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Sharpen Filters

Lesson 10 from: Demystifying the Photoshop Filter Menu

Matt Kloskowski

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Lesson Info

10. Sharpen Filters

Next Lesson: Artistic Filters

Lesson Info

Sharpen Filters

So, here's the thing with Sharpen. There's a lot of tools inside of here. This really goes back to... This really goes back to... There's a lot of different ways to do things. If you use Unsharp Mask... I don't wanna convince you not to use Unsharp Mask. Cause honestly, guys, at the end of the day... You were in my last class. Well, a lot of you were in another class of mine. But at the end of the day, I'd said it before, sharpening is not going to miraculously change, make, or save your photo. Okay, there's no sharpening technique... There's different people have a different eye for a different sharpening technique, but there's no one sharpening technique that you're going to be like, "Oh my God, my mind is blown. "I'm missing out. "My photos could be so sharp." So, if you use Unsharp Mask, keep using it. It doesn't matter. There are a lot of things underneath here. What I can tell you is Sharpen, Sharpen Edges... You know, Sharpen Edges kinda just sharpens edges. Sharpen, it's sharpe...

ning without any slider. Like, you get nothing. Why would you ever use it? Sharpen Edges you saw, it'll very vaguely sharpen edges. Sharpen More sharpens more than Sharpen. (students laughing) There's nothing else I can tell you about it. You would just never ever use it. Smart Sharpen, Unsharp Mask... Unsharp Mask is 15 years ago. That's how we sharpened our photos. This is before Lightroom, before Camera Raw. That's how I would sharpen my photos. Lightroom and Camera Raw came out. I kind of switched over. Smart Sharpen, if you're a Photoshop user, and you're not really doing any raw editing inside of Lightroom or Camera Raw, Smart Sharpen, according to Adobe, is the best sharpening method inside of Photoshop. So, that's what you should be using. It has overtaken Unsharp Mask. It basically has Unsharp Mask in it with Amount and Radius, but it also lets you kind of pick what type of blur you want to remove from the photo. Whether it's like the blur from a lens blur, a little bit of camera shake, or whatnot. But, you know, just think of Amounts as the contrast. Sharpening fines edges, adds contrast to those edges to make it look sharp. Think of Radius as, it fines an edge how far outside that radius. And then, noise sometimes you get from adding sharpening in there, so you'd want to reduce it. But, guys, honestly, if you're using Lightroom, you're doing... How many people are using Lightroom or Camera Raw? So, just about everybody in here? Just use the sharpening panel inside of there. You're not missing anything by coming in here and doing it. Shake Reduction. The best times I've seen Shake Reduction work is in a demo. I've never really been able to get it to work for me. Like where I had a blurry photo from camera shake, and Shake Reduction has miraculously changed it for me. But the idea behind Shake Reduction... I'll zoom in for you. The idea behind it is... Let's turn the preview off. So, this is a little bit of camera shake. It's not quite as sharp as it could be. So with Shake Reduction, you can go in here. And as you saw, you can create. You can kind of point it at a place in the photo that has a good representation of where that shake is. You kind of point it there, and it examines all this stuff, and it kind of tries to maneuver it together to give you a sharper photo. All right, so that was before. That was after. You can see it. Can I be honest with you? If I went in and did Smart Sharpen, or sharpening in, it would actually look pretty much the same. So, again, I've seen demos where you're like, "Wow! That looks awesome." I've never been able to get it to really work outside a demo.

Ratings and Reviews

Deborah Bailey
 

I've always wondered what all the filters were in Photoshop. This class showed how they work, and which ones are helpful to use. I learned a lot and I recommend this class.

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