When I sat down to begin writing a tutorial for my four favorite image sharpening techniques, I realized about halfway through my first one that I was going to need to split them up. Otherwise I would risk having a post so long nobody would finish reading it. So now, having finally completed them all, we have my four favorite Photoshop sharpening techniques.

1. High Pass Sharpen
This is my favorite, and possibly the most flexible of the four. I nearly always use this sharpen, and often use another alongside it.
1st of 4 Useful Photoshop Sharpening Techniques
Click the image for a full size view.

2. Luko USM
This sharpen is good for adding a little contrast back in to an image, where others sometimes diminish it. Very useful, especially in landscapes or portraits.
2nd of 4 Useful Photoshop Sharpening Techniques
Click the image for a full size view.

3. Adamus Sharpen
This sharpen is great, but does not translate to print very well at all. Best as a web only solution. Click the image for a full size view.
3rd of 4 Useful Photoshop Sharpening Techniques
Click the image for a full size view.

4. LAB USM
This is a subtle sharpen, that helps diminish the haloing that can occur with normal Unsharp Mask. Click the image for a full size view.
4th of 4 Useful Photoshop Sharpening Techniques
Click the image for a full size view.

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 tutorial, I am going to show you the LAB Color Mode sharpen technique. This is a more subtle sharpen, that has a little more control over haloing and artifacts than a simple Unsharp Mask.

4. LAB Sharpen
After you have finished processing your image, make a single layer copy of the visible image by doing a “Stamp Visible” command (Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E).

Now take the layer that was created by the Stamp, and duplicate it to a new image. To do this, go to Layer > Duplicate Layer and choose New in the Destination drop down.

Next, change the Color Mode to Lab by going to Image > Mode and picking Lab.

After you change to LAB mode, select the Lightness Channel. When it is selected your image should appear black and grey.

Now, apply your Unsharp Mask by going to Filter > Sharpen and select Unsharp Mask. Once that is open, start adjusting your sliders. There is no set number that will work for your image, but a good range to try is Amount between 75 and 150, Radius between 1 and 3 and Threshold between 0 and 2. For this example I used Amount 102, Radius 1.8 and Threshold 2.

At this point you can either change it back to RGB Color mode (Or whatever you used for the main image) and save it if you are happy with it, or you can copy this layer back to the original and work with masks to get it a little cleaner.

I am going to just convert back to RGB Color Mode by going to Image > Mode and picking RGB Color.

And here is the before and after. Click on the image for a larger view.

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 tutorial, I am going to show you the Adamus sharpen technique. This is a more drastic sharpen, particularly with landscapes, but is only useful for web quality pictures.

3. Adamus Sharpen
From your full size image, re-size your image to somewhere between 1000 and 1500 pixels on the long end. Try to keep it at double the size of the image that you intend to finish with. Go to Image > Image Size.

For this example I want to end up with a 750px image, so I am starting with 1500px. Make sure you re-sample as Bicubic, not Bicubic Sharper.

If you have done any editing to your image on multiple layers, before this next step you will need to flatten the image.

Duplicate your your layer and label it sharpen1.

Then go to Filter > Sharpen and run sharpen.

Duplicate the sharpen1 layer and label it sharpen2. Then go to Filter > Sharpen and run sharpen again. This will give two passes of sharpen on this layer.

Now duplicate the sharpen2 layer and label it sharpen3. Then go to Filter > Sharpen and run sharpen again. This will give three passes of sharpen on this layer. This will give it a highly over sharpened look, but don’t be alarmed. It will not stay that way.

Now re-size the image to the web size that you intended, in this case 750px. Make sure you re-sample as Bicubic, not Bicubic Sharper.

You will end up now with three sharpen choices. Simply choose which layer gives you the best result and then save for the web. Below is the before and the three sharpens. Click on the image for a larger view.