How to Sharpen a Photo part 3

This is part three of my tutorial on How to Sharpen a Photo. Check out part one

Step 12

What you want next is that the resulting image to have the black areas as dark as possible and the white ones as light as possible. Use the Levels settings (which you will find under Image > Adjust > Level) and modify the cursors under the histogram accordingly until you have reached the desired effect. The dark areas in the image are the areas which will be sharpened so do not rush into things and set the image accordingly to your needs.

Step 13

If you still do not have enough contrasting edges in the image, you can repeat the “Find edges” action until you have reached the desired setting. You will soon see a real change.

Step 14

Because you want to have a smooth transition between the white and the black areas of the picture at this point, you will have to blur the image so to hide the actual sharpening of the edges. You can use a Gaussian blur to achieve this (Filter Blur Gaussian Blur).

Step 15

Select a small amount of blur so that only the margins are blended in a way pleasant to the eye. For example, you can use a value of between 2 and 4 pixels.

Step 16

After you have performed these steps, you need to tell the software that the “Sharpening Mask” you have worked on until now is just a mask. You will need to select only the black bits on the image.

Step 17

Use the Select Load Selection option. When the dialog box appears, make sure that the “Sharpening Mask” appears as the Channel. Also check that the Invert box is selected.

Step 18

Make the image visible again by clicking on the Layers tab. After you have done so, the selection created in the step above should be superimposed over the image.

Step 19

You have done all the preparation needed to get your image ready for the actual sharpening process. To do this, you will need at first to hide the edges and view the actual picture. By selecting Choose View->Show->Hide Edges you will make the selection invisible.

Step 20

You will work better if you see the pixels at their actual size. To have this, choose View-> Actual Pixels. Use the mouse to go to a part of your image on which to see the effects of your sharpening settings.

Step 21

Your picture is ready to have the sharpening applied to it now. The “Unsharp Mask” filter is found in the Filter section under the Sharpen sub-menu. Play with the values until you reach the desired outcome from your picture. Experiment with the values until you consider the image to have the wanted sharpness.

Step 22

Do not use very aggressive changes. Work in baby steps with the values so you can see in the preview window the change’s effect on the image.

Step 23

When applying the filter, keep the Radius to a low value (0.5 or 1 should more than enough) and the Threshold to 0.

Step 24

If you consider that the sharpened area to be restrictive for your needs, you can go back to Step 12 and select from there another level setting.

Step 25

After you are satisfied with the changes made to the sharpness and the image looks more the way you wanted it to, it is time to click “OK” and let Photoshop adjust all the modifications.

Step 26

Remember that before you have started working on editing the image, you have converted your file to the Lab Color space. It is now convert it back to RGB Color (do this by choosing Image Mode RGB Color).

Step 27

After finishing sharpening the picture and you have reached the final and desired version, you can do other adjustment to it, such as resizing the picture or cropping and adding other elements to it (for example text).

Step 28

You can now save the resulting image, once all the editing has been done, Go to the File > Save as option and select the name of the file and the place to store it on your hard drive.

Step 29

If you want to print the final image on an inkjet printer, you should take into consideration that not all printers are that good to print the picture with the exact parameters you see on the screen and that is you must be careful not to over-sharpen the image.

Step 30

You can create a Photoshop Action of the above steps if you do not want to repeat all the actions every time you want to edit a picture using similar options.

Related Articles