Give your illustration or photograph a crisper finish with the Unsharp Mask.

What is the Unsharp Mask?

The Unsharp Mask is a post-processing effect seen in classic darkroom photography techniques.

Traditionally, a copy of the original image would be blurred or “unsharpened” and then layered over to the original image.

During the printing process, low frequencies would be canceled out thanks to this layering technique, creating a much clearer image.

Now digitally, an Unsharp Mask does the same thing- adding clarity and improving the contrast in your image.

How to Add the Unsharp Mask

Click Filter>Unsharp Mask.

There are two sliders that can be used to adjust the values of the image.

Radius adjusts the thickness of the outlines in the image between different colors.

Amount adjusts the strength of the sharpening. The higher the percentage, the sharper the difference between colors in the image will be.