When you have finished working on an image you should sharpen it to make the edges in the image look crisper so that they look better when printed on paper and displayed on the screen.

In Photoshop Elements, choose Enhance > Unsharp Mask and set the Radius to around 1.0 – 2.0 pixels. Select a low Threshold value of somewhere between 3 and 10 and adjust the Amount as required.

You will require a higher level of sharpening for images that you will print than you need for display on your computer screen or on the web, for example.

Use the Preview option to check the before and after results of sharpening to ensure you are getting the desired result. You should see the sharpening effect clearly at 100% view, but you should avoid making  visible halos around the edges in your image.

If your image was a little soft and lacking sharp focus before you begin, use a larger Radius value for the sharpening.

If you have been creating layers as you fix your image you must apply sharpening to a flattened version of the image, so choose Layer > Merge Visible to do this.

Other stories in this Simple Photo- Editing Workflow series:

Step 12 – Major Surgery

Step 11 – Getting to black and white

Step 10 – Fixing Redeye

Step 9 – Fixing Imperfections

Step 8 – Fix Skin tones

Step 7 – Fix Color problems

Step 6 – Fix muddy images

Step 5 – Fixing under and overexposed images

Step 4 – Straighten

Step 3 – Crop an image

Step 2 – Make a duplicate

Step 1 – Assess the image

Helen Bradley