Sometimes Cloudy in Virginia

I’m late to the game on this trick, but I just learned it today so I think it’s pretty cool.  I’ve been sharpening images with Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask for quite a while.  It has worked pretty well for me, though it isn’t terribly easy to selectively apply or adjust after the fact.  Enter the Hgh Pass Filter sharpening method… I first heard it this morning, catching up on an old podcast from TWIP.  I did a little searching to find out more and found two nice tutorials on the method at Layers Magazine and PhotoshopSupport.com.  The basics are:

1. Create a duplicate layer from your image
2. Apply the High Pass Filter (radius somewhere between 1-3 pixels seems to work well)
3. Change blending mode to Overlay (optionally Soft Light or Hard Light)
4. Adjust opacity of the layer to your sharpening needs.

Read the linked articles for more information and sample images.  The advantage is a layer whose opacity you can adjust to increase/decrease the effect, as well as being able to easily mask the layer to selectively apply the filter.  Very cool.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 at 11:42 am and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.