Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Step Five:
Dipping into the realm of the painfully
obvious, dragging the Amount slider to
the right increases the amount of sharp-
ening. Compare the image shown here,
with the one in Step Four (where the
Sharpening Amount was set to 0), and
you can see how much sharper the image
now appears, where I dragged it to 100.
Step Six:
The next slider down is the Radius slider,
which determines how far out the sharp-
ening 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 prob-
ably 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 vis-
ibly 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 (unlike 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).
(Continued)
