Sharpen Your Photos With A Few Simple Steps

Having sharp photographs is one of the most essential aspects of a successful food photograph. Digital cameras sometimes produce soft images that need to be sharpened in post-production. That's where Photoshop comes into play. Photoshop is essential.

In this tutorial, I'll show you a really quick way to sharpen your images using Photoshop. I use this trick ALL OF THE TIME. You should too!

Sharpening Tutorial in second part of post...

Step #1. Duplicate The Background Layer

Open your image in Photoshop and using the layer palette, duplicate the layer. You can either click and drag the background layer into the "new" layer icon at the bottom of the layer paletter or you can select the background layer and go to Layer> Duplicate Layer.

Step #2. Add High Pass Filter

With the duplicated layer selected, go to Filter> in the top menu, Other> High Pass. The image will appear gray with white and black outlines. The scrubby slider on the bottom will control the amount of sharpening...slide it to the right for more sharpening or slide it the left for less. The goal is to get the gray image to appear as only a line drawing. Click ok.

Step #3. Change Layer Blending Mode

On the layer palette change the layer blending mode from 'Normal' to 'Overlay'. The gray layer will now disappear and turn into a sharpened layer. Switch the layer off and on to see the difference!

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