Video:Elements Tutorial: How to Sharpen an Image

Transcript:Elements Tutorial: How to Sharpen an Image

Hi, I’m Pelpina, here for About.com. If you have an image that’s a bit out of focus, you can try to make it look better with sharpening tools in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Auto Sharpen Feature in Photoshop Elements

First of all, let me say that you can’t really improve the focus of a photo after you’ve taken it, but you can try to increase the contrast between pixels, and therefore make it look sharper.  The easiest way to sharpen an image automatically, is by going to the upper menu - click on enhance, and choose auto sharpen. 

Manually Adjust Sharpness

If you want a bit more control, you can also find a sharpening tool in the Quick Photo Edit Mode, at the bottom, on the right. This is a quick-fix tool, which lets you easily sharpen with just one single movement. Make sure you move it slowly, though, because when you overemphasize the edges of your image, it will seem unnatural. 

Unsharp Mask Tools Offers More Options

For even more options, let’s try the unsharp mask. Just go to the enhance menu while you’re in full photo edit or quick photo edit mode -- and click on unsharp mask. This tool is very handy because it gives you different options to control the amount of sharpening and which areas you want to apply the effect to. 

The amount, here, gives you the option to specify the amount of sharpening - the higher this number is, the sharper your image will be. Make sure it’s not too much, or otherwise your image will look grainy. 

The radius is the width of the sharpness - so the higher this number, the wider the sharpness. Basically, when you have a high-resolution photo, you’ll probably want to put the radius high, compared to a low-resolution photo.

And then there’s the threshold. It looks at the difference in brightness between pixels to determine how much of the edges are sharpened. If the value is low, very small contrast differences in your photo will be sharpened. If the value is high, only pixels with a big contrast (dark and light colors) will be sharpened. Just play around between the amount, radius and threshold to find the best sharpness for your image - without making it look grainy or unnatural.  

Sharpen a Portion of the Images in Photoshop Elements

To sharpen just a small part of an image, you can select the sharpen tool. You find it in the lower left corner of the tool bar, sometimes you have to click through the blur tool or smudge tool to see it. Make sure you set the options in brushes menu: such as what kind of tip you need for the brush, the size of the brush, strength, and so forth. Then, just click and move the mouse over the area you want to sharpen.  

Like I said before, you can’t actually improve the focus of a photo after you’ve taken it, but you can definitely improve the way it looks. For more video tutorials and articles on Photoshop Elements, make sure you visit compute.about.com. Thanks for watching!