The idea with pre-sharpening is just to remove softness and get a better starting point for creating precise selections. If you go too far with the pre-sharpening, you will get issues later on. The global sharpening slider in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom can work well for pre-sharpening as long as you remember to keep it very subtle. The first step towards master sharpening in Photoshop is to let go of the tempting idea of sharpening the whole image in one go using the sharpen slider in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw. Secondly, all areas of your image might not require the same amount of sharpening, why it makes sense to apply some creative sharpening to selective areas only.įinally, outputting your image for print and web use requires a different amount of sharpening, because the image size and the intended viewing distance is very much different for an 800px wide web image and a 30-inch print. 3-Step Sharpening Logicįirst, a subtle pre-sharpening will remove the softness that comes from the anti-aliasing filter in your camera. The whole Nik Collection has recently been made free. However, in this tutorial, I will use Nik Collection Sharpener Pro 3 Pre-Sharpener / Output Sharpener plugins. It is the approach to sharpening that matters. The logic behind this is pretty simple and is not tied to a specific software. Many photographers and the guys over at Nik Collection by Google suggests that you sharpen your image three times. So when should you sharpen and should you only do it once? Sharpening your image in the best way can be tricky since there are so many steps along a post-processing workflow, where you could sharpen.

Nik sharpener pro 3 free download