Different Sharpen approach

wxwax

Got this from SportsShooter.com

An aggressive way to sharpen a photo, esp. one that's out of focus. To make the sharpening stronger, increase the value for the High Pass Radius. Also, you can tweak how aggressive it is by changing the Opacity of the clipping layer once you're finished. Here are the instructions.

PhotoShop old pros may be familiar with this technique, however, PhotoShop wizard Deke McCelland provided this awesome method (Secret Handshake) for enhancing a slightly out of focus image at the PhotoShop World Expo in San Francisco. Give it a try...it really works great.

1. Open your image

2. Duplicate the layer, i.e. Ctrl-J on a PC

3. Make sure the new layer is active and select FILTER --> OTHER --> HIGH PASS
When the HIGH PASS window pops up set the radius value to 2.0 for print output or between 0.2 and 0.5 for the Web.
You now have what appears to be a gray card with some image outlines.

4. With the "gray layer" still active select LAYER --> NEW ADJUSTMENT LAYER --> LEVELS

5. IMPORTANT - When the New Layer naming window pops up make sure that you check the "Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask" box and click ok.

6. On the levels pop up window set the Input Levels to: [ 80 ] [ 1.00 ] [ 175 ]
Don't change the Output Level settings

7. Make the High Pass filter layer active (the gray layer) and change the blending mode to OVERLAY.

8. Make the Levels Adjustment layer active (the clipping mask) and change the blending mode to LUMINOSITY.

hutchman

Waxy,

I took a picture of a friend's dog, Freddie, this weekend. I broke one of my first rules of digital photography, I only took 1 image. It was worse than soft, it was out of focus. It sucked.




I then tried your technique:





The results were great. While the picture will still never win any awards, it will make Freddie's "dad" happy.

I have saved this technique as a new file under my "Cool Photoshop Tips" folder.

Thanks!

Hutch

wxwax

Wow, that's a rather dramatic change. I tried it on a shot of mine, and noticed that it brought out a lot of grain as well. If I wanted to get rid of the grain, I'd run it through Noise Ninja - which blurs things again!

wxwax

I also notice how it consistently brightens images, sometimes too much. Perhaps if the picture is prone to blown highlights, a good first step might be to reduce the levels a bit, and resave?

hutchman

I tried to reduce the blown out ares with levels in this one. The results were less than overwhelming so I just left it alone. I'll give it to Russ, Freddie's owner, the way it is and he'll be happy (I hope).

Hutch