P H O TO S H O P F O R D I G I TA L P H O TO G R A P H E R S

Day Twenty
Instructor:
Scott Kelby

Todays Lesson:
Sharpening, Day 3
CS2s Smart Sharpen Filter is revealed, along with High Pass
sharpening (for all versions of Photoshop).

Key Concepts:
Besides Unsharp Mask, in Photoshop CS2 theres a new filter called Smart Sharpen, which has some advantages over the Unsharp Mask.
(1) The preview window is much larger.
(2) There are only two sliders, so the filter is easier to use.
(3) You can apply a new style of sharpening designed to remove Lens Blur, which is a new algorithm that
lets you apply more sharpening with less chance of halos and color artifacts.
(4) Theres an advanced mode, with two separate tabs that let you reduce the sharpening in just the
shadow areas or the highlight areas.
Another method of producing extreme sharpening uses the High Pass filter. You start by duplicating the
Background layer, then go under the Filter menu, under Other, and choose High Pass. Drag the slider all
the way to the left, and then drag to the right until the edges start to appear. Then change the Layer blend
mode of this layer to Hard Light to reveal the extreme sharpening. If the sharpening appears too intense,
just lower the opacity of this layer until it looks about right.

Keyboard Shortcuts Used:

To reapply the same filter, using the exact same settings, just press Command-F (PC: Ctrl-F).

Additional Material Not Covered In Class:

Although we applied the Smart Sharpen filter directly to the RGB photo itself, you can also do the Lab
channel trick you learned yesterday and apply the Smart Sharpen filter to just the Lightness channel, allowing you to apply more sharpening with fewer problems.