Adobe Photoshop is one of the most popular image editing software available today. The software provides users with rich image editing tools and features, so that we can arbitrarily edit photos as we like. For example, Photoshop can de-noise images to increase sharpness and quality for images, using the available Unsharp Mask and High Pass Sharpening tools. In the following article, we will guide you how to sharpen images in Photoshop in 2 different ways.
Detailed instructions
1. Use Smart Sharpen to sharpen an image in Photoshop
Step 1 : Zoom the document window to 100% to get an accurate view of the sharpness.
Step 2 : Select Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen .
Step 3 : Set the control functions in the Sharpen tabs :
- Amount: Set sharpening level. A higher value will increase the contrast between edge pixels, resulting in more sharpness.
- Radius: Determines the number of pixels around the edge pixels affected by sharpening. The larger the radius value, the wider the edge effect and the more obvious the sharpness.
- Reduce Noise: (Photoshop only) Reduce unwanted noise while keeping important edges untouched.
- Remove: Set the sharpening algorithm used to sharpen the image.
- Gaussian Blur is the method used by the Unsharp Mask filter.
- Lens Blur detects edges and details in images, and provides better detail sharpness and reduced halos.
- Motion Blur attempts to reduce blur caused by camera or subject movement. Set the Angle control if you choose Motion Blur.
- Angle: Set the motion direction for the Motion Blur option of the Remove control.
- More Accurate: This option is enabled to use when you are using legacy option (since CS6) and slow file processing to remove blur more accurately.
Step 4 : Adjust the sharpness of the dark and light areas in the Shadow and Highlight tabs. (Click the Advanced button to display the tabs). If halos or shadows appear too strong, you can reduce them with these controls, which are only available for 8‑bit and 16‑bit images per channel:
- Fade Amount: Adjust the level of sharpness in highlights or shadows.
- Tonal Width: Controls the range of tones in modified shadows or highlights. Move the slider left or right to decrease or increase the Tonal Width value.
- Radius: Controls the size of the area around each pixel used to determine whether a pixel is in a dark or a light area. Moving the slider to the left specifies a smaller region, and moving it to the right specifies a larger region.
Step 5 : Click OK.
2. Sharpen the image with Unsharp Mask Photoshop
Step 1:
You open Photoshop on your computer and then click File and select Open to open the image you want to increase sharpness.
Unsharp Mask works only on a single layer. In case there are many layers you need to merge them by Layer > Flatten Image.
step 2:
After opening the image we want to edit, we follow the Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask path.
A small dialog box appears on the Photoshop interface. Here, we will proceed to edit 3 options, including:
- Radius: you adjust the width of the halo along the image, so 0.5-1 is reasonable.
- Threshold: adjust the edge contrast value, the smaller the value, the more noise will increase.
- Amount: we adjust the slider arbitrarily. If the image has a lot of fine detail, you will adjust the Radius small (small halo) and the Amount value accordingly (so that the halo is visible enough to sharpen the image). In the case of less detailed images, adjust the Radius in the range of 1.5 or more (larger halo) and the Amount index is smaller, the halo will be larger and clearer.
We adjust the values accordingly and click OK to save the image.
3. High Pass Sharpening sharpens images in Photoshop
Step 1:
You also open the image you want to denoise in Photoshop. Next, duplicate the image by pressing Ctrl + J on Windows , or CMD + J on Mac.
Step 2:
We will perform photo editing on this Layer 1. You can enlarge the image for ease of manipulation, by clicking the magnifying glass icon on the list of tools.
Continue to follow the path Filter > Other > High Pass.
Step 3:
The image will turn gray and the image editing dialog will also appear. Here you adjust the horizontal bar in the Radius section . Depending on each image, we adjust the value accordingly. Click OK to save.
Step 4:
Continue, go to the Layer section in the right corner of the screen and then click on the arrow and select Overlay.
There are quite a few other blending modes that we can apply to images such as Soft Light, Hard Light, Vivid Light, Linear Light, Pin Light, ... Or in case the image is too sharp, it can be adjusted at Opacity to blur.
When you see the standard image, you just need to click Save to save it.
Above are 3 ways to adjust the sharpness for images on Photoshop tools. Depending on the need to reduce noise, image details as well as image size, we choose how to edit and increase or decrease the values accordingly.
Wishing you success!
