Trick Photoshop: Sharpening images with Surface Blur

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Sharpening images with Surface Blur

This is tutorial to sharpen images with something quite contradictory -- Surface Blur in Photoshop CS versions. Photoshop 7 does not have Surface Blur or Smart Filters which will be needed here. The tutorial has been written by Tennessee_Gator

in Flickr. He has derived the tutorial from Calvin Hollywood. The difference is that this is an illustrated tutorial.

Step 1 : I will be using this free stock image. You will find it here

http://sxc.hu/ is a great source for downloading free, high resolution stock images.

There are also ones you have to pay for, but you have a good choice of free stock images.

Step 2 : There is only the Background Layer in the Layers palette.

Step 3 : Press CTRL+J twice. The Background triplicates into Layer 1 and Layer 1 copy.

Step 4 : With Layer 1 copy highlighted (which means it is selected), press CTRL and click on Layer 1.

Both Layers are highlighted.

Step 5 : Press CTRL+G. The two layers merge into a Group. You can see that the Blend Mode is set to Pass Through.

Step 6 : Change the Blend Mode to Overlay.

Step 7 : Click where the small white hand points to open the Group. Click on Layer 1 copy.

Step 8 : Press CTRL+I to Inverse.

The image looks like this.

Step 9 : Change the Blend Mode to Vivid Light.

The image looks like this.

Step 10 : Right click layer 1 copy and click on Convert to Smart Object.

Step 11 : Layer 1 copy has been converted into a Smart Object.

Step 12 : Go to Filter>Blur>Surface Blur.

Step 13 : The Surface Blur dialogue box opens. Set the radius at 50 pixels and Threshold at 15 levels. You may increase the Radius and Threshold depending on your image anThe sharpened is image.