Most people don’t even realize they are destroying their photos when they sharpen them. Right now, I’m going to show you the best way to sharpen photos, in Photoshop without damaging your photos. Today, we’re going to use two examples, we’re going to use a person and a landscape. So just get straight to the point. Lets duplicate the layer so we can do a before and after . Filter>Sharpen> Unsharp Mask. This is the adjustment a lot of people use and it’s a great option.
Now, generally speaking, I like to keep the radius under 1 and then take our amount up to around 120. I’m not going to see a lot of difference till you get around about 100. But what I want to do is I want to push this a little bit further so I can show you what we want to do. So let’s push this radius higher and I’m going to push this up now. I see a lot of people do this. They push it up high. Now, obviously, this is damaging it because you can see the white is blowing out (I call this sizzle).
OK, here’s THE trick. Choose this layer and grab the white triangle. Now we’re going to drag the white to the left. Let me show you before. That’s before we roll it off. Notice we’ve got halos around the edge of the guitar here, halos around, see those halos around the tuning pegs, her bracelet. Hit that preview, boom! Let’s use a landscape photo to really show this. This is what I just showed you and this is where it sizzles.
The nice thing about here is we have the ability to fade the highlights. So watch this, fade the highlights. Why is it not fixed? Because we need to set the tone and tell it what the highlights are as we move over. Now, it starts to move more into the mid tones. So this gives us a little bit more control because we can choose exactly where we want to. Using the fade is exactly the same as using the Blend if trick before. So smart sharpen is like Unsharp mask with the Blend If (fade) slider built right in.
Do the shadows. Let’s look at how these methods of sharpening affected the smooth areas of the image. Look at the sky, if you look at the unsharp mask. Notice how it increased the noise in the soft area in the sky as well. So it’s not as targeted. So I hope this opened your eyes a little bit with how to sharpen your photos and avoid that sizzle, which I see in so many photos. I’m curious what you think.
An "unsharp mask" is actually used to sharpen an image, contrary to what its name might lead you to believe. Sharpening can help you emphasize texture and detail, and is critical when post-processing most digital images. Unsharp masks are probably the most common type of sharpening, and can be performed with nearly any image editing software (such as Photoshop). The sharpening process works by utilizing a slightly blurred version of the original image. This is then subtracted away from the original to detect the presence of edges, creating the unsharp mask (effectively a high-pass filter).
Note: Step 2 combines the three images using a "mask overlay," which is when image information from the layer above the unsharp mask passes through and replaces the layer below in a way which is proportional to the brightness in that region of the mask. If the resolution in the above image is not increasing, then why is the final text so much sharper? Note how it does not transform the edges of the letter into an ideal "step," but instead exaggerates the light and dark edges of the transition. Note: Unsharp masks are not new to photography. They were traditionally performed with film by utilizing a softer, slightly out of focus image (which would act as the unsharp mask). The positive of the unsharp mask was then sandwiched with the negative of the original image and made into a print.
Why are these light and dark over/undershoots so effective at increasing sharpness? It turns out that an unsharp mask is actually utilizing a trick performed by our own human visual system. The human eye sees what are called "Mach bands" at the edges of sharp transitions, named after their discovery by physicist Ernst Mach in the 1860's. These enhance our ability to discern detail at an edge. Note how the brightness within each step of the gradient does not appear constant. On the right side of each step you will notice it is lighter, whereas on the left it is darker - very similar to the behavior of an unsharp mask.
Fortunately, sharpening with an unsharp mask in Photoshop and other image editing programs is quick and easy. It can be accessed in Adobe Photoshop by clicking on the following drop-down menus: Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Amount is usually listed as a percentage, and controls the magnitude of each overshoot. Radius controls the amount to blur the original for creating the mask, shown by "blurred copy" in the TEXT illustration above. Threshold sets the minimum brightness change that will be sharpened. This is equivalent to clipping off the darkest non-black pixel levels in the unsharp mask. The threshold setting can be used to sharpen pronounced edges, while leaving subtle edges untouched.
Unsharp masks are wonderful at sharpening images, however too much sharpening can also introduce "halo artifacts." These are visible as light/dark outlines or halos near edges. Remedies: The appearance of halos can be greatly reduced by using a smaller radius value for the unsharp mask. Another complication of using an unsharp mask is that it can introduce subtle color shifts. Normal unsharp masks increase the over and undershoot of the RGB pixel values similarly, as opposed to only increasing the over and undershoots of luminance. In situations where very fine color texture exists, this can selectively increase some colors while decreasing others. When red is subtracted away from the neutral gray background at the edges (middle image), this produces cyan color shifts where the overshoot occurs (see subtractive color mixing). Remedies: Color shifts can be avoided entirely by performing the unsharp mask within the "lightness" channel in LAB mode.
Move your mouse over unsharp mask and sharpened to see how the sharpened image compares with the softer original image. With the constant improvement of technology, it is realistic to expect tack sharp images straight out of your camera. Many times, though, the image appears sharper on your camera than when uploaded to your computer. This is because images need to be sharpened for their specified output. In Photoshop sharpening for beginners, we look at why and how to sharpen your images. Before we delve into the photoshop sharpening tools, it is important to know why and when you need to sharpen your images. As previously mentioned, you need to sharpen images for their specific output types. Sharpening is also very useful when it comes to correcting smaller focus issues. Sharpening the subject’s eyes brings the attention back where you intended. In other genres of photography, use sharpening in pretty much this same way. Sharpen for your respective output: web vs print. Keep in mind that while sharpening takes your image to the next level, there are times when it is not needed. As with other editing techniques, Photoshop sharpening filters are destructive (when applied directly to your image).
While the name “unsharp” sounds like a tool that would make your images less sharp, this counter-intuitively named filter is, in fact, a sharpening tool. Go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask. Remember, we said that sharpening basically increases the contrasts around the edges in your image? Radius manages the level of detail. When using these sliders, a good starting place is to figure out your radius first. Do you want to sharpen the smaller details or the larger ones? In this example, push your radius up and then work back down until you affect the areas that you want. One of the downsides of using Unsharp Mask is that it is Layer specific. The Smart Sharpen tool is like a child of Unsharp Masks, as it gives you some more options.
One of the cool things with Smart Sharpening is that it ignores skin detail and focuses on areas with higher contrasts e.g. Use the same workflow as above to access the Smart Sharpen filter. The dialog box gives you more advanced options than the previous Unsharp Mask. A drop-down menu allows you to remove different types of blurs such as Gaussian, Lens and Motion blur. In Photoshop CC, your menu looks a little differently but has all the same options. Smart Sharpen also allows you to create presets. This is helpful if you are sharpening a batch of images at similar focal lengths. Another photoshop sharpening for beginners is the High Pass Sharpening technique. While it is a little more advanced than the other tools, you can still easily apply it. It is not a filter found in the Sharpen Menu like the Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen filters.
Desaturate your new layer. Go to Filter -> Other- > High Pass. Left: Using High-Pass in the default normal mode, see how your edges are defined. At full size, you don’t always see that the eyes are not as sharp as they can be. Like Smart Sharpen, the eyes and lips are sharpened, but the skin is unaffected. Remember, sharpening should be the last step in your post-processing workflow. These filters and techniques in Photoshop Sharpening for Beginners will take your image to that next level. Do you have any other photoshop sharpening for beginners tips you’d like to share?
Learn how to sharpen images with Unsharp Mask, the easiest, most basic and most oddly-named sharpening filter in Photoshop! While it sounds like something that takes away sharpness, Unsharp Mask gets its name from a traditional photography darkroom technique where a copy of the original photo is blurred, or "unsharpened," and then applied to the original image as a contrast mask - essentially a sheet of film placed alongside the negative during printing. A blurred image in-camera will always be blurry - no amount of sharpening will change that. “The Unsharp Mask is designed to enhance the details in an image,” says Photoshop expert Jesús Ramirez. “Photoshop is not creating the details, it’s just creating the illusion that there is more detail. The Unsharp Mask increases the image contrast along the edges of objects in a photo. The effect doesn’t actually detect edges, but it can identify pixel values that differ from their neighboring pixels by a certain amount. From there, the mask will increase the contrast of the neighboring pixels, making the light pixels lighter and dark pixels darker.”
Keep in mind, if you overshoot the sharpening, it creates a halo effect around the edges of objects. 1. First, open your digital image in Photoshop and make the image layer a Smart Object. This allows you to apply the Unsharp Mask as a smart filter to the input image, which keeps the sharpening effect editable, in case you need to make changes later. 2. Select the Unsharp Mask filter by going to Filter › Sharpen › Unsharp Mask. Drag the Amount slider to increase the amount of contrast in the pixels. Adjust the Radius slider to determine the number of pixels neighboring the edge pixels that will affect the sharpening. Use the Threshold setting to indicate how different the sharpened pixels must be from their surrounding pixels before they are considered edge pixels. If they are considered edge pixels, they’ll be adjusted by the sharpening filter.
The Unsharp Mask affects the color of pixels as well as the brightness. In areas of fine detail and complex color textures, the sharpening can increase some color values while decreasing others. To change the blend mode of the Smart Object filter, double-click on the Blending Options icon to the right of the filter’s name. Then in the Blending Options dialog box, change the blend mode of the filter from Normal to Luminosity. The Unsharp Mask is a very effective filter for creating striking, high-contrast images. If you want to achieve a specific look with your sharpening, use the Smart Sharpen effect. “You have more control of how the sharpening is applied to the image if you use Smart Sharpen,” says Ramirez. With this tool you can set the sharpening algorithm and control how it affects the light and dark areas of your photo.
The Camera Raw preferences offer another way to create sharpened images. “Camera Raw helps you maintain a realistic look as you sharpen your photos,” says Ramirez. This effect lets you subtly adjust the definition of an image by increasing contrast, reducing noise, or highlighting image texture. As you explore image enhancement and sharpening, experiment with different tools in Photoshop and see which one works the best for you.
