My Baby Photos!

Image before and after sharpening

Have you even taken the perfect photograph? The ideal shot that personifies your child and captures them in their essence? Often I think I got the shot only to come home and find my image is blurry. Blur occurs with camera shake, subject movement, improper focus and improper depth of field. But the good news is you don’t have to scrap these blurry photographs. They can easily be sharpened using photoshop’s high pass filter.

1. First open the photograph you wish to sharpen:
   

   Blurry Photograph Before Sharpening

   In this photograph the primary focus in on the water fountain. The subject’s facial features are not well defined. This photo was taken with a telephoto lens and the photographer (aka me) was not steady without a tripod.

2. Make a duplicate layer (Layer –>Duplicate Layer)
3. Change the blend mode of the duplicate layer to overlay by using the drop down menu in the layers tool bar.
   

   Blend Modes in Layers Tool Bar

   Your photograph will appear to have too much contrast like the one below. Don’t worry — we’ll fix that!

   

   Photo with too much contrast

4. Apply the high pass filter (Filter–>Other–>High Pass)
   

   High Pass Filter

   Adjust the radius to taste. For this photograph I used a radius of 10. You may need to play around with different settings to get the effect you want.

   

   High Pass Filter; Radius Adjustment

5. If there are regions you find too sharp eliminate them with the eraser tool. In this photograph I erased a region of too much contrast over the chin and chose to keep the arms and cheeks softer.
6. Finally play around with different blending modes in the layers tool bar. Blending options to consider are overlay, soft light and hard light. I used the soft light mode for this photograph.
   

   Sharpened Photograph

   The final result is a photograph with the focus on the subject. The effect is a subtle adjustment can take your images from so-so to spectacular!

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