Photoshop: Sharpening Using the High Pass Filter

This tutorial describes another way of sharpening images using one of the many filters that can be found within Photoshop. This technique is useful in older versions of Photoshop, as you can sharpen the image without altering it directly.
All images used in this tutorial are copyright © Getty Images.

Step 1

Open up the image you want to sharpen. Create a duplicate of your image and then go to Filter - Other - High Pass. Personally I prefer lower values, but feel free to play around with the settings. For this tutorial, I've set the radius to 0,5.

Step 2

Now set your duplicated image to either Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Vivid Light or Linear Light. Notice that Vivid and Linear Light may alter the original colors of the image, but they also increase the sharpening level. The example below is set to Linear Light.