How to - Sharpen in Elements (and PS to a degree)

[danic]

I have found this technique to be very good at sharpening and I thought I would share it with everyone. I use Elements 6.0, so your version of PS/Elements may have things in different locations or might be called something else.

Firstly, create a layer, and call it "High Pass"

Then select "Filter" from the top, move the mouse down to "Other" and select "High Pass"
You will then need to select the amount of pixels. I usually set it around 10. The higher the amount of pixels, the greater the effect.

Select "ok"

Now your photo should look reasonably gray. Don't stress. It should.

Now on the RH side of the screen there is the Layers window. It is where you can select your opacity of layers, create new layers, etc etc. Select the menu bar in the layers window and change it from "Normal" to "Soft Overlay" or "Hard Overlay", depending on how much of an effect you want it to have. You can also change the opacity of the layer to adjust the sharpness.

Easy? Yep, it sure is. It shouldn't take you any more than a minute or two to do.



Any questions, or if a screen shot is needed, let me know.

Cheers,
Dan

[mjs1973]

This has become my main way of sharpening my photos over the last year or so. One other thing I do a lot is use a layer mask so I only sharpen the areas that I want sharpened. (Not sure if elements supports layer masks?) I usually find a setting of the High Pass filter between 2 and 10 to work best, depending on the photo.

[Frog]

Oh my!
What sounds simple to some sounds awfully complicated to me.
90% of the time, I just use auto-sharpen.

[Didache]

High-pass-sharpening (HPS) is indeed a very useful weapon in the armoury. Most of the time, most people just use unsharp mask (USM), and mainly this is fine. The main problem with USM however is that it applies to the whole image, even if some of it requires more/less sharpening than other parts. Because HPS is done via a layer, it is possible to be selective about the areas requiring sharpening - for instance, on the eyes of a portrait, but not on the skin tones.

Mike

[mjs1973]

High-pass-sharpening (HPS) is indeed a very useful weapon in the armoury. Most of the time, most people just use unsharp mask (USM), and mainly this is fine. The main problem with USM however is that it applies to the whole image, even if some of it requires more/less sharpening than other parts. Because HPS is done via a layer, it is possible to be selective about the areas requiring sharpening - for instance, on the eyes of a portrait, but not on the skin tones.

Mike

Yup. Before I started using the HPS technique, I would use smart sharpen. I would often create a duplicate of my background layer and apply the USM to that. That way I could use a layer mask and only sharpen what I wanted to.

[SmartWombat]

I use the brush in lightroom, with automasking on and configured to sharpen 50.
It does all of that work for me - I just concentrate on making it look right.

[Medley]

I still use USM more than any other, because it allows the most imput for variations. Mike (Didache), if you duplicate the background layer, and do the sharpening on the duplicate, then you can use a layer mask to create the selectivity you speak of.

High pass sharpening definately has a place, but it works better on some type of images than it does on others.

As far as drawbacks, the single biggest one applies to nearly all forms of sharpening: in adding contrast, PS adds the most to the highest contrast areas and the least to the low contrast ares. This is exactly opposite of how you want it. The solution is to go to Layer> Layer Style> Blending Options and use the 'blend if:' sliders to limit the sharpening in the high contrast areas. Doing this BEFORE applying the USM filter (or other sharpening) allows you to then "punch-up" the sharpening amount without fear of over-sharpening the high contrast areas. This is known in the trade as a "mid-level contrast boost", and the results can be awesome.

- Joe U.

[A.M.D.A.]

I have found this technique to be very good at sharpening and I thought I would share it with everyone. I use Elements 6.0, so your version of PS/Elements may have things in different locations or might be called something else.

Firstly, create a layer, and call it "High Pass"

Then select "Filter" from the top, move the mouse down to "Other" and select "High Pass"
You will then need to select the amount of pixels. I usually set it around 10. The higher the amount of pixels, the greater the effect.

Select "ok"

Now your photo should look reasonably gray. Don't stress. It should.

Now on the RH side of the screen there is the Layers window. It is where you can select your opacity of layers, create new layers, etc etc. Select the menu bar in the layers window and change it from "Normal" to "Soft Overlay" or "Hard Overlay", depending on how much of an effect you want it to have. You can also change the opacity of the layer to adjust the sharpness.

Easy? Yep, it sure is. It shouldn't take you any more than a minute or two to do.



Any questions, or if a screen shot is needed, let me know.

Cheers,
Dan

Dan, thank you for sharing this info!

I have GIMP and managed to locate / download a plugin for the "High-Pass". But then after getting past that step I'm getting a bit confused about how to proceed...

Now your photo should look reasonably gray. Don't stress. It should.

About the gray, how does it supposed to look? Solid gray, or maybe kind of "hazy".

Again, thanks for taking the time to post. If possible, screenshots would be awesome!

[mjs1973]

About the gray, how does it supposed to look? Solid gray, or maybe kind of "hazy".

Again, thanks for taking the time to post. If possible, screenshots would be awesome!

Here is an example of how most of my images look once I add the High Pass layer to them. I used a radius setting of 5.5. Just enough to highlight the edge detail.