Image Sharpening in Photoshop

Part 3 of 3

This video demonstrates how sharpening images in Photoshop CS5 can be aimed precisely so as to limit unwanted sharpening which might increase noise.

Whilst Photoshop has tools for powerfully sharpening images, it lacks the masking controls of it’s cousins, Camera Raw and Lightroom that make sharpening a more sophisticated process in those packages. The method in this video is actually a bit involved, but it allows you to apply steep sharpening values whilst limiting the impact of the sharpening to the most important detail in the photograph. For this technique to work, the noise in your image need not necessarily be tame, but it must not be so severe that it overwhelms the other details in the picture.