Sharpening | Digital Photography for Moms

Sharpening is the topic of my 3rd article in Digital Photography For Moms’ series on Photoshop Elements’ Adobe Camera Raw.

Where and How to Sharpen in Adobe Camera Raw

You can find the Sharpening settings on the Detail tab of the ACR window:

Adobe Photoshop Elements Adobe Camera Raw Sharpening

Before you sharpen, make sure that you are zoomed in to at least 100%! Double click on the magnifying glass at the top left corner for a quick 100% zoom.

You can see here that ACR automatically applies default settings to every picture. (Change these defaults by creating a new camera default. Post a comment if you’re interested in details on that.)

Before you go any further, it’s good to know what you’re going to do with the picture. If it needs no further edits, then sharpen it here to perfection.

On the other hand, I don’t make any changes at this point if I’m planning on further edits in PS or PSE. I stick pretty hard and fast to the guideline about sharpening last in my workflow. And, I find that sharpening here and then sharpening again in PSE to make sure that your new edits are crisp often creates too harsh an effect. If I am going to sharpen in PSE, I use one of these methods to achieve a crystal clear photo.

So, if I’m taking my picture into PSE, I don’t change these defaults. But if your picture needs nothing further, here is what you need to know about the Adobe Camera Raw sharpening options.

Amount – adjusts the level of sharpening
Radius – ACR sharpens the parts of your picture it thinks are edges. This slider defines how wide an area must be for ACR to recognize it as an edge. I don’t usually change this one. More is sharpened with an edge is as the radius increases.
Detail – This slider helps control halos that sometimes appear around parts of your image when sharpening. But if you go too low, no sharpening at all will happen.
Masking – This slider is especially great for faces. It protects non-edge areas from sharpening. The higher the number the more is masked, and so less is sharpened.

These adjustments are all dependent on each other. So increasing the detail and masking at the same time might really help a portrait.

Try holding the Alt key (isn’t that Option on a Mac?) when adjusting Radius, Detail or Masking. Your image will turn gray so that you can focus on each change as you make it. When using this trick as you adjust the Masking, remember that white means the effect is showing and black represents areas where the sharpening effect is masked, or not visible.

ACR’s Noise Reduction

I just don’t use it. I’m a big fan of (free) Noiseware by Imagenomic. The freeware isn’t integrated into PSE and requires extra work, but it sure is worth it. Noise control is one place I’d really like to see Adobe improve in the next release.

Other articles you might be interested in:

Why Shoot in RAW?

Processing RAW Images in Photoshop Elements/ACR – White Balance

Processing Raw Images in Adobe Camera Raw – Part 2

And the final article in this series will cover opening, saving and closing Raw files. It’s not quite as straightforward as you might think. Subscribe to Digital Photography For Moms via email or RSS so that you don’t miss out!