Basic Sharpening


After you've color corrected your photos and right before you save your files, you'll definitely want to sharpen them. I sharpen every digital camera photo, either to help bring back some of the original crispness that gets lost during the correction process, or to help fix a photo that's slightly out of focus. Either way, I haven't met a digital camera (or scanned) photo that didn't need a little sharpening. Here's a basic technique for sharpening the entire photo:

Step One

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Open the photo that you want to sharpen. Because Elements displays your photo in different ways at different magnifications, it's absolutely critical that you view your photo at 100% when sharpening. To ensure that you're viewing at 100%, once your photo is open, double-click on the Zoom tool in the Toolbox, and your photo will jump to a 100% view (to see the actual percentage of zoom, look up in the image window's title bar or Options Bar, depending on your viewing mode, or look in the image window's bottom-left corner).

Step Two

Go under the Filter menu, under Sharpen, and choose Unsharp Mask. (If you're familiar with traditional darkroom techniques, you probably recognize the term "unsharp mask" from when you would make a blurred copy of the original photo and an "unsharp" version to use as a mask to create a new photo whose edges appeared sharper.) Of Elements' sharpening filters, Unsharp Mask is the undisputed first choice because it offers the most control over the sharpening process.

Step Three

When the Unsharp Mask dialog appears, you'll see three sliders. The Amount slider determines the amount of sharpening applied to the photo; the Radius slider determines how many pixels out from the edge that the sharpening will affect; and the Threshold slider determines how different a pixel must be from the surrounding area before it's considered an edge pixel and sharpened by the filter. Threshold works the opposite of what you might thinkthe lower the number, the more intense the sharpening effect. So, what numbers do you enter? I'll give you some great starting points on the following pages, but for now, we'll just use these settings: Amount: 125%, Radius: 1, and Threshold: 3. Click OK and the sharpening is applied to the photo.

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Sharpening Soft Subjects

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Here is an Unsharp Mask settingAmount: 150%, Radius: 1, Threshold: 10that works well for images where the subject is of a softer nature (e.g., flowers, puppies, people, rainbows, etc.). It's a subtle application of sharpening that is very well suited to these types of subjects.

Sharpening Portraits

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If you're sharpening a close-up portrait (head-and-shoulders type of thing), try this settingAmount: 75%, Radius: 2, Threshold: 3which applies another form of subtle sharpening.

Moderate Sharpening

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This is a moderate amount of sharpening that works nicely on product shots, photos of home interiors and exteriors, and landscapes. If you're shooting along these lines, try applying this settingAmount: 225%, Radius: 0.5, Threshold: 0and see how you like it (my guess is you will).

Maximum Sharpening

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I use these settingsAmount: 65%, Radius: 4, Threshold: 3in only two situations: (1) The photo is visibly out of focus and it needs a heavy application of sharpening to try to bring it back into focus; or (2) the photo contains lots of well-defined edges (e.g., buildings, coins, cars, machinery, etc.).

All-Purpose Sharpening

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This is probably my all-around favorite sharpening settingAmount: 85%, Radius: 1, Threshold: 4and I use this one most of the time. It's not a "knock-you-over the-head" type of sharpeningmaybe that's why I like it. It's subtle enough that you can apply it twice if your photo doesn't seem sharp enough after the first application (just press Control-F), but once will usually do the trick.

Web Sharpening

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I use this settingAmount: 400%, Radius: 0.3, Threshold: 0for Web graphics that look blurry. (When you drop the resolution from a high-res, 300-ppi photo down to 72 ppi for the Web, the photo often gets a bit blurry and soft.) I also use this same setting on out-of-focus photos. It adds some noise, but I've seen it rescue photos that I would have otherwise thrown away. If the effect seems too intense, try dropping the Amount to 200%.

Coming Up with Your Own Settings

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If you want to experiment and come up with your own custom blend of sharpening, I'll give you some typical ranges for each adjustment so you can find your own sharpening "sweet spot."

Amount

Typical ranges go anywhere from 50% to 150%. This isn't a rule that can't be broken. It's just a typical range for adjusting the Amount, where going below 50% won't have enough effect, and going above 150% might get you into sharpening trouble (depending on how you set the Radius and Threshold). You're fairly safe to stay under 150%.

Radius

Most of the time, you'll use just 1 pixel, but you can go as high as (get ready)2. I gave you one setting earlier for extreme situations, where you can take the Radius as high as 4, but I wouldn't recommend it very often. I once heard a tale of a man in Cincinnati who used 5, but I'm not sure I believe it.

Threshold

A pretty safe range for the Threshold setting is anywhere from 3 to around 20 (3 being the most intense, 20 being much more subtle. I know, shouldn't 3 be more subtle and 20 more intense? Don't get me started). If you really need to increase the intensity of your sharpening, you can lower the Threshold to 0, but keep a good eye on what you're doing (watch for noise appearing in your photo).

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The Photoshop Elements 4 Book for Digital Photographers
The Photoshop Elements 4 Book for Digital Photographers
ISBN: 0321384830
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 201
Authors: Scott Kelby

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