Adobe PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS Manual page 107

Unsharp Mask locates pixels that differ from
surrounding pixels by the threshold you specify
and increases the pixels' contrast by the amount
you specify. In addition, you specify the radius of
the region to which each pixel is compared. The
effects of the Unsharp Mask filter are far more
pronounced on-screen than in high-resolution
output. If your final destination is print, exper-
iment to determine what settings work best for
your image.
For information on other filters for sharpening
images, see "Sharpen filters" on page 202.
To use Unsharp Mask to sharpen an image:
1 Choose Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask.
Make sure the Preview option is selected.
Click on the image in the preview window to see
how the image looks without the sharpening.
Drag in the preview window to see different parts of
the image, and click + or – to zoom in or out.
2 Do one of the following:
• Drag the Amount slider or enter a value to
determine how much to increase the contrast of
pixels. For high-resolution printed images, an
amount between 150% and 200% is usually
recommended.
ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS
• Drag the Radius slider or enter a value to
determine the number of pixels surrounding the
edge pixels that affect the sharpening. For high-
resolution images, a Radius between 1 and 2 is
usually recommended. A lower value sharpens
only the edge pixels, whereas a higher value
sharpens a wider band of pixels. This effect is
much less noticeable in print than on-screen,
because a 2-pixel radius represents a smaller area
in a high-resolution printed image.
Drag the Threshold slider or enter a value to
•
determine how different the sharpened pixels
must be from the surrounding area before they are
considered edge pixels and sharpened by the filter.
To avoid introducing noise (in images with flesh-
tones, for example), experiment with Threshold
values between 2 and 20. The default Threshold
value (0) sharpens all pixels in the image.
3 Click OK.
99
User Guide