Photoshop trick - Sharp photos

Used from:
The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros'!
By Scott Kelby

You can make your photos look even that much sharper by adding sharpening in either Adobe Photoshop
Now, which photos need to be sharpened using Photo-shop? All of them. We sharpen every single photo we shoot using Photoshop's Unsharp Mask filter.
Okay, it sounds like something named "unsharp" would make your photos blurry, but it doesn'tthe name is a holdover from traditional darkroom techniques, so don't let that throw you. Using it is easy. Just open your photo in Photoshop, then go under Photoshop's Filter menu, under Sharpen, and choose Unsharp Mask. When the dialog appears, there are three sliders for applying different sharpening parameters, but rather than going through all that technical stuff, I'm going to give you three sets of settings that I've found work wonders.

For people: Amount 150%, Radius 1, Threshold 10

For cityscapes, urban photography, or travel: Amount 65%, Radius 3, Threshold 2

For general everyday use: Amount 85%, Radius 1, Threshold 4
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Another trick using LAB mode:

1. Go under the Image menu, under Mode, and choose Lab Color.


2. Go to the Channels palette and click on the Lightness channel. (Note: This Lightness channel contains only the detail and not the color in the photo, which is why you sidestep some of the color problems you get by sharpening the full-color photo.)


3. Now apply the Unsharp Mask filter using the settings mentioned above.


4. Try applying the Unsharp Mask filter again, using the same settings. If your photo appears too sharp, before you do anything else, go under the Edit menu and choose Fade Unsharp Mask. In the Fade dialog, lower the Opacity slider to 50%, so you only get half-strength on the second application of the filter.


5. Now go back under the Image menu, under Mode, and choose RGB Color.


Here are the images, post processing.
No significant difference can be noticed without careful observation, as I chose a difficult image:
Original:



Sharpened



Cropped left part of original image



Cropped left part of sharpened image