South African Penguin
Do you sharpen up your images in Photoshop? Perhaps you use one of the preset sharpen methods you find under the filter menu? (filter – sharpen).
Very often these presets are just exactly what you’ll need to enhance your photo, but sometimes you want to/need to have more control over the process. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to sharpen your image in just a few small steps using the High Pass filter.
The photo I’ve used in this tutorial is a scan from film. The star of the photo, the penguin, was captured on a trip to Cape Town, South Africa.
- Open your photo and copy the original layer (ctrl+j)
- On the copied layer, choose the high pass filter (filter – other + high pass) (illustration 01)
By default the radius is set to 10 pixels, which should be suitable. Click OK. - Change the blending mode for the layer. Set it to Hard Light (illustration 02)
- Play around with the opacity of the layer until you’re satisfied with the result.
- If needed you can also add a Brightness/Contrast Layer, but this depends entirely on your photo.
Click on the gallery to see the process:
01 Filter Menu
02 Blending Mode
03 Original
04 High Pass
05 Brightness/Contrast Layer
06 Finished Result
More tutorials:
The Alligator (add a lens blur effect to your photo)
Restore scanned photos in Photoshop
Cardinal Guzman 
Womferful
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Kis
Vento
I better save this in case I can ever afford to get photoshop- thanks!
I will try this!
By the way, do you use Camera Raw?
Yes I do, but I didn’t use it here.
I don’t know what the Masking thing does, in the sharpening/noise reduction section of CameraRaw…
To be honest I’ve never used it, but according to Adobe that specific masking tool:
Wow … cool! Thanks! 🙂
I had to try it out. Here you can see a detail from a randomly chosen photo. I didn’t change anything, I only used sharpened it and used the masking feature in RAW. As you can see the tones got slightly changed as well.
Yeah I see that …! it turned out well, but the whole colour scheme seems altered..
When I just look at the preview in CR, I find it a little hard to see the difference, unless I go to extremes..
I’ve never liked the results from a high-pass sharpening, but I see here that its about choosing the right photo – that then all that tweaking you talk about. I’ll try it out sometime.
Actually I hardly ever use this method with high pass. My preferred method is the ‘sharpen more’ filter. I use it on a layer copy and if the result is too sharp I change the opacity of the layer. It’s quick and easy.
I haven’t gotten Photoshop yet, I don’t know why it seems complicated to me, and I haven’t even tried it. As I move further along, then maybe.I can see where it made a big difference here.
It is interesting to learn another sharpen method. Sometimes I use the Sharpen-Unsharp Mask and at other times I copy the original layer, apply an Overlay Blend 100%, then go to the High Pass filter. I play around with the radius, but it usually varies from 2.5 – 5px.
I will definitely try your method.
Very interesting – thank you, Cardinal!
Very handy, thanks!
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When you describe it, it all seems so easy! Whenever I hear that word Photoshop and layers I start to panic…so need a beginners tutorial😉