Tip for Sharpening Images

01 February 2007

Photodoto has a quick photo sharpening tip that I'm finding really useful in Gimp and surprisingly simple.

I now take these steps (optionally):

  1. Curves to correct exposure and color.
  2. Crop with fixed ratio (2:3 or 3:2) select.
  3. Selective Gaussian Blur to smooth ISO noise.
  4. Duplicate the layer.
  5. Unsharp Mask the new layer.
  6. Add a black (transparent) mask to the sharpened layer.
  7. Use a large brush, and paint white (opacity) onto the mask in just the lines I really want sharpened, such as the face or hands, or generally , the subject of the photo.
  8. Flatten.
  9. Save.

Am I missing any other tricks? Not that I'm saying I need to spend even more time post-processing images. Somehow, though, I am caught up on stills and video right now.

Filed Under: Photography Gallery Linux Computers