Sharpening - A brief introduction

excellent contents and writing.

for those that still want more i suggest buying "Adobe Photoshop for Photographers" written by Martin Evening(about 50 $). That covers sharpening roughly the same way with quite a few examples but also deals with other tasks like RAW-processing, noise reduction, retouching and image editing.

Unlike most books on Photoshop this book is focused on the needs of a photographer in stead of the general pixel-editing artist. That means that it gives in depth coverage of what we need and leaving out the Photoshop capabilities that are seldom needed for photo adjustments.

Although the book is about Photoshop it deals with the various processes in the same basic way as Micholand does, so it should be perfectly usable for those that use other editing applications.



Edited by brettania - 20 February 2010 at 22:17

Outstanding    Thank you very much.

pdeley wrote: You might perhaps add in the beginning of the second part that you are specifically reviewing the sharpening options in Photoshop. Most of the relevant menus and functions are labeled or laid out a bit differently in other common editors like GIMP and PSP.

Well, due to the fact that Photoshop to a certain extent is the standard when it comes to image editing, there shouldn't be the need to specifically add a note here. Furthermore the general sharpening options and techniques aren't really editor dependent, at least there are always predefined sharpening commands like "Sharpen" as well as the "Unsharp Mask" filter, even though of course the menus and layout might be different in GIMP or PSP

In photoshop, I use the high-pass filter over a desaturated layer to add sharpening, and I absolutely love it. That technique might be worth including as well. It's a good action technique as well.


Thanks for the write-up. Very informative

vabijou wrote: I'm pretty familiar with GIMP, and not at all with Photoshop. However, I'm not aware of an "Apply Image" function in GIMP, and I am wondering what exactly this function does in Photoshop so I can try to duplicate the technique in GIMP.

Actually the "Apply Image" command doesn't get used very often and is another flexible photo blending tool of Photoshop and allows to blend a layer and a channel from one image with a layer and a channel of another image. In short, it simply blends two images together with various possible blend modes amongst others "Add" and "Subtract".
Here's an interesting article about it with some more information => Misunderstood Photoshop: The Apply Image Command

Always a pleasure to read something written by people who knows what they are talking about.

Especially the "Sharpening using an Edge Mask" is very useful for me who like shooting high ISO to get grain. I have really struggled to apply sharpening without sharpening the grain to much. I have used very cumbersome techniques involving unsharp mask on one layer and the by hand erase all areas that should´nt be sharpened.

Nice job


Edited by Heyckendorff - 21 February 2010 at 22:04

thank you for sharing this article, i myself have problem with sharpening and this opens a new knowledge for me thanks.....