High pass sharpening

This process is useful for cleanly sharpening an image. I especially like using this whenever I have a high iso grainy image and don't want to blown the grain out of proportion with an unsharp mask or if I just want a clean high res image. The photo I am using in this tutorial is on my other blog and there will be a link to it at the bottom of this post.

1. Open your image in photoshop and make sure to have the layer you want to sharpen selected.



2. Duplicate your layer by right clicking it or with hotkey [ apple + j ].



3. Desaturate the duplicate layer through image, adjustments, desaturate or hotkey [ shift + apple + u ].



4. While still on your desaturated layer click the high pass filter.



5. Keep the radius small, typically less than 10 pixels. You just want the filter to keep the outlines in the image.





6. Change the top layer's blending mode. I find soft light or overlay to be the best for this kind of edit.



7. At this point you can mask out any areas that look too sharp and can reduce the opacity of your duplicate layer to your eye's preference. There are more details on how to do this in the next post I have about high pass clouds.



Once you are done merge your layers or flatten your image and save it. Below I have put a before and after so you can see the difference high pass sharpening makes. I hope you found this tutorial useful and easy to comprehend!



Tree top tilt shot:
http://binterart.blogspot.com/2010/06/tree-top-tilt-shot.html