Ikkyblog

Digital photographs are a little soft by nature. Most require at least one pass of sharpening, and often require more than one to look their best on the web. In this series of tutorials, I am going to demonstrate some of the techniques I have learned to help get your images tack sharp (please note, some of these techniques will not translate to print well).

1. High Pass Sharpen
This sharpen technique is subtle, and I often use it in conjunction with other sharpens.

After opening your image, in the layers menu duplicate the background image and name it high pass.

Next, change the layer mode on the high pass layer to Overlay.

Then in Filter, go to Other and chose High Pass.

Next, you will adjust the high pass slider. This usually takes a little playing with, but stick to the lower end. I rarely go over 1.8. For this example, I used 1.6.

Lastly, you may or may not want to adjust the layer opacity. I find that it sometimes helps blend the sharpen, especially if there is any over sharpened areas. In this example I have the opacity set to 92%.

The finished product becomes this before and after picture. (click for a larger image):