The Sharpen tools: Unsharp Mask

We looked at the sharpening process in Chapter 3, The Basics of Image Editing, but I think it's worth going over some of the more important points again to ensure that your output quality is perfect.

The regular Unsharp Mask filter from the Enhance menu has three sliders and a small preview window:

• The Amount slider is the amount of enhancement that's added to the edges of the contrast.
• The Radius slider controls how much attention is spread either side of the contrast edge.
• The Threshold slider has the effect of blending or softening the contrast edge.

If the Amount and Radius sliders are increased too much, the sharpening effect looks very gritty and unpleasant to the eye. Adding a Threshold amount will help to soften the overall result.

Unfortunately, the downside of using this particular filter is that it's not possible to control the unsharp mask. We can do this in the Camera R...