Sharpen Photos like a Pro! 

You are the sharpest tool in the toolbox my friend. In fact, you are the entire contents of the toolbox, thank you for all your content.

I am a Fuji shooter. And sharpening in ACR or Lightroom produces "worms". At some point I discovered that, dropping the sharpen slider in ACR to 0 and sharpen in PS allowed me to sharpen my images without "worms." Probably because it makes a difference that it's sharpening a Tiff file and not a Fuji raw file. So this video is especially useful for my Fuji buddies. Thanks

I am basically an Astro photographer using Photoshop to process my stacked images. Photoshop has a steep learning curve but your videos seem to cover a lot of topics and make them rather intuitive. I hope to slowly try to digest as many of your videos as possible. Thank you and keep up the good work.

Best explanation of sharpening in PS on the web. Most tutorial merely show how to sharpening. The reasons was just as valuable. I love your high pass method. I'll will give a try. Thanks!

Thanks again Blake. I used High Pass sharpening, but only sometimes with a mask and not with Blend If. This method you show makes sharpening much better.

Great job Blake. You are the king with explanations.

This one is at the top of my list to learn.

You've nailed it again, Blake, and that's enough reason for me to stay with f64 Elite.

Great video Blake! The sharpening a knife example will be a great mental reference to keep in mind when making decisions. Thank you!

Wonderful video! Thank you!

Best way to sharpen that I've found is to do it in LAB colour space on the luminosity channel, that way you don't see any colour shift since in RGB the colours are tied to the luminosity--i.e. sharpening adds more contrast to edges and darkens colours overall as a result.

I only use sharpening to compensate for the data loss that occurs when translating square pixels into round dots. I feel that if more sharpening is required, the image file is no good. Why sharpen for printing? That’s my ultimate goal. Any image I’ve created that looks good enough to print will certainly look just fine in the digital realm. I only use one sharpening workflow for all of my images. The workflow is as follows: Duplicate background layer. With duplicated layer selected click filter>other>high pass. Set radius to 15.0, nothing else. Now click image>desaturate. Now click image>curves. To create a tone curve input the following output/inputs: 190/255, 128/128, 40/80, 0/0. This will create a nice S curve and block halos from being obvious. Change blending mode to Overlay. Change opacity of sharpening layer to 28%. Works every time. If you’d like to know the continuation of the workflow that removes the sharpening from the areas of the photo that aren’t in focus, send me a message. This can be turned into an action that saves time too.

This channel will take off surely, great information so much knowledge And delivered quickly and precisely. Love it

Great video ! I loved it, and I am very glad that I mostly use those best practices without even knowing these path extisted :) My quick tool for sharpening is Topaz Ai clear, and a brush to erase the stuff I don't like sharpened :) Thank you so much and best regards from Uruguay.

Thank you for this concise and constructive tutorial. You nicely presented your method.I enjoy your work.

Excellent video! Thanks Blake, this helps a lot!!

Another great video Blake 👍. Thanks for sharing 🙏

Awesome video Blake, so much great information.

The thing I do before sharpening is first do the image size to what I want it, depending on web or print. Ive found that if you sharpen then down size your image, that can cause not so nice results.

Hello Blake! Much love from Bucharest, Romania!

Very nice! Created an "Action" in PS; with Merged Visible layer, Turn into Smart Object, applied: High Pass filter, Lenear Light BM - 30% fill, and Blend-If, add Mask. Ready to tweak setting and paint mask! Thanks!

Now my sharpening will improve. I will use a mask thanks.

You sharpened my capabilities using just RU-vid, how cool is that?

When I was the Production Manager for Digital Imaging Services at the National Geographic Society, I had to explain to one of our Photographers why we couldn't produce a 30x40 print from his 35mm Transparency, which we scanned, as sharp as it appeared in our Magazine. I had to explain the difference for sharpening for magazine output in a small size as compared to the sharpening used for a large Photographic print output. This was when digital output and photoshop was first introduced into photography, and this was a chore. By the way the photographer I had to educate was the one who captured the famous Green Eyed woman image that graced the cover of the NGS Magazine.

Very helpful thank you

I like how you used the overlay in BI to get a more visual view.. >>> Great tip ....Thank you

First comment . Hello from Philippines

Craftsmanship, the distilled experience of endless trials, may be behind the real beauty that shines through one's art. As you say, *where and when to sharpen* is most important. But that only through practice, practice, practice. Frustrated??? Perhaps a look back at one's work from a year or two ago will show show how much one really has learned and improved even though the daily incremental progress seemed infinitesimal.

I see what you did there, Mick (Dundee)! 😜

Excellent!!! I would have loved to see this technique on a portrait, Fashion shoot, though. Thanks.

Blake Rudis is my man ! Expressing his ideas, believes and/or some facts in a very succinct manner with real time visual results, Bravo ! .. But how do you to determine the the levels of sharping for a specific final output ? Be it average computer screen or a $6000 Eizo monitor, a smart phone, anything backlit to a neighborhood flyer printed on a $300 inkjet or laser printer and $6000 inkjet to a Heidelberg rotary offset printer., ect. ect. I guess it is not like ; "one size fits all" So what determines how to set the parameters for each output ?! The best answer I found was to lower the brightness of your screen halfway down, however, it might work for luminosity and contrast, but sharpening ? I am so frustrated not to know this. If you can find the time then please make a video of it. Any recommended further reading is very welcome. But you have a DON with a hell of a lot more impact than me reading a book. I guess that probably 90 % of photographers are just as much in the dark as I am. I am a bit of an old film dude, who never had to bother with these issues and desperately wants to learn. Thank you so much for your time and attention. With all my respect. Kind regards, Hendrik

Thanks so much. I've tried various sharpening techniques and this makes sense for my portrait images where I sharpen certain facial features but don't want to sharpen of skin; the masking and blend if technique gives me lots of control. One question -- what are your thoughts on sharpening only on the final image size (e.g., reducing an image to instagram specs and resolution) vs. the original image size?

Thank you for this video. As someone, who edits for a living, I completely agree with you about sharpening. When doing product photography, I use Capture One (full frame only I'm afraid) and do a gentle sharpening there before I export to photoshop, to 'set the scene' so o speak. I don't sharpen in the middle of my workflow as there may be some artefacts that I will get rid of through a different method of Freq Sep that I use and will show up on a High Pass sharpen later. Linear Light is one of the blend modes I use for sharpening but I find it can be sometimes too harsh when used on some portraits, but like you said, it is image dependent. It is good to see someone finally showing the blend if usage on sharpening as I'm sure not many will have ever used it before for this purpose. People should watch more videos like this, even seasoned photoshop users, as there are so many many different methods for achieving the same goal in photoshop. Once again, thank you.

Great demo, Blake. I always relied on a plug-in called Photokit Sharpener for years. Unfortunately, its no longer supported and not compatible with the CC variants of Photoshop (shame). This looks like an excellent method. PK Sharpener also had an action for capture sharpening to counteract the the sensor's AA filter on certain cameras (needed for Canon, not needed for Sony mirrorless bodies, for example). I guess the mild sharpening you did in ACR served the same purpose?

Great tutorial Blake, especially the explanation that sharpening is just an optical illusion. Also, I like the blend if part and that color overlay to see what are we sharpening. You are sharpening with linear light, why not with soft light? Thank you

Thanks for the video, makes sense, but did your method and could not see any difference from just a global sharpening and low unsharp mask. The only time yours worked if I rely crank up the high pass and use 30 / 50% fill. Will keep playing, thanks again.

Either do capture sharpening in RAW ie Radius 0 and detail maximum or don’t but then add it in Ps. It’s Dependant on every image but for best results only sharpen in Ps 🙂

Honest question, I'm not trolling: Do you think this works better than Topaz Sharpen AI? Topaz seems to do about the same by default, and it might get nearly identical results with a little tweaking if and where needed. I'd be interested in seeing a comparison with AI and your technique. Still, nice technique. You nailed it with your clear and thorough explanation. I once used a similar techniques with a high pass filter to sharpen for missed focus, and the tutorial I followed was not as good as yours, not even close. (And btw Sharpen AI with a couple of clicks corrected my missed focus way better an my effort in Ps using a high pass.)

I do real estate for vacation properties. This video is great! ? For you tho….if I finish sharpening in PS, then should I turn off the extra sharpening option when exporting? Seem like it would then ruin what I applied first in LRC then in PS.

thanks i will try the high bypass selective sharpening ---- but why do you add the Color overlay layer ?

Just out of curiosity how do you feel about luminosity masks and using them to decide where your sharpening is occurring and then using fill to reduce or increase potency of the effects. I realize you would have multiple layers doing this but is this a more accurate approach?

Great video and tutorial - and a question: in the video, you say that sharpening can be done at any step in the workflow. That said, I was always told that sharpening should be done at the image output size...so, if I'm resizing an image for my website, and I want the smaller side to be 3000px, I resize, then sharpen accordingly. I suppose the question is then, does size matter?? ;)

trusty ol griptillian ;)

Why do you use lineair light instead of any other?

Talk to me talk to me. Whats up Frank here. Why are you F64 and I'm N64? and we are bothe photographers. LOL how does that happen. Hope all is great. Cheers from LA Nuclearfrank. take care!

Fun fact. Rudis is slang in Swedish for uneducated, inexperienced. This is obviously not the case with you.😆 Thank you for this lesson I have just wondered about how to do in this case. So how about the sharpen filters in PS are they useless?

Default sharpen value is 40. Is there a way to restore it to 25?

Your content is very useful. But you speak much too fast. Listening at .75 helps.