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Quick and effective sharpening in Photoshop
30th September 2008
As with anything in Adobe Photoshop, there are a million ways of doing the same thing and sharpening is one that I have spent more time on than most. Along with my own shaky photos, I spend alot of time fixing images for clients.
I have used many methods and plugins. Plugins like FocalBlade are excellent, but you need time to get it right and when doing large batches, it soon becomes laborious.
What I found myself wanting was a simple method that didn’t mess with colour and had some control over strength.
Smart sharpen does a great job, but it can create colour halos and other artifacts when set too high.
So I started sharpening images using channels and still find it the best way to keep the quality of the image intact.
Sharpening with channels
One
Change colour to Lab under Image Menu > Mode.
Two
Go to the ‘channels panel’ and select the ‘lightness channel’.
Three (optional)
You can make a duplicate of this lightness channel, just in case you ever want to revert. You need to turn this channel off though before continuing.
Four
Go to Filter Menu > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. I normally use Smart Sharpen, but for speed we’ll use Unsharp Mask. Now you can vary the amount of sharpening, but we will go for an average that works out on a majority of cases. We’ll say – Amount 80%, Radius 1 and Threshold 2 to 3.
Five
Go to back to Mode > Image Menu and revert back to RGB. That’s it!
Sharpening with luminosity
Just for good measure I might leave you with another very quick and non destructive way to sharpen that does the job very like above.
This uses the luminosity blend. Luminosity uses the lightness values of layers without using any colour information, which is absolutely perfect for sharpening.
One
To start, duplicate your layer and rename it ‘Sharpen’. Change the blend mode to ‘Luminosity’ in the layer palette. Set the opacity to something like 50% or 60%.
Two
Go to Filter Menu > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen. Set the amount of sharpen very high. When this is done, press okay.
Three
Go back to layers and turn sharpened layer off to see the effect. If it’s not quite to your liking or too strong, you can change opacity of the sharpened layer to lessen the effect.
And that’s it again!
[ Filed under Photoshop Tutorials ]
Comments
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1
johnny said,
Right on. Thats a cool tip thanks. Was looking for a simple way of doing this. Will help. J
16th October 2008, 10:19