Discover sharpening techniques in Photoshop using both High Pass filter and Smart Sharpen, exploring their strengths and differences in a comprehensive tutorial.
This exercise is excerpted from Noble Desktop’s past Photoshop training materials and is compatible with Photoshop updates through 2020. To learn current skills in Photoshop, check out our Photoshop Bootcamp and graphic design classes in NYC and live online.
Topics covered in this Photoshop tutorial:
Using the High Pass filter for sharpening, The Hard Light blending mode, High Pass vs. Smart Sharpen
Exercise Preview
Photo courtesy of istockphoto, © Quavondo, Photo #6405868
Exercise Overview
In this exercise we’ll compare two different sharpening techniques—Smart Sharpen, and sharpening with the High Pass filter. While Smart Sharpen can be quite good, the High Pass technique can yield results that are more natural and closer to the original. Smart Sharpen brings attention to all details (even when all noise is removed), and sometimes that includes things you don’t want. High Pass can better bring attention to the natural areas of interest.
Sharpening with a High Pass Filter
- Open girl with city background.jpg.
- Do a File > Save As.
- From the Format menu (Mac) or Save as type menu (Windows) choose Photoshop and name it yourname-girl-sharpen.psd.
- Duplicate the Background layer (Cmd–J (Mac) or Ctrl–J (Windows)).
- Rename the layer high pass.
- Set its blending mode to Hard Light.
- Go to Filter > Other > High Pass.
- Set the Radius to 8 Pixels and click OK.
- Hide and show the high pass layer to see the changes. When you are satisfied, make sure the high pass layer is shown.
High Pass vs. Smart Sharpen
In the Layers panel, click on the Background layer and Duplicate it (Cmd–J (Mac) or Ctrl–J (Windows)).
Name the new layer smart sharpen.
Drag it above the high pass layer.
With the smart sharpen layer selected, go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.
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Set the following before clicking OK:
Amount: 100% Radius: 8 px Reduce Noise: 0% (We are not applying noise reduction for comparison purposes, but feel free to use it on your own images.) Remove: Gaussian Blur -
Hide and show the smart sharpen layer to compare it to the high pass layer.
Notice how the high pass layer brings out more definition in the hair. The high pass also better focuses on the eyes, and not the nose. In comparison, smart sharpen highlights the nose too much and there is too much halo on the left cheek—where it meets the buildings in the background. The high pass sharpening is more natural. For instance, the shirt strap really stands out on the smart sharpen layer but not as much with high pass. Overall, high pass is closer to the original.
We’d typically use a layer mask to remove any unwanted sharpening, but for the purposes of this exercise we don’t need to. You’re done, so save and close the file.
Optional Bonus: Using High Pass on a Layered Document
It’s good practice to save sharpening for the very end of the retouching process. In the previous example we only have one layer, but what about a layered file? We can preserve all our retouching layers and add a sharpening layer on top.
Open lifestyle color shirt-done.psd.
A Embedded Profile Mismatch dialog should open. This image uses ColorMatch RGB. Like Adobe RGB it’s a perfectly valid RGB workspace, so there’s no need to convert. Leave Use the embedded profile selected, and click OK.
Go to Select > All.
Go to Edit > Copy Merged.
Select the color shirt layer.
Go to Edit > Paste.
Rename the new layer high pass sharpen.
Set its blending mode to Hard Light.
Go to Filter > Other > High Pass.
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Set the Radius to 1 Pixels and click OK.
Now all your editing layers have been preserved, and you have a final sharpened layer all in one file! Typically your next step would be to add a layer mask in order to remove any unwanted sharpening.
