What filters do you apply to get good thumbs?
 

I am just experimenting with some thumbs and was corious what kind of effects and filters you use when you want to create some HQ thumbs.

Besides smart blur, lighting effects and sharpen what else do you use to get them look good ?

bump for you :)

Thanks for the bump mate :thumbsup

Levels is always good..

Here's another way that may work for you,
Duplicate layer
gaussian blur
set the blending mode to "soft light"
adjust opacity

Learn to adjust your levels properly through photoshop, also watch your color balance and curves... Soft filters such as light gaus. blur can be of help. Keep an eye on contrast also, a lot of pics lose it here.

usually a sharpen, then a sharpen edges followed by a contrast adjustment to about 21-28 and a brightness level about the same

I make a lot of thumbs in photoshop i apply in action filters sharpen 30-50% fade sharpen 70-90% later again the same and improve contrast and brightness.

i make some hq thumbs look at my tgp http://www.hollygalleries.com

It really depends on what you want to use them for and how much time you have on your hands.

It's garbage in, garbage out, so start with good quality high-res images.

Photoshop is the way a lot of people do it - kinda slow - unless you do a batch run. Worst part about PS is the file sizes come out twice as big as they have to.

With a good quality image - in two steps:

1. Batch to size
2. Apply an unsharpmask filter - Radius:2px - Threshold:10 - Amount: 50-80 (depending on the set).

Best of Luck,

Archer

Thanks guys:thumbsup

I'll try some of them out . I use the hand blur tool but need something more.