Unsharp Quick Guide

Sharpening is a mystery to many people, myself included. A few weeks ago I started to investigate sharpening, and while there are a plethora of tutorials and methods and actions available, not being a professional with hours to dedicate to one image, I needed something quick and dirty, that I can remember and repeat. I came up with two sharpinging "defaults" and a "custom" approach that works in many if not most situations. It is important to always save sharpening for the very last step before saving. Sharpening before making other adjustments will often yield unwanted artifacts and effects, which will then be compounded by jpeg compression (but that's the subject of another post).

As a quick examplar, the image below was shot in raw and jpeg. The first image is the jpeg as it came from the camera, resized to 1200x800. No editing was done. The second image is the edited raw file finished off with the unsharp mask procedure described below. Comparing results and playing with settings has taught me the most about this tool, although reading the CS3 help file and online tutorials also proved informative.

Superfine Large JPEG, untouched, resized.

8.2MP RAW, adjusted & sharpened in Photoshop, resized.

ALL PURPOSE SETTING:
Amount: 85 Radius: 1 Threshold: 4

WEB SETTING:
Amount: 400 Radius: 0.3 Threshold: 0

"CUSTOM" APPROACH:
1) View at 50 or 100%
2) Set Initial Parameters:
Amount: 400-500 Radius: 1-2 Threshold: 0
3) Increase Radius until halos form, then back off
4) Adjust Amount until grainy/oversharp, then back off
5) Increase Threshold to smooth low contrast areas, but preserve fine detail

I'll use a quickmask or path to define where I want to sharpen and what I want to leave alone, feathering the edges, etc. This isn't a Photoshop tutorial or blog, so I will omit details of making selections and using layer masks.

For a bit more flexibility, I like to put the sharpening on its own layer, so I can adjust the amount simply by sliding the opacity handle. Probably not the most elegant method, but it seems effective.

Unsharp is by no means the only way to sharpen, and in fact there are multiple sharpening methods and tools that can be used in conjunction to achieve astonishing results that are way ahead of my ability. Future posts will hopefully include quick guides to using high and low pass layer masks, along with some other methods that Photoshop CS3 provides.

Other sharpening routines that are straightforward and relatively simple are definitely welcome in the comment section.