What Do the Shadow and Highlight Sliders Do in Photoshop Smart Sharpen?

Its the go-to sharpener for many but it holds a little mystery. In this tutorial I’ll take a look at those sliders that are hidden away in Photoshop Smart Sharpen.

By default the Shadow and highlight sliders in Photoshop Smart Sharpen are closed. If you’ve been brave enough to twirl them open it might not be immediately apparent what they do, so lets take a look;

 

Fade Amount

This allows you to set how much of the Shadows or Highlights should be sharpened. The fade amount is how much sharpening should be reduced, so 20% Fade amount leaves 80% sharpening.

Noisy Shadows?

Head to the Fade amount and set the slider to 100%, leaving 0% sharpening in the darker areas of the image.

Tonal Width

With the Fade Amount at 1% or more the tonal width instructs Photoshop how to distribute its sharpening. Set at 50%, the default,  it’ll sharpen evenly across the tones.  Lowering this will sharpen only the darker tones (shadows) or lighter tones if you adjust the Tonal Width in the highlights.

Still with me?

Radius

This is the width that Photoshop should look from an edge to analyse for shadows or highlights.