Adobe® Photoshop® CS2 Studio Techniques

Sharpening an Image

To sharpen an image, choose Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask and type in the generic numbers of Amount = 500, Radius = 1, and Threshold = 0, just to make sure you can easily see the effect of sharpening the image (Figure 12.36). Now, adjust the Threshold setting. With it set to 0, everything in the image will be sharpened. That can cause areas that used to have fine detail (like a brick wall) or areas that used to look relatively smooth (like a skin tone or a shadow) to suddenly have overly exaggerated detail. That will make those bricks look noisy and will add years to anyone's face because you've exaggerated every imperfection. To avoid that, slowly increase the Threshold setting until those areas smooth out (Figure 12.37 ...