Photoshop Tutorials: Sharpen Images With The High Pass Filter

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Step 4: Change The Blend Mode To "Soft Light" Or "Hard Light" If Needed To Adjust Sharpening

Now that we've applied our sharpening to the image, one of the ways we can fine-tune it is by changing the blend mode of our duplicate Background layer. Right now, we're using the "Overlay" blend mode, which is sort of the "average" amount of sharpening. If you want to increase the sharpening amount, go back up to the Blend Mode options in the top left corner of the Layers palette, click on the down-pointing arrow to the right of the word "Overlay" and change the blend mode to Hard Light:

Changing the blend mode of the duplicate Background layer to 'Hard Light'.

Photoshop Tutorials: Change the blend mode of the duplicate layer to "Hard Light" for more intense sharpening.

If you want to reduce the amount of sharpening, change the blend mode from "Overlay" to Soft Light, again by clicking on the down-pointing arrow in the top left of the Layers palette and selecting "Soft Light" from the list:

Changing the blend mode to 'Soft Light' to reduce the sharpening.

Photoshop Tutorials: Change the blend mode to "Soft Light" to reduce the amount of sharpening.

For comparison, here's the same image using all three blend modes to adjust the sharpening. The image on the left is using Soft Light, the one in the middle is set to Overlay, and the one on the right is set to Hard Light:

A comparison of the three blend mode choices to use with the High Pass filter.

Photoshop Tutorials: A comparison of the three blend mode choices to use when sharpening with the High Pass filter. Soft Light is on the left, Overlay is in the center, and Hard Light is on the right.

The difference may not be easy to see on your monitor with these low resolution images, but if you're working on larger images, the difference between the three blend modes will be more apparent.

Step 5: Reduce The Sharpening Amount By Lowering The Layer Opacity

Another simple way to fine-tune the sharpening is by adjusting the duplicate layer's opacity value. Lowering the opacity value will reduce the amount of sharpening. You'll find the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette, directly beside the blend mode options. I'm going to set my blend mode to Hard Light and then lower the opacity of the layer to 80%:

Lowering the Opacity value to 80%.

Photoshop Tutorials: Lower the opacity value of the layer to reduce the sharpening amount.

Here, after lowering the opacity, is my final result:

The final result.

Photoshop Tutorials: The final result.

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