Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

There are many photo sharpening techniques. Some are quite tedious with many steps and lots of slider adjustments to make. This tip I learned today works very well and it is very simple. First, let’s check out an example. Simply roll your mouse over the image below, you will notice the effect of the sharpening.

If your browser does not support the image rollovers, please download the following images to your computer for comparison. No sharpening, and with sharpening.

So, how does this technique work? What I did was simple:

1. Resize the original photo in Photoshop using the default settings to 1000 pixel wide
2. Apply “Filter\Sharpen\Sharpen” three times
3. Resize the photo to half (500 pixel wide)

It is so simple! Not more sliders to fiddle with. If there is any adjustment, it is mostly the number of times you apply the sharpen filter. It worked quite well on this zebra photo with insignificant amount of halo or noise artifacts. This sharpening technique really is meant for posting small sized photos on the web, not for sharpening large photos for print since the final down-sizing is essential to eliminate artifacts.

I found this tip from a DPReview forum thread. You may follow this link directly to read the excellent tip by Mark Adamus.