How To Sharpen The Details Without It Looking Photoshopped

I’m sure this is already out there somewhere on the www, but I figured I’d include it here anyway, because it’s a trick I use fairly often.

The High Pass Sharpen

I like details. Who doesn’t? I also happen to like shooting with a wide aperture. (Newer photographers, remember that means small numbers, like 1.4, 1.8, 2.0) Unfortunately, shooting at such a wide aperture means sometimes I lose sharpness in the details. (I use a 50mm 1.4 but sometimes it can get pretty soft.) So how do I fix this? I take two seconds in Photoshop and give my photo a little punch. Here’s how you can too.

First let’s take a close up look at what your photo might look like at it’s original size. Pretty good, but could be sharper. I want Pumpkin’s eyes to be the focus, and to really pop, so that’s what I’ll sharpen. Make sure all your other editing is done (if any) and flatten your image. Now duplicate that layer. (Or if you’re a keyboard junkie like me: Ctrl + A, Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V)

Next we’re going to use the high pass. Filter → Other → High Pass. Up pops a screen asking you to input the radius number. This is really up to you, because every image will be different. You don’t want it to be too much because this is really a subtle technique. For the sake of this example I used 8.8 so you could really tell the difference, which is more than double what I usually use. (I vary from 2.8 – 4.8 depending on the photograph.) Next we’ll want to overlay this layer. (In your layers bar, to the left of Opacity and Fill, located in the right sidebar. By default it’s set to “Normal”.)

Now your photograph looks something like this. But, in my humble opinion, this is too much. See the fur on the top of his head? The whole photo has now obviously been attacked with a sharpen tool. Why on earth would I do that? That would defeat the purpose of shooting with a lower aperture. If I wanted his whole head in super sharp focus I would have shot with an f/stop of 2.8 or higher! I still want the majority of the photo to be soft, but I want the focus to be sharp like it would be with a nicer (read: way more expensive) lens. So what do we do?

We duplicate the background layer (your original, unsharpened photo), and place it on top of the high pass layer. Now simply take the eraser tool and wave that sucker over the main focus in the photograph. I usually do the eyes, or sometimes the eyes and nose (for cats, anyway). But for this shot I just erased the eyes, leaving me with a soft photograph, with one sharp (but subtly so) focus.

I imagine you’re getting ready to scroll back up, and then back down again to try and see if you can spot the differences. I’ll spare you the trouble.

AHA. And you thought it looked good NOW, wait until you zoom out and take the whole photo in.

PURRFECT!

Soft with that little subtle punch. (As if punches could be subtle.)

It should be noted You don’t need Photoshop to use this technique. You just need a photo editing software that uses layers, and pretty much all of them do now, and the ability to sharpen. In Paint Shop Pro you simply copy the layer and instead of doing the high pass, you sharpen till your heart is content, and then follow the same steps above!

Enjoy!