Sharpening is the method of increasing the contrast between two objects, usually isolated to the point at where they meet. What this means is that to sharpen an image, you darken the lines and lighten the areas around them. If the lines are light, you brighten them even more and darken the areas around them. This makes them stand out more. When lines stand out more, the photo looks sharp.
Sharpening an image should always be the very last step in the photo retouching process. Sharpening is destructive to the image and since the level and technique of sharpening used for an image will vary depending on how you will output the photo, you don't want to have it stuck in your image from early on.
We'll be talking in the future of other methods you can use to sharpen your images. For today, we're talking about the High Pass filter in Adobe Photoshop.
Technique One: High Pass Filter
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Step 1
Duplicate the background layer (Mac shortcut: Command + J; Windows users: Ctrl + J)
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Step 2
Select new Layer
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Step 3
Choose Filter > Other > High Pass. Increase the pixel radius until you see sharp edges begin to appear on the screen
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Step 4
Go to Layers palette making sure the top layer is selected
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Step 5
Change "High Pass" layer to "Soft Light" or "Hard Light" to increase or decrease the level of sharpening.
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Step 6
Save Image
Tutorial Download
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sharpen-images-using-the-high-pass-filter.pdf (2.57 mb)