This tutorial will teach you how to sharpen your digital photos using the Lab mode. This helps to reduce the noise in pictures that may get sharpened and it only sharpens the lighter portions of the image.

Step 1:: Open your image in Adobe Photoshop.
Step 2:: With your image open, go to Image > Mode > Lab Color.
Step 3:: Now head over to your layers palette and select the "Channels" tab to the right of Layers. From here, click on Lightness. Your image will convert itself to black and white.

Step 4:: Now head to Filter > Unsharp Mask. I usually set my values to 80,1.0,1 for web photos and 250,0.8,1 for print.

Step 5:: Finally go to Image > Mode and convert your image back to RGB Color or whatever you were using before sharpening.



All Photos are Copyright of Mike Last at www.mikelastphoto.com