How to sharpen portraits smartly and efficiently in Adobe Photoshop

 

 

When processing portrait images, there's often a delicate balance between retouching the image and maintaining good detail and sharpness. Just as it's very easy to make skin too soft, it's also easy to make aspects of your photo too sharp, leading to unnatural edges around eyes or with hair.

To help you sharpen smarter and more effectively, Aaron Nace with Phlearn has published a new video tutorial, The Best Way to Sharpen Portraits in Photoshop. Nace mentions up front that you should save sharpening for last in your photo editing workflow. This is important because we will be sharpening selectively, so you want to make sure to accentuate only the details you wanted to be in the final image. Further, you should know what you want the final output size to be when sharpening, as your technique will vary depending on how the image will be presented. You don't sharpen a portrait for a 16 x 20 print the same way you sharpen an image you're sharing on a website.

(Via Phlearn)