High Pass Sharpening

Here is a method for sharpening i learned some time back. It uses the ‘high pass’ filter in photoshop cs4.

Text Version:

1. Duplicate the original layer [ctrl + j] and change the blend mode of duplicated layer to ‘overlay’.

2. Right click on the new layer and choose ‘convert to smart object’.

3. Now go to the ‘filter’ menu and choose ‘high pass’ from ‘other’ sub menu.

4. Change the Radius slider until you find a sweet spot. It varies for everyone and every image.

A small Video:

Advantage:

I find this method is very useful because, it is non-destructive. I can easily delete the layer if i mess up some how. Also there is one slider instead of three in unsharp mask filter

You need to change the amount of sharpness if you resize the image. Since we apply the filter as ’smart filter’ you can change it any time.