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There’s no question that Lightroom is a powerful piece of photo processing software, but due to that power sometimes it’s not as easy to wrap our heads around everything it has to offer, that’s in part why I started my Let’s Edit YouTube series a weekly segment in which I share my own editing workflow for viewers to learn from.

After starting this series one of the most commonly asked questions was to go into more detail on how the sharpening tools in Lightroom work. Sharpening in Lightroom is broken down into four different sliders – Amount, Radius, Detail and Masking – and they each work together to help you achieve the perfect amount of sharpness in your photograph. Today, rather than simply answer this question to the comparatively small group of people over on my site, I thought I’d bring these tips to the dPS community as a whole. I know there are a lot more people out there looking to master the art of sharpening images and I’m happy to help explain them.

Before We Get Started

There is one thing I’d like to mention before we dive into the tutorial and that is that these tools are designed to help improve an image that is sharp to begin with. They won’t fix camera shake, missed focus points, or poor DOF choices, but rather improve upon an already sharp image. So with that said if you’re struggling to get your image tack sharp you might want to check out this great DPS article on five tips to achieve sharper images first and then head back here to learn how you can make them even better.

The Amount Slider

As the name implies the amount slider is a broad and general addition or subtraction of the amount sharpening applied to your image. The more you slide to the right the sharper your image will become. It works by increasing the contrast between different pixels in a fairly general way. The next three sliders can help us refine how the amount of sharpening is applied throughout the image.

Before we get into those other sliders though I do want to mention that each of these four tools has an extra option attached to it. By using the Alt (windows) or Option (Mac) key on your computer you will be shown an overlay that will help aid you in making better decisions with your sharpening.

For the amount slider this option removes the color from the image letting us use a simple gray scale image for sharpening. This is important because some colors can give false sense of sharpness when placed next to each other and can make it difficult to determine the true level of sharpness in the image.

The Radius Slider

Next in the detail panel is the Radius Slider which lets you control how far away from the center of each pixel the sharpening effect occurs. This is great for determining if you’d prefer a more airy feel (smaller radius) or a more hard edge feel (larger radius).

Each photograph is different and often times in portraiture the radius is left rather small, while in architecture or landscape, the radius can be made a bit larger to truly define the edges of your scene.

With the radius slider the option key will create an overlay that allows you to see the effect of the edge sharpening in a visual and easy to understand way. The edges that are being effected become clearly defined and the areas of the photograph where this effect is not being applied will be left hidden behind a gray overlay. In the screen-capture above you’ll see with the radius slider maxed out the trees along the horizon are clearly defined in the overly.

The Detail Slider

I like to think of the detail slider as a fine-tuning slider or even just simply as picking up from where the radius slider left off. Rather than focusing on the hard edges of the image the detail slider is designed more for bringing out the finer textures of the images.

It does this by controlling how the high frequency data is displayed.

The further you push the detail slider to the right the more high frequency data will be displayed resulting in more textures in your image. Be warned, if you push it too far in some cases the outcome will be overly sharp or you may start sharpening unwanted noise. These negatives are things you’ll want to watch out for as they can start to make your photograph too harsh for your viewer and distract from the overall story you’re trying to tell.

To help you determine the optimum positioning of the detail slider the option overlay available works in much the same way as the radius slider showing you where your detail is being applied by showing you the areas effected by your changes.

The Masking Slider

Finally we’re down to the last one of the four. The masking slider allows you to in a sense control where your sharpening is to occur. By sliding it to the right you reduce the areas of the photograph that sharpening will occur by ignoring less important edges and only sharpening the more obvious ones.

Again with the alt or option key held down you are presented with an overlay for this slider which shows you where everything is occurring The areas in black are being masked out, while the areas in white are where the sharpening will take effect. As you can see above here the hard edges of the dog around her ears, muzzle and eyes are being sharpened where as the areas in black are not. It’s a great way to keep you background filled with creamy bokeh, but sharpen the face or focal point of your subject.

Well that’s it – I hope this quick look into Lightroom’s detail sliders has helped you learn a bit about how to sharpen your photographs, if you’d like to see it in action check out this video where I go through the above steps while sharpening a Macaw from a recent trip to the local zoo.

John Davenport is an avid amateur photography who shares his photography on Facebook. He also runs a weekly series called “Let’s Edit” which focuses on editing photos in Lightroom.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

Learn How to Use the Sharpening Tools in Lightroom

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