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you probably know how to adjust simple
properties in your images like shadows
highlights and color but what if you had
something with a less obvious issue for
example a photo that looks soft or maybe
even a little grainy
fortunately Photoshop comes with a
number of filters that can help you with
something like this today I'm going to
show you two of them sharpening and also
a feature called noise reduction
sharpening does exactly what you would
think it can make your images sharper or
clearer so certain details are easier to
see it can't fix photos that are blurry
or out-of-focus unfortunately but if you
have an image that's a bit soft like
this one it can help anytime you're
working with filters it's a good idea to
duplicate your layer first so you aren't
making changes to the original just
right-click choose duplicate layer from
the menu and then give it a name we'll
type sharpen to make it easy to tell the
layers apart when you're done go up to
filter on the menu bar then mouse over
the option that says sharpen here you'll
find a few different filters to choose
from they'll all sharpen your image but
in different ways and to different
degrees we're going to use the one
called unsharp mask which may sound a
bit weird but it's exactly what we need
it's very easy to use and it'll let us
customize the results
as you can see this filter gives you
three different settings to work with
amount radius and threshold you'll see a
preview in the document window as long
as this box stays checked you also have
a smaller preview that you can easily
reposition notice that when you hold
this with your mouse it toggles the
preview on and off which makes it easy
to compare the sharpen version to the
original now anytime you use sharpening
it's important not to make any extreme
adjustments you can end up doing more
harm than good
that being said it's still okay to
experiment and nothing in Photoshop is
permanent why don't we get started with
the radius setting radius controls the
size of the details that are being
sharpened so generally it's best to set
it to a lower value too high and the
edges will start to look unnatural or
exaggerated this is called a halo effect
we recommend something between 0.3 and
0.5 for most images you can even enter
the exact value here you could go a bit
higher if you were working with a higher
resolution photo the amount setting
controls the level of sharpness being
added how much you need depends on
several different things including the
image size so it's good to play around
with this this time if you go too low
the effect on the image may not be
strong enough see how it still looks
kind of soft in this case I think I'm
going to set the amount fairly high
somewhere between 180 and 190 finally
sharpening has a tendency to make image
noise more visible those are the tiny
little flecks that can make your photo
look grainy you might even see some in
the background here increasing the
threshold can help you reduce this but
you have to be careful it can cause your
sharpening to become inconsistent
therefore we recommend leaving this set
to zero unless the filter is creating
lots of extra noise for you so there we
have it I think we're done the
difference is subtle but it does make
the image look a bit more crisp once
again you can click and hold the preview
to toggle it on or off
when you're satisfied go ahead and click
okay noise isn't just caused by
sharpening it can also appear in your
image for other reasons for example if
the photo was taken in lower light
luckily you can reduce this using a
noise reduction filter once again you'll
start by duplicating your layer so you
aren't making changes to the original
you can right click like before or just
drag the layer down to the new layer
button next go ahead to the filter menu
then mouse over the noise option you'll
want to choose the one that says reduce
noise and a dialog box will appear
when you apply noise reduction you're
actually removing information from the
image so you have to be careful when
using this feature removing too much
noise can lead to blurriness or loss of
detail the key is to take it one setting
at a time and just keep adjusting them
until you're happy with the results so
let's go ahead and get started first we
have strength which basically controls
how much noise reduction is being
applied we recommend starting at the
maximum value so you can see your
adjustments more easily but you can
always set it to something else later if
you need to next we have preserved
details which controls how much of the
original image is left untouched you
might want to play with this one a bit
while you keep an eye on the preview
choose a setting that's too high and
you'll actually cancel the effects of
the filter but if you go too low you'll
start to lose detail we're going to
shoot for something less extreme maybe
around 5 or 10% this keeps some of the
detail but also gets rid of a lot of the
noise sometimes noise will look like
small patches of individual colors the
word for this is color noise you can
mitigate the effect by increasing the
reduced color noise setting just be
careful not to increase it too much or
depending on the image the colors might
start to bleed together for most images
we recommend a lower setting I think 40
or 50% should do it for this one
finally reducing noise can also cause
the image to lose some sharpness you can
add that sharpness back using the
sharpen detail setting just like
preserve details increasing this too
much can cancel the effects of the
filter so you generally want to aim
lower in this example we're going to set
it to about 10% which should sharpen it
just enough to make a difference
keep in mind you can use the same
click-and-hold method to compare the
filtered version to the original if you
look closely you'll see that the
difference is pretty slight but we did
manage to reduce some of the noise as
you can see there are lots of minor
problems that you may not have realized
you can fix in Photoshop now you know
how to sharpen your images and reduce
image noise using two easy-to-use
filters