Last updated 20th June' 07 : D White

Although I've tagged this tutorial for the Mac, it also works on PC's (and even the screen shots are for the PC.) When I get time I'll redo the shots for the Mac just so it looks legitimate.

Here is the original Image. Please feel free to copy this and use it for the tutorial.

Step 1 - Duplicate your layer and do a High Pass Filter

Before we do anything I really recommend making a copy of your original image. This way we can get back to the original... just in case.
Click Image>Duplicate... This will allow you to preserve a copy of your image which you can just minimise for now.

Make a copy of your image. Just click and drag your background onto the New Layer Icon at the bottom of your Layer Stack

Now we need to run the first of our High Pass Filters

Click Filter>Other>High Pass... This first pass will use a fairly low Radius. For low res images use around 1.0 pixels. Higher res images may need to go upto around 4.0 pixels.

Once you've done this then set the blend mode to Vivid and flatten the image (Layer>Flatten Image...)

Step 2 - Second High Pass Layer

Copy your layer again (as above).

Just like above, we are going to add another High Pass Layer. This time we are going to increase the radius

As you can see I've used a radius of 10.0 pixels. A higher resolution image will need a higher radius.

This time we change the blend mode to Linear Light

Reduce the Fill to about 30% (or to suit your taste). Flatten the image the same way as mentioned above.

Here is what we have so far. You can quite easily stop here if you want.

Step 3 - Add a Sharpening Layer

This is the final step. We need to add a sharpen filter. We will actually use some unusual settings. If required make another copy of your layer (as mentioned above).

Now we are going to apply a Unsharp Mask Filter (Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask...)

Set the Amount to 100%, and the Threshold to 0%.

Since my image is only a low resolution one, I've used 1.0 pixels for the Radius. Higher resolution images will require you to push this much higher (even as far as 30 pixels). This part really is to suit your tastes and shouldn't really be overdone. You should be able to see the overall result in your main view.

Step 4 - Shadow/Highlight (optional)

Personally I think that this particular method requires some tweaks to the highlight/shadow function to get it closer to Lucis Arts. You can find this in Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Higlights...

As you can see here I've dropped the highlights by 10% and lifted the shadows by 10%. Again tweak these to your taste. In fact, sometimes this step can be missed out. It's just my personal taste.

That's it really. It isn't quite as good as using the nice plug in found for the PC version and needs you to do some tweaking but to be honest I've had some fantastic results.


This first shot is the 'creamy' Lucis Arts' version

This is the 'not so creamy' filter version. (PS: Because of the low resolution, I think I just went too far on the Sharpen step. You could always go back and try different radius values to see if you get closer or even skip that whole step.). Still quite nice though and better than nothing at all.

Obviously play around with the different radius settings to see what results you get. Have fun

Credits

This tutorial is based quite closely to one I saw on Flickr by O Casasola. I've tweaked parts but the principle is there from his tutorial in the Strobist group.