How To Sharpen In Photoshop – 3 Easy Ways

How To Sharpen In Photoshop. Photoshop Sharpening for Beginners – Unsharp Mask, High Pass Filter, and Smart Sharpen Explained. Photoshop image sharpening

Have you ever wondered how to sharpen in Photoshop? Well, in today’s video I’m gonna show you three easy to follow ways to sharpen your images in Photoshop coming up. Hey, everybody. This is Charles Cabrera, helping you get started with photography, Photoshop , and Lightroom. Let’s get started.

How to Use UnSharp Mask – Sharpen In Photoshop

So, sharpening should be done at the very last, when you’re done with all your edits. So, I’m going to just create a layer here and, say in this layer I was removing blemishes. In order to use the Unsharp Mask to sharpen in Photoshop, you have to create a stamp layer. That is a layer that is basically a combination of all the layers below it.

So, the way you do that is you come up here to Image. Apply Image. And you take all these defaults that you see here, Merged, RGB, Blending mode could be Multiply. Say OK, and what that’s done is it put all the layers below it into one layer. So now if we right-click and say Convert to Smart Object, so that way when we use the Unsharp Mask we can go back and change things. So now we can come up here to Filter, Sharpen, Unsharp Mask. And here we have all the options for our Unsharp Mask. Now, sharpening works by finding the edges in your photo, making light pixels lighter and dark pixels darker. It increases the contrast around the edges of your image.

So if we move the Amount slider, you can see that it increases or decreases the amount of contrast in the edges of your image. So you can really bump that up to see what it does. Now, the radius manages the level of detail. So the smaller the radius, the smaller the details that the sharpening is gonna affect. And if you kick this radius way up, it’s going to, meaning that it is going to affect larger details. That’s way overdone right there, but you can see it’s affected the whole image, so we wanna really work mainly in the eyes here. So now the Threshold slider affects the areas of high contrast like for the eyes, in this case, but let’s keep the threshold down. So if we bring the amount up to say, 100 just to see the contrast we have and the Radius, the more we bring it down, it’s gonna affect the pores.

At this detail here, a Radius of 1.3, and if I hit this preview here, you can see that the pores of the skin are changing. Not so much the detail in the eye. It’s when you bring this Radius up that it affects. So I’ll bring it back down and bring it back up, and you can see the detail is more affecting the eye as the Radius gets higher. So let’s bring this down a little bit. You wanna work with the Radius and the Amount to get something that looks like it has enough detail and not too much. So Amount 63, Radius 3.7. And if I say OK. So now that we have a Smart Object and this is a Smart Filter, you can click on Unsharp Mask and see you can change any of these settings that you want to. So you can always go back. So I’m gonna change my Amount. Make it a little bit higher here. And say OK. And now that sharpening has actually been applied to the whole image. I just want it around the eyes.

So I’m gonna add a black layer mask by holding Alt or Option and clicking on a new layer mask icon. And I’m gonna paint with white on this layer mask. B for the brush tool. And with a soft brush, flow low, I’m just painting this effect in around her eyes. And a little bit on her lips. And I can click on this eye here. Before. And there’s after. You can definitely see the differences in the eye. Now in the image, the eyes are more where you’re drawn to. And you can keep going back if you want to add more. More sharpening. And if you wanted to, you could paint a little bit on the eyebrow here. And so we purposely wanted these details to show up more, and not on the skin. And that is the Unsharp Mask.

And if I press Shift and click on the layer mask, it shows where the effect is on the whole image. And it’s just a way that you can tell, well maybe you might wanna have it on in other parts of the image, but then hit Shift and click on the layer mask, and you’re back to where you were. So that’s how the effect is on the whole image. That’s how the effect is on just the eyes. Now, you can keep on adding different layers of sharpening, so if you wanna add some sharpening for small details, what you would do is create a new layer. Come up here to Image. Apply Image. And then make a Smart Object here. Again, come up to Filter, Sharpen, Unsharp Mask, and then bring down your Amount quite a bit. And your Radius, and say OK. And then what you would do is put another black layer mask Alt/Option and add layer mask. And you can just paint with white in any area that you want to sharpen.

So, in this case, there wasn’t any area that I actually wanted to add too much small detail sharpening, but I just wanted to show you that you can keep on adding more Unsharp Mask layers like this. And just adjust the Radius and the Amount for the detail that you wanna get. The first way to sharpen in photoshop.

How To Use Smart Sharpen – Sharpen In Photoshop

The second way to sharpen in photoshop is smart sharpening. This is a stock image, but the workflow would be the same if you were working on an image, and say you were doing blemish removal on one layer and that was like the last thing that you were doing in your editing process.

What you would do on this layer is you would come up here to Image. Apply Image. And take all these defaults. They’re usually correct. Merged, RGB, Multiply Blending mode and 100% opacity and say OK. So if you had layers below this they would all be sandwiched into this one layer up here. And then create a Smart Object from this. And come up here to Filter, Sharpen, Smart Sharpen.

Now, Smart Sharpen works very similarly to Unsharp Mask, except that you have a lot more options. The Amount and Radius work the same. One of the good things about Smart Sharpen is it ignores the facial features or the skin details and focuses on higher contrast areas like eyebrows, eyes, hair, beard. The amount sets the amount of sharpening when you increase the Amount it increases the contrast in the edges. The greater the Radius value, the wider their edge effects, and the more obvious the sharpening.

And now we have something new called Reduce Noise. So you have some noise introduced when you’re sharpening. So when we’re reducing noise here, actually increasing this slider. So it’s reducing unwanted noise while keeping important edges unaffected. So remove and one of the better options to use is Lens Blur, so it kind of removes that lens blur and all the effects from it on your sharpening. So these additional options down here. You can fade the amount in your shadows or fade the amount in your highlights.

Radius works the same as Radius up here. And Tonal Width controls the range of tones in the shadows and highlights that are modified. So in this image here you can see that this man in the middle here is already more in focus than the ladies on either side. We’re going to increase the sharpness on him. And I’m gonna bring up my Amount and bring up my Radius. And I’m going to reduce some noise.

So let’s look at just a preview. So that’s before and the after. I think I want to reduce my amount of sharpening down to about 200 or so, 206. And also the Radius there’s quite a bit going on there. So I’ll actually bring it up because I want a little bit more of the overall image. I’m gonna bring my Radius to about 8.3 because I want him to stand out even more here. And here is before, and here’s the after.

Even though he was already in focus and everybody else was out of focus, with the Smart Sharpen you can see that it’s not affecting his skin, it is just affecting the eyes, eyebrows, hair, what he’s wearing. Also what’s good about Smart Sharpen is here you can set a preset. So if I want I can say this is a preset, and name this Sharp1 and save it.

And so a good way to use this is if say, I have a batch of photos that are similar from this shoot, well I can just bring up this preset and use it. And just say OK. So now, like with the Unsharp Mask, I have a Smart Filter. Here is before, here is after. I can come in here and click on the Smart Sharpen, change any of these values, and say OK. Another way to sharpen in photoshop

How To Use High Pass Sharpening – Sharpen In Photoshop

Another way to sharpen in photoshop is called High Pass sharpening one way to sharpen in photoshop. While it’s still a little bit more advanced than other tools, it’s still easily applied. So it’s not a filter that’s found in the Sharpen menu like the Unsharp Mask and the Smart Sharpen. It’s like a combination of steps that you can use to sharpen your image.

So, like the other workflows, if you’re doing a lot of editing on a photo, the last thing you wanna do is sharpen. So if you have your last layer that you’re doing some work on. Again, you wanna come up here to Image, Apply Image. Take all these defaults. So you can either do that, or you can just duplicate your last layer.

So next, you want to desaturate your layer. So to desaturate your image, you come up here to Image, Adjustments, and Desaturate. So the reason you do this is since sharpening increases saturation around your edges, your image may start to look surreal, so desaturating the image during your sharpening will take care of that. Then you wanna create a Smart Object here on this layer. Right-click, Convert to Smart Object. And now what you can do is come up here to Filter, Other, High Pass.

Now here’s our Radius slider that gives us the amount of area that we’re gonna see sharpened. So as you remember before, Radius works like on the low end of the radius. It’s going to sharpen some of these small details. Like in this case, the skin. And as you bring up your radius, you’re gonna see more areas that are gonna be affected by your sharpening. This radius is about 10 right now. You can start to see the eyes and the lips. So right around there is where you’re probably gonna be using this for the sharpening of the eyes and other details. And if you go way too high, you’re probably never gonna use this.

Another thing we can do is, we can actually see this a little bit easier in real-time. Let me cancel out of this. And change the Blending mode to Overlay. And now I’m gonna come back up to Filter, Other, High Pass. And this time I’m going to move my Radius down until I see actually how it is sharpening in real-time. So again, if I bring this up just a little bit I can see that at certain values, like in this case, say the eyes. If I were to leave this at 7.2 and say OK. So that has sharpened the eyes and everything actually, the skin and everything.

And now we’re going to need a layer mask to selectively mask out, or allow the areas that we want sharp to show through. Since we made this a Smart Object, this is actually a Smart Filter. And we can either come in here and click on High Pass and say I want to add a little bit more sharpening. I’m gonna increase this a little bit here and say OK. And I can turn off this eye right here and see how it affects the whole image.

Also, if you want a little bit more sharpening, you can change the Blending modes. So that’s Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light’s giving it more sharpening. Vivid Light even more. Linear Light the most. So this is the only method that’s going to allow you to use a Blend mode to actually change the amount of sharpening that you have in your object. So I’m just gonna take this down to back to Overlay. I was just showing you what you can do with the Blend modes, too.

So now with this technique, we’ve applied sharpening, but it’s applied to the whole image. And I want to include it just around the eyes and a little bit on the lips. So in order to do that I’m going to add a black layer mask. Hitting Alt or Option and click Add Layer Mask. So right now you don’t see any of that sharpening, because the black layer mask has hidden that. And to reveal that, I’m going to paint on the black layer mask with white. B for the brush tool. And I have my flow. I’m gonna bring this up a little bit to 15% just so you see.

And so I’m painting in just around the eyes. And you can see that the eyes are coming in very nicely. And I’m gonna paint some on the lips. And if I turn that off, there is before. There is after. And if I wanna paint just a little bit up around the eyelashes, just right here. I can even add a little bit on the eyebrow. There’s before, and there’s the after.

So now we have a way to use this High Pass sharpening, and it’s totally non-destructive. Now if we want, we can actually duplicate one of these layers and then go back into the High Pass and change the Radius. Say, if you want to just do small details, you can move the Radius slider all the way down and then apply that, and make this a white layer mask on the duplicate layer. And that would show through. And that would be like a small detail sharpening on the whole image. The third way to sharpen in photoshop.

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So now, let me ask you something. Which of these three techniques did you find helpful? Let me know in the comments below. If this video was helpful, give it a like and don’t forget to subscribe. If you want more short and easy Photoshop tutorials, see the ones above. And remember, it’s never too late to learn. See you in the next video.

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