Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Step Six:
The next slider down is the Radius slider, which determines how far out the sharpening
is applied from the edges being sharpened in your photo. This pretty much works like the
Radius slider in Photoshop's Unsharp Mask filter, which is probably why the default is 1
(because that's probably where we'll leave it most of the time). I use less than a Radius of 1
if the photo I'm processing is only going to be used on a website, in video editing, or some-
where where it's going to be at a very small size or resolution. I only use a Radius of more
than 1 when: (1) the image is visibly blurry, (2) it has lots of detail (like this photo, where
I pushed the Radius to 1.2), so it can take some serious sharpening, or (3) the image needs
some “emergency” sharpening. If you decide to increase the Radius amount above 1 (un-
like the Unsharp Mask filter, you can only go as high as 3 here), just be careful, because if
you go too much above 1, your photo can start to look fake, oversharpened, or even noisy,
so be careful out there (in the next step, I set it back to 1).
