7 Sharpen Tool
Used for retouching
Found at #7 in the Toolbar diagram at left
The sharpen, smudge tools and blur
tool are grouped together in the toolbox. If the one you want is not
visible, click on whichever one is, and a pop-up menu showing the others
will appear.
The blur and sharpen tools are referred to as the ‘focus’ tools since they work to harden, of soften edges within an image.
The sharpen tool works by increasing contrast at distinct edges. Be aware that this will cause you to lose detail at the top and bottom of the brightness scale (very light, and very dark areas) when sharpening. The Luminosity setting in the blend mode menu can be useful to avoid color shifts or halos when sharpening.
To use the sharpen tool, select it in the toolbar, set desired values and settings in its options bar [see below], choose a brush from the options bar pop-up palette, and then drag in the image over the area you wish to sharpen. Be aware that sharpening occurs even when the cursor is not moving, as long as the mouse button is held down. The speed of the effect is determined by the Strength setting on the options bar.
If you choose Edit > Fade immediately after using this tool, you can change the opacity of the strokes you have just applied.
A shortcut for changing brush sizes while using the sharpen tool is to press the left bracket [ to decrease brush size, and the right bracket ] to choose a larger brush. Shift-right-clicking on your document while using this tool opens its blend mode menu next to your cursor.
Note that this tool cannot be used on 1 bit Bitmap mode, or Indexed color mode images.
The keyboard shortcut for the sharpen tool is the letter R. You can cycle through the blur, sharpen, and smudge tools by holding down the Shift key while pressing the shortcut letter.
The illustration below is the sharpen tool’s options bar. To find any tool presets that have been made for this tool, click on the tool’s thumbnail at the left end of the options bar. To reset the tool to its default settings, right-click on the tool’s thumbnail and choose Reset Tool from the menu that appears.
To choose a brush size and type, click on the brush thumbnail. A pop-up
palette of available brushes will appear. Press Enter or click on your
document’s blue title bar to close the palette after you’ve
chosen a new brush. If you want to access the full brushes palette with
its many options, click the brushes palette button at the far right end
of the options bar.
You can also right-click on your document to open the brushes pop-up palette next to the cursor. For more information on brushes, please see the Brushes in 7 tutorial. If you are still using Photoshop 6, find information on the your brushes palette on the old brushes page.
The box titled Mode, and showing Normal is a drop down menu of
the blend modes you can choose from.
Beside this is the Strength value box. You can type in a number, or access the slider, shown, by clicking on the arrow on its right side. The speed of the sharpening effect is determined by this setting. Choose the Use All Layers check box if you want to use data from all layers. When unchecked, only the active layer’s edges trigger sharpening.
If you have doodled with a tool’s options and want to get back to the default settings, right-click that tool’s icon at the far left end of its options bar (in Photoshop 6, left-click). Choose either Reset Tool to reset only the current tool, or Reset All Tools to restore default settings to every tool.
Please note that all descriptions, and illustrations featured refer to files which are in Photoshop’s .psd format, and which are in RGB color mode. Other file formats, and color modes may generate different options. Some Photoshop features are not available for images not in .psd format, or RGB color mode. To find what color mode your image is in, choose Image > Mode.
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