How to Sharpen Images and Photos for Digital Use

by Sudarsan Chakraborty
Digital-Use

When shopping online, 75% of the customers rely on the product image to make a purchasing decision. Therefore, businesses are keener on photo editing hacks than ever before. Anybody with a smartphone can take a picture and add layers of filers to it.

However, it takes more than that to edit images for digital use. Professional photo editing is more than cropping and using effects on the picture. It demands a keen eye for detail.

Clients will buy more products from your site if you take a little time to develop clear photos. This article discusses how to sharpen images and photos for digital use.

Basic Sharpening

Note that sharpening should be the final stage of your photo editing. Click on your image, then go to photoshop. Double click on the actions panel and choose to create a new action.

You’ll want to compare the filtered versions with the original ones while editing. This will make you realize when you are using too many filters. So, press the Cltrl+J to duplicate the background layer to hide the new one.

To adjust filters after adding them, copy the background layer again. Then right-click to choose to convert the smart object.

After that, click on the image filter and select sharpen. Choose smart among the sharpening options.

The image filter increases the contrast along the edges of two different hues. Most editors want the edges to glow. Therefore, drag the sliders till you achieve the desired look.

Yet, you don’t want the image to attack the viewer. So, reduce noise to make the filter less noticeable.

Detail Sharpening

Most amateurs stop at the previous step leaving blurry details of the pictures. You should duplicate your new image file then right-click on it to choose the clear smart filters option.

Then go to the blend mode settings and choose overlay. From there, click on the filter tab to choose ‘other .’Finally, click on high-pass to reduce or increase the radius to a point where you can only see white lines.

Outer sharpening

Duplicate the image file and increase the high-pass effect. Be keen on the areas that are out of focus. They’ll be harder to read across many devices. An OCR library will help you read texts from images.

Go back to the blend mode settings and choose soft light. Then decrease the opacity levels and add a layer mask to both image file layers.

Use the paint bucket to fill the mask layers with black paint. The desired effect is to make the layers invisible.

Inner Sharpening

Reveal some parts of the underlying area you want to sharpen. Then, use a soft brush to paint white over the parts where you want to sharpen. You can consider adjusting the opacity levels to make the image filter look subtle.

The final step is to test your final image file on different zoom settings. You can revisit the noise filter to balance the image out in its highest resolution.

How to Sharpen Images for Digital Use

There is no ideal photo editing method. It all depends on the message you want to convey to the consumer.

Follow the above guide on how to sharpen images and photos for digital use. You’ll get clear photos that you can use for advertisements.

If you enjoyed reading this piece, browse this website for more photo editing tips.

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