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Unsharp Mask

 

Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask is a great way to add a little sparkle to eyes and a smile-but how do you avoid sharpening the skin and bringing out the wrinkles? Wrangle up the Lasso tool and I’ll show you how to rustle up just the eyes and mouth…
Step 1

Step 2

Copy and move the selected areas to a new layer by hitting command/control-J. Double-click on the words Layer 1, and rename the new layer Eyes and Mouth.

Step 3

Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Set an Amount of 100%, a Threshold of 0 levels, and a Radius of 2 pixels. Feel free to play around with the Radius setting to get nice, sharp, clear eyes and teeth without getting that oversharpened ‘halo’ effect.

Step 4

Hit the OK button, pardner, and you’re done- you’ve just lassoed up a pair of eyes and a smile with just a little more sparkle than the average cowhand.

5 Comments

  1. shruti said on — June 16, 2008 @ 2:27 am

    its great…now i can solve some of my querries…

  2. Matt Martin said on — June 27, 2008 @ 10:36 pm

    I like it! Nice and quick.

  3. rima uruguay said on — January 24, 2009 @ 8:48 pm

    thats so easy, its was hard to found the tool, cause im not english speaker. thanks¡¡

  4. Raj said on — June 21, 2009 @ 12:55 pm

    Yo man,this is so simple n great….We can take their smartness to the next level….

  5. dud said on — January 2, 2011 @ 7:21 am

    it’s a cool and quick guide so thank you.

    i wanna add that i think the level of the unsharp is a bit to much and it lost the natural feeling of the overall photo.

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Create A Composite Layer

If you have a multilayer composition and you
want to apply an effect to all the layers at once, don’t flatten the layers–use a composite layer instead. Hide the layers you want excluded, and press Shift-Command-Option-E (PC: Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E). A new layer will be created at the top containing a merged copy of all the visible layers.

Another option is to create a new layer at the top of the stack and make it active. Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) each layer you want to include to make those layers active, as well. Press Option-Command-E (PC: Alt-Ctrl-E).
by Colin Smith

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