Photoshop Elements >

Sharpening >

1 - High-pass Filter Sharpening

Four Advantages

High-pass Filter Sharpening has four advantages:

1) Fewer steps

2) Only the edges are affected, where sharpening is most needed.

Expanses of even tones and colors, where sharpening isn't needed, are ignored.

3) Noise is not sharpened.

4) Applying sharpening to only certain areas, selective sharpening, is easy.

How It Works

High-pass Filter Sharpening finds edges like the Find Edges filter (Filter > Stylize >Find Edges).

It uses the Overlay blending mode to find the edges.

This blending mode is a combination of the Screen and Multiply blending modes.

The former lightens lighter areas, and latter, darkens darker areas.

So, once the edges are located, the lighter edges are lightened, and the darker edges are darkened, increasing the contrast.

The increased contrast is perceived as being sharper.

Be sure to check off as you go along.

Preparation

1) Again, sharpening is the last step when editing a photograph.

2) Make a composite layer.

A composite layer contains all of the layers of your photograph.

If you haven't already done so, go to Composite Layer.

Do the following.

a) Deselect the eye icons on the layers you don't want to merge.

b) Click the top layer (highlighted).

c) Select > All.

d) Edit > Copy Merged.

e) Edit > Paste.

3) Move the composite layer to the top position in the Layers panel.

Sharpening

1) Click the composite layer (see above).

2) Remove the color (desaturate) the composite layer.

Go to Enhance > Adjust Color > Remove Color, or press Shift + Ctrl + u.

3) Change the blending mode for the composite layer from Normal to Overlay.

Blending Mode?

At the top of the layers stack, look for the unlabeled Blending Mode box.

It's to the left of the Opacity box.

If you're new to blending modes, go to Blending Modes.

4) Go to Filter > Other > High Pass.

Start with a radius of 1.5 pixels.

Experiment with values between 1 and 3.

As mentioned, you can reduce the amount of sharpening by lowering the opacity of the layer.

Therefore, you may want to sharpen too much.

Then, you can fine tune the sharpening by changing the opacity of the layer.

You can also reduce the sharpening by using Soft Light, or increase it with Hard Light, instead of the Overlay blending mode.

Evaluate

Compare the unsharpened and sharpened versions by selecting and deselecting the eye icon on the layer being sharpened.

Enlarge your photograph to 100%, and review the most important part of the photograph.

Evaluate the sharpening by checking the following.

• Detail should be evident, but not blaringly so.

• There shouldn't be any halos along the edges in the photograph.

As mentioned, you can change the sharpening by varying the opacity of the sharpening layer.

This may be convenient if you're printing a photograph at various sizes, each of which may require a different level of sharpening.

The next section discusses selective sharpening using High-pass Filter Sharpening.

You can apply sharpening only to parts of a photograph.

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