PS:CS4 - Unsharp Mask (CMD+F) VS. Unsharp Mask

[nickXedge]

I recently started figuring out Photoshop CS4, mostly on my own by just fidgeting around on some of my RAW images. I did a little reading today and it seems that "Unsharp Mask" is pretty much used by almost everyone who PP their photos.

I started playing around with it and it doesn't seem to be difficult to figure out how to sharpen an image using this feature. Naturally, I followed these steps: Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask and then mess with the values until I gain some understanding of how it works.

Afterwards I noticed that right under Filter, it shows Unsharp Mask CMD+F. It's obviously an automatic function for using this feature that is so popular. The questions follow; does anyone use this instead of playing with the values on their own? Does anyone know how it chooses the values or the defaults? It seems obvious, but is it better to use the manual version?

Thanks in advance for all the clarification.

 

[gr8tfly]

CMD-F will invoke the last used filter, using the filter's last settings. It's not tied to the Unsharp Mask filter - that's just the last filter you used.

 

[bocomo]

if you do option-cmd-f it will reopen the last filter dialog instead of automatically reapplying the last filter

 

[nickXedge]

Ahhhh, how embarrassing. Thank you for the prompt responses. Next time I'll poke around a bit more before I ask a silly question.