Sharpen Images in a Jiffy

With many of us using mobile phone cameras these days take photos, at times the pictures may not turn out to our satisfaction. You cannot expect great photos with mobile phone cameras. But you can do a lot to improve them in Photoshop. One common problem is that mobile phone cameras tend to blur details. This can be corrected to a great extent in Photoshop in a few simple steps. It can be done in any version of Photoshop.

I took this photo of the General Post Office in Kolkata in Dalhousie Square, which is a landmark with my mobile phone. You can see that the photo is not one to brag about.

Step 1 : Press CTRL+J on the keyboard. This will duplicate the Background layer as Layer 1.

Step 2 : Go to Filter>Other>High Pass

Step 3 : The High Pass filter dialogue box opens. This is the filter which will sharpen our image. When you are are using a small image or using one for the web (500 px X 500 px) let the Radius remain at between 1.1 to 1.3 pixels. For larger images you can try a larger Radius. You can see the sharpen taking effect in the dialogue window even though everything appears grey. I have used a Radius of 12.0 pixels since the image I have is large.

Step 4 : Now change the Blend Mode to Overlay in the Layers pallette and you are done.

The sharpened image. That is all. Try it out.