Mark S. Johnson Photography

In this “Ultimate Sharpening” tutorial, I demo my two favorite methods for output sharpening––High Pass and Elegant Sharpening. High Pass sharpening produces a result that is similar to applying the Unsharp Mask filter with a very high Radius setting. Because of this “high Radius setting” effect, the High Pass method doesn’t sharpen fine details as precisely as the Elegant sharpening method, but it does a better job of preventing haloes. It works particularly well on subject matter that contains large, smooth areas, such as skies and skin. Elegant Sharpening is a remarkably powerful Photoshop action designed to precisely sharpen edges without increasing texture (noise) in areas that don’t benefit from sharpening, such as skies and skin.