Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me in Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to sharpen images in Photoshop.
If this is your first time at the Photoshop Training Channel, don't forget to click on
that Subscribe button.
Generally speaking, there are three types of sharpening: Capture Sharpening, Creative
Sharpening and Output Sharpening.
Capture Sharpening is the sharpening that you apply to an image to bring back the detail
lost through the lens, the process of capturing the image to a sensor, and converting it to
a digital format; the demosaicing process.
To offset this loss of detail when you open up a raw file in Camera Raw or Lightroom,
you'll see that the Sharpening Amount is set to 25 by default.
If you open up a jpeg, instead, the Amount will be set to zero because your camera or
the device that created the image adds the Sharpening by default.
In this tutorial, we will focus on working with a JPEG to further enhance the Capture
Sharpening.
If you're working with a raw file, you can follow the steps on the Camera Raw example
to sharpen any raw images that you may have.
The other two types of sharpening are Creative Sharpening and Output Sharpening.
Creative Sharpening is applied selectively based on artistic intent or an aesthetic look
that you're going for.
Creative Sharpening is usually not realistic or subtle.
Output Sharpening is the last step that you apply to an image.
It is done when you reduce the size of the photo and export it as a JPEG or if you're
going to print the image.
Both printing and downsizing an image may soften it and it may need a bit of sharpening.
In this video, we will work on sharpening this photo.
It is important to note that we will not be bringing back any detail.
We can only create the illusion of sharpness in Photoshop.
This is done by increasing the contrast of edge pixels which makes it seem as if there
is more detail.
This process can create edge halos or increase noise, so it's always a good idea to make
subtle adjustments.
Also, when applying sharpness, always view the image at 100% so that you can really see
what is happening.
Any other view will be inaccurate and misleading.
There are no rules for settings that you should always use.
The amount of sharpening that looks good depends on the contrast of the texture of the image.
The only thing that seems to hold true for most cases is that you should apply subtle
adjustments.
Okay, let's get started.
The first sharpening method that we're going to use is one that you probably have seen
before.
It's not one of my favorites but it's a very popular one and I want to show it just so
you can see what it does, how it works, and why I prefer using other methods.
So I have this image here.
It's simply a background layer.
I'm going to duplicate it by pressing Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, then I'm going to
go into Filter, Other, High Pass.
And it's going to create this effect here; 1.6 pixels will be okay, then press OK.
Now there is a little bit of color on this image, so I'm going to zoom in so that you
could see it.
I'm going to desaturate it by pressing Ctrl Shift U to desaturate; that's Command Shift
U on the Mac, or you can also go into Image, Adjustments, Desaturate.
Then, you can use either Overlay, Soft Light or Linear Light, to sharpen the image.
I'll start with Soft Light, which is the most subtle effect; that's before and after.
Then Overlay, which is a little bit stronger, and finally, Linear Light, which is the strongest
of the three.
In this example, I'm going to use Overlay and I'm going to double click on the Zoom
Tool so we can zoom in to 100%.
And as you can see, this method sharpens the image.
It does a really good job.
However, it applies a Sharpen to the entire image.
If I zoom in and disable the layer, you can see that the sharpening effect has been applied
to the entire image.
Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
That may be good for the image that you're working with, but in some cases, that is not
what you want to do.
Now, I understand that you could use something like the Lasso Tool and maybe create a mask
around the sky where you don't want the image to be sharpened and create a layer mask.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and click, you'll create a layer mask that is black with
the selection that's active.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and click on the layer mask thumbnail, you will see
the layer mask.
And I know it's not a perfect layer mask, but it's just for an example.
So that will be one way of making this sharpening technique target a specific area.
You could also double click to the side of the layer and use the Blend If options to
adjust the sharpening.
Now, as I said, this method works okay.
A lot of people prefer it, but it's not one of my favorites, so I'm going to disable this
layer for now and I'm going to show you another method that I think works better, and then
I'll show you a third method which I prefer.
So I'm going to duplicate the layer, Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac.
So now we have a background copy.
Then, we're going to use Filter, Sharpen, Smart Sharpen.
But before I show you Smart Sharpen, I'm going to click on Unsharp Mask, which is the old
sharpening filter in Photoshop.
I know a lot of people still prefer it, but mainly because it's been in Photoshop for
a really long time and it's very easy to use.
It only has three sliders.
Now, this is, again, not one of my favorites simply because there is a newer, better filter.
Now I recommend zooming in to 100% when you're working on sharpening.
So I zoomed in but I'm way pass 100%, so it's really easy to just type in 100% here and
hit Enter or double click on the Zoom Tool to zoom in to 100%.
Then, go into Filter, Sharpen, Smart Sharpen, and you're going to get very similar sliders
to the ones that you saw in the Unsharp Mask, but you get a little more control and the
algorithm is a little bit different with the Smart Sharpen.
The first slider, the Amount slider sets the amount of sharpening that you can apply to
the image.
A higher value increases the contrast between the edge pixels, giving the appearance of
greater sharpness.
So if I click and drag this all the way to the right, and I know this is an extreme,
you will see what I was talking about and I can zoom in in this Preview window.
There's a lot more contrast between the edge pixels, which gives that illusion of sharpness.
You usually don't want to drag these sliders all the way to the right.
You want to create subtle effects and you want to avoid edge halos.
Now, for this tutorial, I'm actually going to maybe increase it further than I would
normally do in a real project because I want you to see the effects are being applied to
the image.
With the recording and the compression of the video, that may not be so obvious if I
use subtle amounts of sharpening.
So keep that in mind I'm probably going overboard in most of the examples I'm going to show
you in this video.
So that's what the Amount does.
Then we have the Radius.
The Radius determines the number of pixels surrounding the edge pixels affected by the
sharpening.
In this case, we're telling Photoshop to use 1 pixel from the edge to apply the sharpening.
Reduce Noise reduces some of the noise found in the image.
So we may have noise in the sky and other areas that shouldn't have any sharpening applied,
so we can increase the Reduce Noise to reduce some of that.
Then we have the different types of algorithms that Photoshop will use to sharpen the image.
Lens Blur is default.
In most cases, you may want to use Gaussian or Motion Blur.
For this tutorial, we're just going to work with Lens Blur.
So this is the sharpening that we've done so far.
I'm actually going to reduce the amount just a little bit.
You can still see it there.
You can click on the Preview checkbox to disable it and enable it.
Notice that most of the filtering is happening here in the foreground, a little bit in the
trees back here, and not much in the sky, which is what I want.
If I scroll up, you'll see that not a lot of noise is being applied to the background
here in the sky and these mountains, so that's what I want.
Another reason why I prefer the Smart Sharpen is that you have the ability to control the
sharpening in the shadows and highlights.
If you click on this right-pointing arrow, it expands the menu.
And now you can control the Fade Amount, Tonal Width and Radius on both the Shadows and Highlights.
Fade Amount allows you to reduce the sharpening applied to the image and the shadows, so,
in other words, these settings that you applied on top will be reduced by this slider on the
Shadows and this slider on the Highlights.
You could also think about it as an Opacity slider for the Sharpening and the Shadows.
Tonal Width controls the range of tones and the shadows or highlights that are modified.
In other words, it controls how dark the shadows are that are going to be affected.
A lower tonal width will only affect the deep shadows and a larger tonal width will affect
the deep shadows and dark grays.
And in the Highlights, the Tonal Width, of course, controls the whites and light grays,
and the Radius controls the size of an area around each pixel that is used to determine
whether the pixel is in the shadows or highlights.
Moving the slider to the left specifies a smaller area and moving it to the right specifies
a larger area.
So, as you can see, there's a whole lot more control in sharpening with these sliders.
I'm actually going to go into the Presets dropdown and set it to default; so that's
before and after, and I'm going to press OK.
Now, even though you have much more control with this than you do with the High Pass Filter
method, this is not the way that I prefer doing my sharpening.
What I prefer using is the Camera Raw Filter, so I'm going to click on the background, press
Ctrl J, Command J to duplicate, and I'm going to convert this to a Smart Object so that
we can work non-destructively.
We didn't do it in the earlier example with the Smart Sharpen, but I also recommend using
a smart object if you're going to apply the Smart Sharpen.
So, go into Filter and select Camera Raw Filter.
This is going to open up the Camera Raw Filter, of course, and under the Detail tab--this
one here--you either have Sharpening and Noise Reduction sliders.
Now, these sliders are somewhat similar to the ones that we just saw in the Smart Sharpening.
But the reason that I like using this slider is that we have visual aids that help us make
the sharpening.
So, first, I'm going to set this to 100% so I'm just going to click on the dropdown menu
and click on 100% so that we can see what is really going on in the image.
Then, you can adjust the Amount and most of these are very self-explanatory.
They work very similar to the Smart Sharpen sliders amount on how much sharpening do we
want.
If we go all the way to the right, you'll see that we sharpen the image dramatically,
but it doesn't look very good.
Now, I said that these sliders give us visual cues, and what I mean by that is that if you
hold Alt on all these sliders, except for the Color ones, you'll get a visual representation
of what's going on.
So I'm holding Alt, Option on the Mac, I'm going to click and drag, and notice how the
image is now black and white.
It removes the color so that we can better see the sharpening that we're applying to
the image.
So, in this case, I'll probably go up to maybe 60.
Then the Radius, once again, hold Alt, Option on the Mac, click and drag.
So you can clearly see what's going on.
We can see the shape of the outline.
This is a sharpening that is going on.
So, you can adjust it and, obviously, this is way too much, so the radius will probably
be good at 1, maybe even less.
So that you can see what's going on, we will leave it at 1.
Then the detail, once again, I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac, click and drag,
and you can see the detail that we're affecting.
If we go to 100%, you can see in the sky, we're getting a lot of noise, so that's not
very good, so we're going to move that to the left and maybe leave it at about 35 or
maybe even lower, maybe 30.
Then, the masking, if I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and click, the image will be completely
white; this works just like a regular layer mask in the Layers panel.
White reveals, black conceals.
Right now, the entire image is white, so the sharpening is being applied to the entire
image.
If I start dragging to the right, you're going to see some gray, and eventually some black
areas.
Just like with the layer mask, black is going to hide this sharpening, so if I release now,
the sharpening is not being applied to any of the areas that were black, so, you can
adjust the slider accordingly to hide the sharpening effect in areas that don't require
it.
Then, you have the Noise Reduction.
I'm going to zoom in a little bit more just so that you could see.
If I hold Alt, Option on the Mac, click and drag on the Luminance slider, you'll see how
I'm removing a lot of the detail.
You don't want to do that and the reason it turns black and white is so that you could
see what's going on without color affecting your judgment.
I don't want to go too far, maybe a value of 5 or lower.
In this case, we'll leave it at 5.
And once again, I'm going to go back to 100% and you could see the Details slider and how
that works and the Luminance Contrast slider.
Now I said that the Color sliders don't give you any preview; if you hold Alt or Option
on the Mac, and for this image, we don't need these sliders.
These sliders are intended to be used with Noise that have color.
The noise that we have here does not have any color so it doesn't change much.
We're going to leave the Color slider at 0 (zero) for now and it will disable the other
two sliders.
I'm going to press OK.
The Camera Raw Filter will apply the Sharpening.
If I disable this eye icon, you will see the before and the after.
And just like you can with the High Pass Filter, you can apply a layer mask to a Smart Filter
and it's already there--it's here.
That's what this white square is, so you can always paint with black in areas that you
really don't want to affect and you could also go to the side of the layer and even
do some of the Blend If sliders if you need to.
And, of course, you could always double click on the Camera Raw Filter label to bring up
the Camera Raw Filter once again and make adjustments to the Sharpening and Noise Reduction.
This is the method I prefer just because it gives me a whole lot more control.
And that's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
If you enjoyed this tutorial, don't forget to click on that Like button and share it
with a friend.
Also, don't forget to subscribe to the Photoshop Training Channel.
Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you again soon.