Sharpening Tutorials

hark

Administrator
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Every once in a while, questions come up about various methods to sharpen. Many involve Photoshop, others use Lightroom, and even other brands of software yield good results. If you have a video or tutorial to link that explains a preferred way to sharpen, please post it below. There are many different ways to sharpen - some work better for certain situations than others - so it's helpful to know more than one method.

Here is an easy video on High Pass Sharpening. It requires using a layer mask, but even if you aren't all that knowledgeable about layer masks, it's not difficult to follow. The default layer mask is white. White reveals the sharpening all over the images. Click on the layer mask, then hit ctrl+i (Windows) or command+i (Mac) to invert the layer mask to black. The sharpening will be hidden. Using a white brush on the layer mask, brush over the areas you want to sharpen.

 
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mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Every once in a while, questions come up about various methods to sharpen. Many involve Photoshop, others use Lightroom, and even other brands of software yield good results. If you have a video or tutorial to link that explains a preferred way to sharpen, please post it below. There are many different ways to sharpen - some work better for certain situations than others - so it's helpful to know more than one method.

Here is an easy video on High Pass Sharpening. It requires using a layer mask, but even if you aren't all that knowledgeable about layer masks, it's not difficult to follow. The default layer mask is white. White reveals the sharpening all over the images. Click on the layer mask, then hit ctrl+i (Windows) or command+i (Mac) to invert the layer mask to black. The sharpening will be hidden. Using a white brush on the layer mask, brush over the areas you want to sharpen.


The great thing about high pass is if you only have say photoshop elements so cant do selective brush sharpening you can use the eraser to remove high pass from any part of the image you don't want sharpening.
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
I'll just pass along that I find it's a good idea to desaturate the layer before changing the Blend Mode when using the High Pass Filter to do a global sharpening. This additional step prevents noise from creeping into your final image which can happen when using the High Pass Filter but, again, this step is more important if you're using the High Pass Filter for global sharpening; if you're going to selectively sharpen as is shown in the video, you probably don't need to worry about the extra step. Still, it's super simple and a good thing to know, in my opinion.

To desaturate the layer press Ctrl+U (Cmd+U for Mac users) which opens the Hue/Saturation dialog box, after selecting the sharpening radius. Now move the Saturation slider all the way to left (-100) and click "OK". That's all there is to it.

Now adjust the Blend Mode to whatever you want.

Using the Opacity slider is another way to help tone down the sharpening if you've taken things too far.
 
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