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Home / All Posts / Sharpen Photos Using the High Pass Filter in PSE

Sharpen Photos Using the High Pass Filter in PSE

High Pass Filter Tutorial Header

If you are like many of us you have quite a few blurry photos ranging from a little to a lot blurry. Using filters is one of my favorite ways to not only lighten photos but sharpen them. Sometimes just a little sharpening can make a world of difference to your photo. You are not going to believe how easy this technique is, and best of all it can be achieved in both PS and PSE!

Step 1 – Open your blurry photo and make a duplicate copy. Close the original.

orignal photo

Step 2 – Press Cmd J (PC: Ctrl J) to make a duplicate layer in the layers panel.

Step 3 – In the Layers panel, on the duplicate photo layer, set the blend mode to Overlay.

choose the Overlay blend mode
Step 4 – In the Menu Bar, choose Filter > Other > High Pass.

choose high pass filter
Step 5 – Play with the settings slider until you are happy with the results. Click OK.

adjust amount of high pass
Since the High Pass filter is applied to the duplicate photo layer you can adjust the Opacity if you decide that you sharpened it a bit too much.

Adjust the opacity of the filter layer
before and after high pass filter applied
Step 5 – Merge the layers if desired by pressing Cmd E (PC: Ctrl E). I prefer to keep my layers separate so I can play with them down the line. And that’s all there is to it!

Here are some more samples:

The photo below is a low-quality iPad photo, by using the High Pass filter I was able to make it look a lot better!

Before after photo 2
The original photo is pretty good, but if you look closely at the eyes you can see that the details are not sharp.

Before after photo 3
By using the High Pass filter the eyes are now much clearer.

Close up of eyes
I hope you have some fun with this technique and would love to see your results or hear your comments!

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3 Comments

  1. Cynthia
    Cynthia on 05/18/2018 at 8:06 am

    Thank you. This will bring new life to photos that I thought I could not improve on. Great tutorial.

    Reply
  2. pjscraps
    pjscraps on 05/18/2018 at 1:28 pm

    thanks for this tip. such a subtle change for a large impact

    Reply
  3. Julie L.
    Julie L. on 05/18/2018 at 6:16 pm

    Thanks so much for this tip. It’s going to be very useful! 🙂

    Reply

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