From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Advanced

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How sharpening works

How sharpening works - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Photoshop CC 2017 One-on-One: Advanced

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How sharpening works

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- This chapter is all about sharpening. That is, editing an image to make its details appear more sharply defined. Now, it's important to note that we're not talking about focus. Photoshop cannot reach back into your camera and adjust the optical focus of your lens element, nor can it invent detail that does not exist. In other words, if an image was shot blurry, it will remain blurry. What Photoshop can do is take a well-focused image and make every detail appear crystal clear, either onscreen or in print. Photoshop pulls off this effect using a kind of parlor trick. It finds the edges in your image, which are areas where neighboring pixels transition rapidly from light to dark, and increases their contrast. Then Photoshop traces razor-thin halos around the edges. The halos appear bright on the light sides of the edges and darker still on the dark sides. This renders the edges more different than each other, the luminous equivalent of an abrupt cliff, which our eyes read as more…

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