Edge-Sharpening Technique

This is a sharpening technique that doesn't use the Unsharp Mask filter, but still leaves you with a lot of control over the sharpening, even after the sharpening is applied. It's ideal to use when you have an image (with a lot of edges) that can hold a lot of sharpening or one that really needs it.

Step One

Open a photo that needs edge sharpening. Duplicate the Background layer by pressing Command-J (PC: Control-J). The copy will be named Layer 1 in the Layers palette.

Step Two

Go under the Filter menu, under Stylize, and choose Emboss. You're going to use this filter to accentuate the edges in the photo. You can leave the Angle and Amount settings at their defaults (135° and 100%), but for low-res images, you'll want to lower the Height setting to 2 pixels (for high-res images, you can raise it to 4 pixels). Click OK to apply the filter, and your photo will turn gray with neon-colored highlights along the edges. To remove those neon-colored edges, press Shift-Command-U (PC: Shift-Control-U) to desaturate the color from this layer.

Step Three

In the Layers palette, change the layer blend mode of this layer from Normal to Hard Light. This removes the gray color from the layer, but leaves the edges accentuated, making the entire photo appear much sharper.

Step Four

If the sharpening seems too intense, you can control the amount of the effect by simply lowering the Opacity of this layer in the Layers palette.

Before

After