Increase Blur to Sharpen Better? - Photoshop Trick

this technique blew my mind so much that i could not wait to share it with you my friend have a look at it right now it is 4 20 p.m right and this video will be out tonight by 8 30. yes let's hope for that so hi there this is unmashed from picks and perfect i hope you're having a great day and if not know that every moment is a new moment and you can turn it around anytime you want in this video i'm going to share with you a very special technique where the more you blur the more sharper your image gets although that might sound common and you might have heard about it before what really struck me was when i compared it with high pass it totally changed the game and in many cases it was way better than i passed and by the way i'm going to also share with you a free action in this lesson so without any further ado let's get started i'm going to skip the intro because i'm so excited about it and by the way you can download all of these sample images in the description have a look at it so right now here we have a photo and we gonna discover the technique together i'm gonna share with you an action but let's discover and understand how this works first so first we'll make two copies of the background layer or whatever layer you're working with press ctrl or command j twice all right the one at the bottom is going to be at normal blend mode the one at the top will be at vivid light blend mode now keep in mind all of the blend modes inside of this group overlay soft light vivid light what do they do they are contrast blend modes all right so what if we invert this layer by pressing ctrl or command i now everything is just opposite right now if we blur something is there a possibility that it will sharpen stuff yes there's a tricky way to it but it will work now change the blend mode from normal to vivid light does this ring a bell or something have a look at the color of most of the image what color is it gray right except some of the areas it's mostly gray now what is the blend mode which really corresponds well with grey overlay right overlay is a blend mode which hides everything that is gray anything that is darker than gray darkens that anything that is brighter than gray it brightens that so how can we use it here so if you do anything in vivid which is already inverted it should invert the effect right so similarly first of all let's go to filter and then convert for smart filters so that whatever we do we can change the values later right now what if we blur it by going to filter blur and then gaussian blur and we did that so that we can change the values of blur later have a look what happens the edges are more defined as we begin to blur it the more we blur it the thicker the edges get now we do not want a value so high where we have super thick edges which can result in halos so let's go for a lower value like four now this is still a higher value so that you can see the before and after but in real world scenarios we won't go that high hit okay have a look what's happening the edges are more pronounced and the rest of the areas are what gray so what if we could group both of these layers select the vivid one hold the controller command select the normal one press ctrl or command g and then if we change the blend mode to overlay guess what happens we get an overall sharpening have a look at the before and after so here is the before here is the after and we can name this lab sharpening interesting isn't it now sure we have covered this before i think three or four years ago but this time there's a twist to it have a look at it of course you can control the amount of sharpening with opacity because radius is just the thickness of the edge right don't confuse it with the intensity of sharpening so if you want less of it just decrease the opacity right now at 100 it's at full power now of course you don't want so much but let's compare it with high pass so here's the before and here is the after just look at the massive difference right there now of course it's too much of course we need to decrease the opacity but just for comparison purposes let's keep it that way so this is sharpening with vivid light let's save it as a history state by going to history if you cannot see it go to window and then make sure history is checked right over there and then click on this camera icon that way that snapshot that moment in time in photoshop is saved let's name this vivid light okay now let's delete this let's do it the usual high pass way how does that work out press control or command j then we desaturate it by pressing ctrl shift u command shift u and then we go to filter convert for smart filters hit ok then we change the blend mode from normal to overlay let's quickly do that and then simply we go to filter other and high pass similarly let's also choose four here all right and this is the high pass method and let's also save it as a history state and this is going to be high pass in other words snapshot now let's compare both of these and you'll be stunned so this is vivid light look at the details inside and this is high pass outside details are the same but inside it does not ignore whereas high pass sometimes ignores some areas i'm sure there's a mathematical reason for it but if you look at it from the artist's viewpoint some areas are not sharpened with high pass so this is high pass inside of the eye no details this is vivid light just look at inside the eye makes a world of difference let's go to our second example and in this case we'll use an action and in the action i have recorded the same steps so if you go to window and actions and by the way you can download the actions using the link at the description this is absolutely for free and if you're feeling too grateful do support us on patreon so after you download the actions you will find it inside the folder pixel perfect vivid light sharpening all right and there's an action inside of that called sharpen let's play it pretty obvious let's click on the play button now the great part about this action is while you play it it's going to ask you what the value of caution blur you want because this is going to be different from image to image so let's zoom in and let's keep it at about four again we don't need four but i'm keeping the value a little higher hit okay all right this is done here is the before here's the after see again it makes a world of difference and of course if you don't want to sharpen some of the areas like the wrinkles here and there you can always create a mask you already know that by holding the alt key on the option key and clicking on the mask button this creates a negative mask then you can take the brush and only paint over the areas which you do want to sharpen so paint with white with a soft round brush over the areas that you want to have more details in like the eyebrows or the eyes and of course then go ahead and decrease the opacity but for comparison we're going to just remove the mask and compare it with high pass now let's create a point in time by clicking on this button inside of history this creates a new snapshot and this is with vivid light let's delete that and let's do the same thing with high pass press control or command j command shift u then go to filter convert for smart filters hit ok change the blend mode from normal to overlay still waiting for the loading button to go away change it to overlay then go to filter other and then high pass four okay all right let's create a point in time and this is for high pass all right let's compare both of these so this is vivid light this is high pass can you see the change look at the details here so vivid light see more details high pass it just doesn't cover some areas but for some cases high pass might work better again i'm not saying high pass is bad i'm just saying that there are many cases where you might consider the vivid light method and by the way if you're wondering why the vivid diet is so mild it's mild because we recorded it with 62 opacity let's increase it and let's record it as new vivid light now compare both of these so this is actually the vivid light and this is the high pass vivid light high pass you definitely have more details with the vivid light method again vivid light high pass now you can go ahead and check for yourself which one works the best for you but just keep in mind with high pass there are some areas that are usually not covered it might create a more natural result or it might not sometimes you might want more details sometimes you might not so it's definitely worth considering both the methods and you already have an action to just simply play it and see the effect for yourself instantly i hope this lesson helped you and if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any other future tips tricks or tutorials i would like to take this moment thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting pixelm perfect on patreon and helping keep fixing perfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for your support thank you for watching and also thank you for taking the time to watch this video i'll see in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating never stop creating see you again [Music] you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 339,535

Rating: 4.9502296 out of 5

Keywords: sharpening, sharpen image photoshop, photoshop action, gaussian blur, overlay, high pass, photoshop tutorial, adobe, add detail photoshop, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: _IujZ_RJ61w

Length: 9min 3sec (543 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 06 2021