Sharpen with Filter>Other>High Pass

[ME100FINN]

I watched Photoshop TV (#20 or 23?) that talked about achieving sharpen using the Filter Other>High pass. It works quiet well on pictures that can take a huge amount of sharpening (not necessarily portraits, but you could try!). It's pretty cool. Run the filter and start the slider at the far left and bring it up until you see lines well defined in the gray preview. Ok and set layer to hard light and even adjust the opacity to fit your preference.

I used it on this photo and it was really cool - the cement just popped out (you cant really tell from the small scale pic though, sorry).
http://flickr.com/photos/me100finn/124639783/

[NMarti]

Beatrice
That's a cool shot - great abstract lines. I'll have to give that a try. Thanks.

[Daviskw]

Hi Beatrice

That did work good… great example. I use High pass to add extra sharpening to eyes.

The high pass filter defines edges for sharpening and gray is the neutral color for the overlay, softlight, hard light group. You can use any of these for different sharpening results.

Here is another tip if you want to define more of your image for sharpening and color starts to appear in the high pass filter, use Enhance>Adjust Color>Remove color... this gives an even sharpening. Ideally you only want gray and black to emphasize edges. Gray will be neutral and not show and the black increases contrast at the edge.

Butch

[ME100FINN]

Added one more building shot to the gallery. Bricks sharpened up so nice. What an easy task. Nice to use something other the USM.

[Pssequimages]

I prefer layer mode "overlay" to the mask layer, rather than hard light. Try it. It is also opacity adjustable for just the right amount of sharpening. Be careful, it is VERY easy to sharpen too much.

[BettyC]

I agree with the Overlay mode--learned that from someone at DPReview over a year ago.

[Wendy]

I use that too :)

Wendy