(upbeat music)
- In this lesson, we're gonna be talking about
selective sharpening.
But before we get into any of that,
it is essential that we have a basic understanding
of what sharpening is in Photoshop.
And let me tell you something, this might surprise you.
Sharpening in Photoshop is an illusion.
Maybe you already knew that,
but let me demonstrate that for you.
Have a look at this circle.
What do you see?
This is a picture of a circle,
but if you have a look at the edge,
see what's concerning here.
It is a little blurred.
You can also see that the edges are a little blurred, right?
Now, what if I wanna make it sharp?
What are the ways that we can do it?
One of the ways is definitely increasing the contrast,
but we are not inventing details here.
We're just creating an illusion, all right?
Have a look at the edge closely.
There are some areas which are closer to white,
in other words, lighter gray,
and there are some areas which are darker gray.
What if you make the darker gray areas more darker?
And eventually black and the lighter areas,
lighter gray areas, even brighter, and eventually white?
Will that lead to a harder edge?
Maybe, let's go ahead and try that.
So let's create a curves adjustment layer, all right.
Now, as soon as we bring the slide on the right
to the left slowly and gradually,
the lighter gray areas eventually start to become white.
Have a look.
They start to become white, all right?
And we're gonna stop right here.
If we take the slider on the left to the right,
have a look, the opposite happens.
The darker areas tend to get darker and darker
and eventually black.
If we take it all the way to the middle,
now have a look at the circle.
It's all sharp, isn't it?
Here's the before, here's the after.
Does that mean that we have invented the details?
No, we haven't.
This is simply an illusion
that fools us into thinking that the image is now sharp.
However, this photo just had two colors,
and that's just for demonstration.
But in real-life scenarios, in actual real images,
if you sharpen too much, you might see some artifacts.
Because again, that's an illusion,
and we're not inventing details
to make the edge more sharper.
Let's take a look at a real-world example.
And by the way, the concept behind all this,
whatever I just showed you, the whole demonstration.
The point here is that we create the illusion of sharpening
by increasing the contrast around the edge,
and that's what we did here.
Have a look.
We made the dark gray areas darker
and the light gray areas brighter,
and eventually, that allowed us
to create an illusion of sharpening, right?
So let's open up another image, a real-world example.
Let's take a look at this photo.
Let's zoom in and have a look.
This image has some details, but it's not sharp enough.
Let me zoom in even more for you,
because you might be watching this video
in a little lower resolution.
All right, let's do some subtle sharpening, have a look.
If I turn this layer on,
I've done some sharpening in Photoshop,
but not that much.
Have a look what happens.
Here is the before, here is the after.
It does create an illusion
of this image having more details,
but that's not really the case, right?
We are just increasing the contrast around the edge.
Still cannot see it?
Let me sharpen it even more.
So here's a more sharpened version of it.
This is extremely sharpened
so that you can see what's happening here.
If I turn this on, now the image looks even more sharper.
But at the cost of what?
Have a look around the edge, see what happens.
You see those halos right there?
That's what it's doing.
It's increasing the contrast around the edge
to create an illusion of sharpening.
So when you zoom out, you cannot see those artifacts, right?
So if I turn it off and on,
it legit looks like the image has more details now.
Have a look at the edge around here.
Here is the before, here is the after.
See what it's doing?
On the one side, it is darker,
and on the other side, it is brighter.
That's what it's doing, it's increasing contrast
around the edge, just as we did in the demonstration
with the circle, remember?
So similarly, have a look at the other edge right here, see.
Here's the before, the original image.
After sharpening, extreme sharpening,
we won't go that extreme in real life,
in real Photoshop life, I must say,
and here is the after, have a look.
This side of the edge, it has been brightened,
and the other side has been darkened.
And therefore, it is creating an illusion of sharpening.
So what does that tell us?
Sharpening in Photoshop is an illusion,
and we're not inventing any details here.
We are just trying to fool ourselves
into thinking that more details are generated.
But we have to be careful here.
As you noticed here, if we do too much sharpening,
have a look at the teeth.
See, right now the teeth is natural,
but if we sharpen too much,
have a look at the halos that generate around the teeth.
So we need to find a way that we don't sharpen as much
and also find ways so that we can reduce the halos
and reduce the artificial artifacts
that are being created near the edge.
Now let me share with you a personal example.
No matter what software you are using,
it can be Premiere Pro
or any other photo or video editing software.
When it comes to sharpening in post,
we are just increasing the contrast around the edge.
Some do it better, some not as much.
The basic concept remains the same.
It is increasing the contrast around the edge.
All right, have a look at this example.
This is one of the videos that I was creating
for my YouTube, and if you zoom in too much, have a look.
Let's zoom in 200%, or let's even go 400%.
The image looks too sharp, right?
It looks like it comes out of a 4K footage,
but trust me, this is a simple 1080p footage.
And the reason why it looks that way
is because we have increased sharpening.
So let's zoom out to 200%,
and if I go to sharpening section right here,
see, sharpening has been increased to 50.
If I just decrease it back to zero, have a look.
This begins to look blurred.
Let me zoom in even more
so that we can see what's happening here.
So this is without sharpening,
and this is with sharpening.
And right now, you can see the artifacts here.
You can easily see around the edges,
one side has been darkened
and the other side has been brightened.
But if you fit it to the screen, if you zoom out overall,
you're not able to tell.
And right now, if you do increase the sharpness,
it does look like it's a 4K footage.
So why did I tell you all this?
That my friend, gives us the first reason
as to why we sharpen in post
and that is, to create an illusion of additional details.
So what is the second reason we sharpen?
Have a look at this example.
Have a look at her face.
Her face is absolutely sharp, right?
And the branch that she's holding and the flowers are sharp.
But if you have a look at the background,
it's all blurred out.
So when you look at the overall image,
where does our attention go?
It goes to her face, it goes to those flowers,
it goes to that branch, right?
So what does this tell us?
This tells us that our attention goes
to the sharpest areas of the image.
So sharpness can also be used to create attention.
If you wanna have focus in a particular area,
let's say you want the viewer to look more in the eyes,
then increase the sharpness even more in the eyes.
If you want the viewer not to look in the background,
then just blur the background.
It's simple and it's obvious, isn't it?
The third reason why we sharpen,
and this is not on a very regular basis,
is that let's say you took a photo
and you missed focus just by a hair.
And on the eye, there's just a little blur there.
So we can create an illusion of it having more details
by artificial sharpening in Photoshop.
Now, there are lots of ways to sharpen in Photoshop,
and in this video, we're gonna discuss three ways.
Now, I'm not gonna tell you which is the best one
or which one is the one that you should use
because there are pros and cons to each and every way
and you have to decide which one is the best for you.
Maybe you are somebody who always like method number two.
So, then go ahead and use that.
Maybe you use a method that we're not discussing here.
If that works for you, please go ahead with that.
In this video, we are just gonna discuss
the top three ones that I use all the time.
And it's not that I stick to one method,
I use all of them, depending upon the situation.
We're gonna discuss the pros and cons of each method
so that you can decide which one is the best for you
and in what situations you can use what.
So let's get started for the first method,
and that is the simplest one, Smart Sharpen.
So here we have our document,
and we have done some color grading on top of the image.
If you open this group, you will see
there are tons and tons of adjustment layers inside it,
and there's a reason why I've put this here.
So that we can discuss the difference
between different sharpening methods.
So for Smart Sharpening,
you do need a stamp visible layer at the top.
Let's say you're working with the document,
you have different layers.
On one layer, you have the background on top of it,
you have a subject on top of that, you have some designs,
and you wanna give an overall sharpening.
So you have to merge all of that into one layer
and apply sharpening to that.
There's no way you can apply it as an adjustment layer
or a projection.
So that is a disadvantage of it.
We'll discuss that later.
But the thing that you have to keep in mind
is that Smart Sharpen requires a merged layer
of the things that you wanna sharpen.
So at the very top, you can create a blank layer
and press Control + Alt + Shift + E.
You can also directly press it,
but sometimes it doesn't work.
For instance, let's go ahead and create a new document.
And that's why I asked you to create
a blank new layer sometimes, and 2000 pixel is fine.
And this is a locked background layer.
If I press Control + Alt + Shift + E, nothing happens.
You have to create a blank new layer and then press that
for it to be able to work.
So sometimes it doesn't work, that's why I've made it
a second nature to always go ahead
and create a blank new layer
and then press Control + Alt + Shift + E,
Command + Option + Shift + E on a Mac.
Now, if you wanted to be absolutely non destructive
so that it can change the values later,
you can always go to filter and then convert
for smart filters and convert this into a smart object
and then apply Smart Sharpening.
Let's go to Filter, Sharpen, and then Smart Sharpen.
There it is.
Now let's zoom in, and let's see what's happening here.
You can also watch the preview here.
So this also helps, you can zoom in there.
The first thing we do here, is increase the amount
all the way to 500.
That's how I work with it.
Now radius is the thing that we have to control,
radius is the thickness of the edge.
If the edge is too blurred, choose a higher radius.
If the edge is less blurred, choose a lower radius.
If you choose too high of a radius,
you might see the halo effect, have a look at it.
I've chosen a very high radius, have a look.
One side of the edge has gone completely black,
and the other side is completely white
creating a HDR vomit effect.
That's not we want.
If you choose the radius too low, like point one,
you barely even see the difference.
So depending upon how blurred the radius is,
sorry, how blurred the edge is
you have to choose the radius.
The way I recommend is, is that I zoom in all the way
and then slowly and gradually increase the radius.
First, we set them on to 500
so that we can see the difference in the radius.
And then slowly and gradually increase the radius
and stop at the point where you begin to see the halos.
So right now we have more details, but no halos yet.
It's all looking good.
So let's go ahead even higher.
I'm gonna choose a higher value here,
so that you can see the difference.
Because usually in these videos,
since these are streaming online,
these videos are usually compressed
and sharpening is the thing that is hard to see.
So I'm going overboard here.
So if you go too high, as you can see,
even if you go to three, you might begin to see these halos.
And we don't want that.
So let's go with 1.2.
Right now, the edges look okay,
but the sharpening intensities are too much.
So let's go ahead and decrease the amount.
Amount is like the intensity,
it's like even if you applied it at 500%
and decrease the opacity,
it would have a very similar effect.
So control how much of a sharpening you want.
Let's use 120 here.
Now sometimes when you do increase sharpening,
it also results in noise,
it just enhances the noise as well.
Have a look at the before and after.
If I turn off the preview, this was before
and turn on the preview this is the after.
There's some additional noise here.
So you can remove the noise by increasing
remove noise slider.
It keeps the sharpening, it tries to keep the sharpening
and also reduces the additional noise.
But sometimes it just results into artifacts
and more often than not, it doesn't look natural.
Because if you have a look at the before and after,
here's the before, it just takes away
some natural textures here.
So I don't usually do reduce noise but a little bit is okay,
up to 10% is kind of looks okay.
That's something you can work with,
but I don't apply it at all.
Now, at the bottom by default, you would have Gaussian blur.
So what it is, is that it's asking what kind of blurriness
do you want to remove with Smart Sharpen?
Is it blur all around like Gaussian blur?
Is it a lens blur that you want to remove?
Or is it a motion blur?
So if there was some motion blur in your image
that you wanna just fix in Photoshop,
maybe you can choose motion blur,
and then choose the angle and try to fix that here.
But for most cases, Gaussian blur is the one.
Motion blur is actually very useful,
when let's say you're taking a photo of something
and the camera shook a little, it's an important photo.
To some extent, you can kind of fix that
using Smart Sharpen.
Anyway, that's for some other time,
these values seem okay to us, hit OK.
Take a look at the before and after.
Here is the before, here is the after
we see a significant difference.
Now still here, there are some artifacts if you have a look,
the other side of the edge has been darkened
to create an illusion of sharpening.
But that's okay, if you zoom out to even 300%
you cannot even tell.
Usually 100% is the correct zoom percentage
where you should be analyzing an image.
Nobody's gonna zoom in this much and check
if it has been sharpened or not.
This is just perfect.
Now by now you must think smart sharpening is amazing
and it actually is.
Because it gives you so many options,
plus if you wanna go ahead and change the values later,
you can always double click here.
It's absolutely nondestructive.
And you can change the values here.
You can also create a preset if you double click here,
you can just have a look.
You can load a preset, save it as a preset.
So you can do that.
If you do wanna go even a little more advanced,
you can work with shadows and highlights as well.
So you do get a lot of options.
It is amazing, actually,
but it has to have some drawbacks, right?
Yes it does.
The major drawback is, it requires you
to create a stamp visible layer, as we discussed before.
And what is the problem with that you might ask?
Well, let's say we had not sharpened, but now we have.
And we wanna change the curves here,
we wanna just decrease the contrast even a little more.
And add a little more highlights here
or make some kind of change here and there.
Or maybe let's go to blues and just add a faded look.
Now what happens is, this is the change we did.
Now if we turn on our sharpening,
well, all of the changes we did are gone.
What do we do now?
The only option is, is to just again, turn it off,
create another stamp visible layer.
See right now it's not creating
because this layer is turned off,
that's why I asked you to create an empty layer
and then press Control + Alt + Shift + E.
All right, so create a stamp visible layer
and then convert it to smart object
and then copy this smart filter to the new one.
Now this is sharpened as well, it's gonna take time.
So it's a very long process.
Sometimes, depending upon the change,
you might have to even do the values all over again.
So if you change the size of the image,
you would have a different radius value,
you would have a different intensity or amount value.
So again, it's a mess to again, create a stamp visible layer
at the top, and then again, apply the sharpening filter.
So that is one drawback.
But if you're confident about your edit,
let's say this is what you wanna go for.
And you're confident about it.
So as the last step, Smart Sharpen does make a lot of sense.
Now let's talk about our second method of sharpening.
That is used widely, and you must have heard about it before
that is High Pass.
So let's go ahead and delete that.
In this case, as well, you do have to create
a stamp visible layer at the top.
But this time, it's a little different,
because it's not something that covers
all of the layers beneath it.
It's a projection.
So let's create an empty layer,
press Control + Alt + Shift + E.
And now first if you want and if you just want,
you can take away all the colors.
Because if you directly apply High Pass here,
have a look it accentuates the edges,
but it also keeps some colors.
So some people do it with colors,
some people do it without it.
So if you don't wanna take the chance
of having additional colors around the edge desaturate it,
by pressing Control + Shift + U,
Command + Shift + U on a Mac.
Now, let's convert it into a smart object.
The similar way we did before
and for organization purposes,
you can name this High Pass Sharpening.
Now let's go to Filter, Other and then High Pass.
Now I do recommend changing the blend mode first
and then choosing the High Pass Filter.
But I'm doing the High Pass first now
so that you can see what happens when we apply High Pass.
So let's apply High Pass, it does the exact same thing.
Have a look around the edge,
it increases contrast around the edge.
So one side of the edge, it darkens,
other side of the edge, it brightens
and all of the rest of the areas it just adds gray to it.
Areas which are not the edge.
So now you have to just decrease the radius
all the way to the left hand side
and slowly and gradually increase it
to a point where the halos don't show up that much.
So at 1.2 there are halos, but if you zoom out,
it doesn't look that much accentuated.
If you go too high, it's the same as Smart Sharp,
and remember the radius there, it's the exact same thing.
It's something you can see visually now.
All right, so if you choose too high,
you can see the halos are clearly visible around the edge.
And even if you zoom out you can see the halos.
So similarly, we can choose the same value here.
I think we chose 1.2 there,
so we can choose 1.2 here as well, hit OK.
Now what is the blend mode that hides
everything that is 50% gray?
Makes anything that is darker,
which is darker than 50% gray and brightens anything
that is brighter than 50% gray.
What does that blend mode?
We talked about it before, overlay right?
So change the blend mode from normal to overlay
and have a look, the sharpening has been done.
So here is the before, here is the after.
Now if you think the sharpening is too much,
you can either decrease the opacity or change the blend mode
from overlay to soft light.
It is a milder version of overlay.
So we're gonna go back to overlay.
So again, let's take a look.
Here's the before, here is the after.
Now what is the advantage of High Pass Sharpening?
Now of course, smart sharpening is a little more smarter.
It directly gives you access to a lot of controls,
you can control the intensity, you can control the radius,
you can also remove noise if you wish to,
you can also remove motion blur if you want to.
What is the advantage here?
It's not that smart but here's the advantage.
The advantage is the projection nature of high pass.
So let's say if you want a little more sharpening,
you can always double up the layer
by pressing Control or Command J.
And you have doubled the sharpening.
Now let's say since this is just a projection,
if you wanted to change something beneath it,
which is just an adjustment,
I'm not talking about moving the image here and there.
You can do that easily and it will happen in real time.
Let's say you want it to increase the contrast
a little more, you don't have to go back to High Pass
and redo the whole thing again,
as we did with Smart Sharpen.
One more advantage of High Pass and why it's commonly used
is that you can stack on sharpening with this.
Let's say you wanted a little more sharpening
on the face area, just double up this layer
by pressing Control or Command J.
And for the face area you wanted a little more radius,
let's say 1.6, all right?
And now you can hold the Alt key or the Option key
and click on the mask button, take the brush
white as the foreground color
and just paint over the face area.
And by the way, we're gonna discuss this later.
We're gonna discuss it in selective sharpening.
Let's say you want a little more sharpening on the eyes.
You're gonna make one more copy and then maybe
have a different radius or the same radius, it's up to you.
So I'm gonna go with two just for a change.
And then in the mask, paint it with black again,
don't worry if you feel that it's going too fast.
We're gonna discuss this in detail later.
And then you can paint white in areas
where you want some additional sharpening.
See that.
So the advantage here is that you can also stack up
some sharpening, if you wish to.
So for different areas of the image,
you can have different levels of sharpening,
you can have tones of masking, everything is so easy to do.
And even after doing all that,
if you want to do little tweaks beneath it,
you can easily do that.
You don't have to do the whole High Pass sharpening thing
all over again.
If it first merge sharpening, and you created
a lot of sharpening layers, and under it,
you made some color change.
Well, you have to do all of those layers again.
And it can be an absolutely tedious process.
So depending upon the situation,
depending upon your requirement,
you have to choose which one works better for you.
The third technique is something that I personally use
from time to time, and that is an interesting technique.
Because in this technique, the more we blur,
the more sharper your image gets.
How come you might ask?
This is how.
So again, in this case, we do require a merged layer
or a stamp visible layer at the very top.
So again, this is one major advantage of this method.
But in some cases, it does a far better job
of sharpening than High Pass.
And in some cases, it can have even more details
in certain dark areas.
Or let's say, if you're adding sharpness in the eyes,
I have seen in my experience that this method sometimes
has more details in the eyes than the other methods.
So here's how it works.
After you have created a stamp visible layer at the top,
make a copy of it.
So have two of these.
The one at the top, you have to invert it, okay?
And then change the blend mode of that layer
from normal to vivid light.
You see something familiar, does this ring a bell?
Most of the area is gray, right?
All we have to do now is to just accentuate the edge
and change the overall blend mode of the entire mechanism
of these two layers that we have created to overlay.
So right now it's an inverted layer, it's an inverted image.
So whatever we are going to do with this,
it's going to be a little opposite, right?
So if we add blur to it, first of all, let's go to Filter,
Convert for Smart Filters, hit OK.
Now if you go to Filter, Blur, and then Gaussian Blur,
have a look.
As we begin to increase the radius, see what happens.
The edges begin to get accentuated.
And you can straightaway notice here that in this case,
there are more details generated, right?
Than High Pass.
So let's go for the same 1.2 here.
And we have to create a group of both of these,
select the first one, hold the Control or Command,
select the second one, press Control or Command G.
Now change the overall blend mode to Overlay.
Now have a look.
This, in my opinion has more details than High Pass.
Have a look inside the eyes.
Here's the before, here's the after
so much more details right now
you wouldn't be zooming in that much.
So this would be the overall zoom.
Here's the before, here's the after.
I just love the amount of sharpening here.
Now of course, we don't want so much sharpening
on the sweater that he's wearing or the shirt.
But we do want sharpening on the face.
So you can always go ahead and use masking here.
So hold the Alt key, the Option key,
click on the mask button, this creates a negative mask.
And then you can take the brush and only paint
over the areas that you do want to sharpen.
And if there are areas that you wanna sharpen
a little less, of course,
we don't wanna sharpen the background.
So let's say the spatter areas you wanna sharpen less.
So you can always go with a lower flow like 10% or 20%.
And then paint over those areas.
If you wanna sharpen an area more,
keep on painting on that area
because it's not opacity its flow.
So flow allows for us to have more intensity
if we continuously paint in an area, unlike opacity.
So this is something I do from time to time.
So those are the three methods.
Now you can go ahead and try all of these three
sharpening methods with your projects
and see which one fits the best for you.
My job is to tell you different methods and techniques
that are there and the ones that I recommend.
It is your job to pick the best for your situation,
for your personality and for your style.
And that's what my friend makes you a unique artist.
Now let's discuss selective sharpening.
Now when it comes to selective sharpening,
as we did a little preview here,
you're gonna be using the High Pass method.
Because it's the easiest to use
when it comes to selectively sharpen.
So using this method, you're gonna drag the attention
of the viewer towards a particular area.
In this case, you're gonna use the eyes
as the source of attention.
Let's do it, so here we have our example
and first of all, we need to decide
how many levels of sharpening do you want.
Let's say we want three levels of sharpening,
one for the entire face, one for the nose,
and the overall eyes.
And a little bit of the cheeks and the teeth,
a little bit of the features
and one for just the details in the eyes.
So let's make three copies of the background layer
by pressing Control or Command J.
First of all, let's press it once, desaturate it
by pressing Control + Shift + U, Command + Shift + U
and then make two more copies.
Now we have three levels of sharpening.
The first is level one.
Let's go to filter, and then Convert for Smart Filters
hit OK.
Now we need to change the blend mode to what overlay?
Remember, I told you that I recommend changing
the blend mode first and then apply High Pass.
That time I did the High Pass first
so that you can see what's happening in the High Pass
how the edges are being accentuated.
In the practical world, I would recommend
changing the blend mode first.
So that when you go ahead and apply the High Pass,
see what happens.
Go to Filter, Other, High Pass.
So as you change the values, you can see in real time
what is happening with the image.
So that's why I recommend it.
So let's take a look at the overall face
and slowly and gradually keep on increasing the radius.
Now we don't have to set the value so high
so that unnecessary details can be accentuated.
For example, if we set it too high, have a look.
The wrinkles are being accentuated.
Apart from halos or artifacts this can also be an issue,
over sharpening or in other words, adding additional details
that we do not want.
So for the overall face, let's go with 1.4.
All right, that works.
Now we have to decide which are the areas
where you do want the level one sharpening.
So hold the Alt key or the Option key,
click on the mask button to create a negative mask.
Take the brush, take a soft round brush
white as the foreground color.
So we wanted only on the face.
So let's paint with white on the face,
increase the flow to 100%.
And just let's paint over the face.
A little bit down here and there you go.
I don't know if you can see it.
So here is the before not that sharp, here is the after.
So I'm gonna zoom in a little more
so that you can see what's happening here.
So here's the before, here's the after.
So this is an overall sharpening.
Now on top of that, let's do some features.
So let's turn on level two.
Let's name it, level two.
Now, let's go to Filter, Convert for Smart Filters, hit OK.
Now change the blend mode first by going to
this drop down right here viewer rating,
click on this drop down, change it to Overlay.
Then go to Filter, Other and then High Pass
it will be at the very top as well.
So you can click there because it's the last filter.
Now of course with this, we might wanna go
with a little higher value, just to focus on the features
like the overall eyes and the mouth.
So let's go with a little higher value in here of three,
or let's go with 2.6, okay?
Now you can also have the same value if you wish to,
you can also double up the sharpening with the same radius.
So hold the Alt key, the Option key
and click on the mask button.
And now you might wanna decrease the flow a little bit.
So let's set it to about 20%.
And start painting over the areas
where you do want a little more sharpening.
So in this cheek area, we do want a little sharpening
around here, maybe a little bit on the forehead right here,
of course all over the eyes, here as well.
And let's increase the flow to 100.
And here nose area, not on the teeth
but we do want a little bit on the lips.
Now we don't want in this area.
So let's erase it from there.
That was some additional unnecessary sharpening.
All right, paint back in the areas where you do want it.
All right, so that looks enough to me.
So you can also dab in certain areas
and then erase the extras where you don't want it.
So let's say we didn't want it on the wrinkled areas.
So let's paint that area with black.
Paint that area with black, we removed too much.
So let's paint back in with 20% flow, right?
Okay, now let's do the third level.
Let's turn it on, and let's first of all,
name it for organization level three.
Filter, Convert for Smart Filters, hit OK,
change the blend mode to Overlay.
Yes, we got to wait for the conversion,
change it to Overlay.
Then go to Filter, Other and High Pass
also, you can also click on the top.
Or you can also use the shortcut right here,
which is Alt + Control + F.
Let's choose that.
And this time, let's go with four, very high value, hit OK.
Again, hold the Alt key, the Option key,
click on the mask button.
And this time we only wanna paint on the areas
where we do want some additional extra details.
So let's increase the flow to 100%
and paint on inside the eyes, have a look at the difference.
So here's the before, here's the after, see that.
See the details coming through.
Similarly you can do the same with the other eye.
You could also do the same with the edge of the eyes
if you wish to, some, you can just dab in a little bit here.
You can dab in the highlight areas a little there.
You can have some edge details here as well.
And additionally if you do want some additional details
on lips or the highlights of the lips in this area,
you can have that.
You can have a little more detail on the cheek shine area
and maybe a little more detail on the eyebrow.
See, it makes a difference, a massive difference.
So there go my friend three levels of sharpening
really brings out the best in this image.
Let's take a look at the before and after.
So here is the before, not that sharp.
I recommend watching this video
on the highest quality possible.
So choose the highest resolution
even if you're watching with a lower resolution right now
just for this little section, change it 1080 P.
So here my friend is the before and here is the after.
As you can see there's an overall sharpening on the face.
A little more sharpening on the eyes,
even a little more sharpening inside the eyeball
that creates levels of sharpening
and that my friend is selective sharpening.
I hope this video helped you with sharpening in Photoshop.
Always keep in mind sharpening in post is an illusion.
And that is just simply adding contrast around the edge,
making one side brighter and the other side darker.
Some techniques can have more halo,
some techniques can have less halos.
Depending upon your situation
you can choose what techniques works best for you.
If you wanna stack up use High Pass,
if you wanna just apply a last filter
at the end of the project, Smart Sharpen is really great.
If you do want a little more details in the dark areas,
if you do wanna just generate details in all of the areas
use the third method where we used Gaussian blur
and vivid light.
And again, you are the artist, you choose what to do
and that makes you unique.
Thank you so much for watching this lesson.
I'll see you in the next one till then,
stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.