Sharpening photos with Photoshop - Unsharp Mask

If you’re like me, still learning photograph and getting used to your cameras, you’ll no doubt have quite a few images that makes you go “If only it wasn’t out of focus”.

Unsharp may be the last word (Is it even a word?) that comes to mind when you want to sharpen your out of focus images.

From Wikipedia:

The Unsharp name comes from the technique uses the blurred, or “unsharp”, positive to create a “mask” of the original image.

Come again? Unsharp Mask is actually a feature available in Adobe Photoshop CS and Adobe Photoshop Elements to help you sharpen images. Enough talk, let’s get to the actual usage of the Unsharp Mask tool in Photoshop. Here’s an out of focus photo:

Open up Photoshop. Then in Photoshop,

1. Go to the Filter menu
2. Choose “Sharpen”
3. Choose “Unsharp Mask”

Enter the following settings:

1. Amount: 85
2. Radius: 1
3. Threshold: 4

Here’s the result:

Notice how the fur along the mouth are sharpen and finer? You can apply this Unsharp Mask multiple times to get the desired effect.

On the other hand, you can also play around with the values of Amount, Radius and Threshold to achieve the desired effect.

This technique is from a great book - Scott Kelby’s The Photoshop Elements 5 Book For Digital Photographers. Every photographer should get this book or the Photoshop CS equivalent because there’s plenty of tips for everybody! Even professional photographers!

Here are a few sets of values from Scott Kelby’s book for sharpening images using the Unsharp Mask tool:

Sharpening Soft Subjects
Softer nature subjects, e.g. flowers, puppies, people, rainbows.
Amount: 150%
Radius: 1
Threshold: 10

Sharpening Portraits
Close-up portraits
Amount: 75%
Radius: 2
Threshold: 3

Moderate Sharpening
Product shots, home interiors and exteriors, landscapes
Amount: 225%
Radius: 0.5
Threshold: 0

Maximum Sharpening
Visibly out-of-focus photos, photos with many well-defined edges, e.g. buildings, coins, cars, machinery
Amount: 65%
Radius: 4
Threshold: 3

Web Sharpening
When resolution is dropped from 300dpi to 72dpi, and out-of-focus photos. Adds some noise.
Amount: 400% (try 200% if that’s too much)
Radius: 0.3
Threshold: 0

How do you sharpen your images? Do you use other tools and software? Share with us in the comments!