upload much to social media , so its really new to me to be honest I often wondered why they never looked as good if I post to the local club site

I guess I better take a look for recommended settings , same for this site is there anything we should do for best image quality ?

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

I've been using Tony Kuyper's action panel built to support his luminosity work flow. I only occasionally use the luminosity portion but there's a resize/sharpen action that I use constantly. I've tried once or twice to reverse engineer it but decided not to as it's been well worth the price I paid for the panel half a decade ago (he's on TK8, I still use version 4).

Effectively it creates a flattened duplicate image of what I have and then performs a multiple step resize (you input the length of one of the sides) and then adds a sharpening layer on top (you can tweak the opacity) as well as a Curve, Levels, and Saturation layer should you want to tweak it. From there I use the old Export for Web function with no additional tweak. I'm sure the process is documented somewhere out there. It's just nice to have it in a box where all I need to do is input the length of the long side and hit a button.

 

[Paul Iddon]

I've discovered a Greg Benz free action for this now - seems to give decent output.

Paul.