Photoshop is the de facto tool for image manipulation and it has been widely used in areas such as graphic designing and even photo retouching and editing. Today i am going to show you an easy method for sharpening blurred or defocused photographs using Photoshop.
Blurred images are one of the most common problems encountered while capturing photographs using a digital or an DSLR camera. Because of the small display on digital cameras, its often difficult to determine whether the subject is in focus or not, as a result photographs sometime come out blurred.
On a camera’s display, a photograph might appear as perfectly focused, however when the same photograph is viewed on a larger display such as a PC’s monitor, the photograph might appear blurred or not focused properly.
You need not worry if your photos come out slightly defocused as it is possible to sharpen blurred photographs. Althoguh its not possible to changes the point of focus in a photograph once it is taken. However with the help of photo editing tools, such as Photoshop, you can easily manipulate the photograph in order to sharpen it.
There are multiple methods by which you can sharpen an image in photoshop. While some are very simple to perform, there are even techniques which require expertise in Photoshop and the results can be far better.
However, its not necessary for you to have through knowledge of photoshop. With a proper how to guide, you can easily perform the necessary steps in order to sharpen a photograph in photoshop. You can follow the instructions below to sharpen any photograph using Photoshop CS5 or CS6.
Note: I have used Photoshop CS5 for this tutorial, however Photoshop CS6 will also get the job done. If you don’t have Photoshop, you can download the trial version from the link provided at the bottom of this page.
How to Easily Sharpen Photos in Adobe Photoshop
- Step 1: Open Photoshop and click on File > Open. Then select the blurred photograph.
- Step 2: Once the photo is opened up in Photoshop, right click on the photo in the layers menu and select “ Duplicate layer “. This will create a duplicate of the photograph in another layer. Name the duplicate layer as “ Sharpen “.
- Step 4: Now select Filters > Others > High Pass and adjust the radius until a slight glow appears in the edges of the photograph. Generally a radius of 10 works best, but you can always adjust it for better results.
- Step 5: Set the blend mode of the Sharpen layer as “ Hard Light “ and the opacity to 50% ( You can adjust it to your requirement ).
That’s it, you should now be able to see that the photograph is slightly sharper than the original. You can adjust the High pass value if you want the photograph to be more sharper.
Download: Photoshop CS5 Trial
