Another way to Sharpen Images in Photoshop
Another way to Sharpen Images in Photoshop
I don’t often sharpen my photos unless I am prepping them for printing. I do dodge and burn the eyes of subjects quite frequently using Lightroom’s tools. One reason other than printing that would cause me to want to sharpen is to use sharpening to focus attention on the subject and away from the background objects. I use this technique a lot with animal portraits where I do not want the background blurred, but still want the subject to pop.
The typical way to sharpen in PS is to use the Unsharp Mask tool. One drawback of this tool is that it is “destructive” meaning the edits happen directly to the image, not to an adjustment layer. You then do not have the ability to adjust the level of sharpening later and other changes are not reflected at all in this layer. Unsharp Mask also can emphasize grain in a photo.
To make an object stand out using sharpening you need to isolate the subject and apply more sharpening to it than to the surrounding areas and emphasize the edges. You could copy the image layer, apply one of the sharpening filters, then use a mask to show the effect in only certain areas, but you would still be dealing with the deficiencies described above.
The High Pass filter adds contrast (thus sharpening) to the edges of an object through an adjustment layer. Because it is an adjustment layer you can control its effects and change your mind later without repeating steps. Changes to layers below the filter layer will also come through unless they deal with the edges of objects.
Start by making a copy of the background layer as you would with any image. I always check on high magnification for sensor spots, dust particles, and large scatter if it is an underwater image. I next would adjust my color and lighting and make any other adjustments. I sharpen as the last step in refining a photo.
I then make a copy of the corrected image to apply the filter to. Find the High Pass Filter under Filter – Other – High Pass. You get a dialog box where you can adjust the radius. You will want the image to appear mostly grey with highlighting just on the edges or on important texture. Press OK and you are back to the layers view. You need to change the blend mode of the layer to one that will ignore anything that is grey and only apply the black or white highlighting produced by the filter. Experiment with Overlay, Soft Light, and Hard light blend modes to get the effect you want. You can also use the Opacity slider to tone down the overall effect of the layer.
To further confine the effect to only the main subject, add a mask to the High Pass layer and mask out any objects in the background that I do not want to get a sharpening effect. Sometimes I try both methods of sharpening to see which has the best effect.
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