Sharpen a soft photo without making it crunchy

Slight blur from a missed focus or a resized image: unsharp masking puts the edge back — if you don't overdo it.

Tools used in this guide

Image sharpen
Image filters
Image compressor

The job

Unsharp masking subtracts a blurred copy from the original, exaggerating contrast along edges. It recovers the appearance of detail — it can't invent detail that isn't there.

Strength and radius

Drop the photo, start near strength 0.5 and radius 1–2 px, and watch the preview. Radius controls how wide the halo region is; strength controls how loud it is.

Skin and skies punish over-sharpening first — check faces and gradients at 100%.
Export as PNG if the source was already JPEG; re-compressing sharp edges adds ringing.

Know when to stop

If you can see a light outline hugging dark edges, you've gone too far. Halos read as sharpening only at thumbnail size — at full size they read as damage.