In the last tutorial we leanred what brushes are and how to install and use them. In this tutorial we’re going to learn how to create our own brushes.

Make a brush from a custom shape. Converting the shape to a brush provides more versatility in using the shape. For example, by changing brush options, you can quickly make a decorative border or create a scatter effect with the shape in its brush form. In this lesson, make a brush from the heart shape.

Create a Brush

To create a brush from a custom shape: From the Edit menu, select New, then Blank File. Create a new blank file with the dimensions of 100px width and 100px height. Press D to set the foreground and background colors to the default of black foreground and white background. Select the Custom Shape tool and select the heart shape from the Default shapes. On the options bar, click the arrow to the right of the leftmost shape thumbnail to view custom shape options.

In the Custom Shape Options dialogue, select Fixed Width and enter the desired height and width. Setting a fixed width allows you to create brushes that are a uniform width and height.

Click to draw the shape.

On the options bar, click Simplify to change the shape from a vector graphic to a raster graphic. From the Edit menu, select Define Brush. In the Define Brush dialogue, enter a name for the brush and click OK. Your brush will now be available for you to use from the Brush Presets palette.

Refine a Brush

When you first create a brush, the brush gets the default brush options that are applied to all brushes. You can apply special brush options to a brush, then save it again to create a new brush with the special options applied. For example, you can create a new brush from the heart brush that you can use to create decorative borders.

To create a heart border brush:

Create a new blank file.

Press D to set the foreground and background colors to the default of black foreground and white background. Select the Brush tool, then select the heart brush that you created above. On the options bar, change the size of the brush, if desired. On the options bar, click the paintbrush icon at the far right to open the Brush options dialogue box. In the Brush options dialogue box, select the following options:

Set Fade, Hue Jitter, and Scatter to 0.

Set Spacing to 125% or more. Spacing is a percentage of the brush diameter and determines the distance between brush marks. Increase this setting to increase the distance between dots.

On the options bar, click the arrow to the right of the brush thumbnail to view the Brush Presetspalette. Click the double-arrows to the top right of the Brush Presets palette. From the menu, select Save Brush. Enter a name for the new brush and click OK.

Post links to examples of some of the brushes you’ve created or some favorites you’ve found

 

I’m always looking for cool features in the programs I use. One of the coolest tools I think PSE has is the brush tool. I think that this tool is underestimated for its uses. There are so many shapes from ink spots and clouds to Warcraft toons that can be used through the brush tool.

Before I get to deep into this tutorial, some of you may be thinking, “What is a “brush”?”  Brushes can be used to make many cool effects, and you can make them just about any shape that you want. The brush tool is one of the most useful tools in Photoshop Elements, with an excellent range of features available. This also means it has one of the most comprehensive option bars in the program though, and it's easy to feel a little bit lost, or simply overlook many of the features available.

Downloading Brushes:

Most brushes are in a zip file. You will need a program like Winzip to unzip the file. You can get Winzip here. 

After you have unzipped the file into a TEMPORARY folder (NOT YOUR PSP BRUSH FOLDER), open PSP 8 and do the following :

     
 * Select File, Import, Custom Brush.

 Select the file or files you want to add and double left click to open the file.

 * Now select Add All and then click OK.

You should now be able to select the new brush in PSP 8, PSP 9 and PSP X. If you do not see the brushes, exit PSP and then go back into it, then select the brush. 

You can find some amazing brushes at Brusheezy, Get Brushes, Brushes Download, PS Brushes, 123 Free Brushes, Adobe, and Deviant Art and since I’m a huge fan of World of Warcraft these are my favorite at PhotoShop Essentials, Photoshop Brushes and 3d brushes can be found here and here.

General Etiquette: Always remember never distribute the freebie brushes, if you had got them by means of exclusive membership, making changes to them and redistributing them is highly discouraged, whenever you use the brushes in your projects to post up on the web, ensure that you give the appropriate credit to the designer and the location from where you had taken them, above all, learn to respect the terms and conditions of usage posed by each artist without fail.

Using Brushes:

New Brushes will show up in “Brushes Window”.  Select the Brush color and play with the parameters. Specify Brush tool options in the options bar as desired, and then drag within the image to paint. 

Brushes - Sets the brush tip. Click the arrow next to the brush sample, choose a brush category from the Brushes pop‑up menu, and then select a brush thumbnail.

Size – Sets the size of the brush in pixels. Drag the Size pop‑up slider or enter a size in the text box.

Mode – Specifies how the paint that you apply blends with the existing pixels in the image.

Opacity – Sets the opacity of the paint you apply. A low opacity setting allows pixels under a paint stroke to show through. Drag the pop‑up slider or enter an opacity value.

Airbrush - Enables airbrush capabilities. This option applies gradual tones to an image, simulating traditional airbrush techniques.

Brush Tablet Options - Sets the options to control with your stylus if you are using a pressure sensitive drawing tablet instead of a mouse.

More Options – Sets additional brush options.

Viewing Brushes:

For you Mac owners out there you have Brush Pilot, a fast and easy application for previewing Adobe® Photoshop® and Adobe Photoshop Elements Brushes (.abr), built exclusively for Mac OS X. Brush Pilot is designed to save you time by allowing you to instantly preview your brushes without having to load them into Photoshop. There is no news as to whether it will stay a Mac only program or if a Windows version will be released.

For Windows users, we have abrViewer, there are lots of wonderful brush sets for photoshop in the web… too many to install them all just to see what they look like! now you can have the preview of a set without having to install it… without having to run photoshop! 

Now it’s all up to you and your imagination. Now you have easy ways of making some really cool effects and shapes in your scrapbook layouts.

Fonts are one of the most important features for scrapbooking, brochures, PowerPoint presentations, web pages, and blogs as they are used for journaling and titles and can really set the mood of the entire page, project and layout.

Here are some points to think about before just choosing any font. Like all design elements, fonts should be used with purpose. Fonts have personalities and attitudes, which should be considered before choosing them. Whatever you do, don’t settle for the default 12-point Times New Roman for body copy unless you are formatting an essay for English class. Captions may be set in a font from the same family that is used for the body copy, but choose something different about it to make it stand out. There are no rules as to size, selection or placement of headlines, but a smart designer will consider the story content, personality of the book and overall visual style when choosing a headline font. Subheads are smaller headings, which often clarify the main headline.  Pulled quotes or featured quotes can be the same size or considerably larger than the body copy. Sidebars should appear as a separate unit, so don’t choose the same body copy and size used for the main story. Dropped caps can either be the same as the block of text they are dropped into, or they can be the same as the headline or another font used on the spread. Some designers like to use fonts as graphic elements to decorate a page.

The first question you may ask is there a difference in the font file types. The answer is yes. You can find a list of them all here. Fonts can be divided in three basic types: bitmap fonts, outline fonts and stroke fonts.

Bitmap fonts (raster fonts) consist of a series of dots or pixels representing the image of each glyph in each face and size. Bitmap fonts are faster and easier to use in computer code, but inflexible, and do require separate font for each size.

Outline fonts (vector fonts) use Bézier curves, drawing instructions and mathematical formulas to describe each glyph, which make the character outlines scalable to any size.

Stroke fonts use a series of specified lines and additional information to define the profile, or size and shape of the line in a specific face, which together describe the appearance of the glyph.

The most used font file formats are:

Adobe Type 1 (pfb file extension) and Type 3 fonts developed by Adobe for professional digital typesetting and desktop publishing. Type 1 and Type 3 fonts are outline fonts (vector fonts), which are using PostScript and cubic Bezier curves.

TrueType font (ttf file extension) is file format created by Apple, Inc as competition for Adobe Type 1 fonts. TrueType font is described by quadratic Bezier curves. It is a very popular font format, that is supported by many operating systems (Microsoft Windows, MAC OS X, Linux).

The next question you may have is where can I find some really unique fonts. Well to answer that I use dafont, 1001 Free fonts, Urban Fonts,  Simply The Best, Search Free Fonts, and Font Space. I actually bought a set from Ultimate Font Download. If you ever find a font that you fall in love with but have no idea what it’s called you can use What the Font. After creating an account, take an image shot, or copy the font and paste it then ask the community for there help. I’ve used this free service before and had the font solved in under 8 hours.

Now that you understand the types of Font Formats and where to get them, you may want to know how to download them. You can follow these simple steps:

Windows 95 to Windows XP:

Click on Start, Select, Settings and click on Control Panel.

Click on Fonts, click on File in the main tool bar and select Install New Font.

Select the folder where the font is located.

The fonts will appear; select the desired font that is titled TrueType and click on OK.

Click Start and choose restart the computer.

The application using the font needs to be restarted; some applications require the entire computer to be restarted.

Windows Vista, Windows 7 and greater

You can install them by following these steps: Right click on the TTF font and choose install. The application using the font needs to be restarted; some applications require the entire computer to be restarted.

You don’t need to download every font to view them. Like I said I bought a package of over 10,000 fonts, so I found a font viewer that has saved me a lot of time. AMP Font Viewer, is an easy to use but powerful font manager, which allows getting a quick overview of both installed and non installed fonts. It can install and uninstall fonts, and organize them in categories. Some of its features are:  Supports TrueType and OpenType fonts. Supports Type1 fonts. Installation of fonts from a folder (one by one or from a list). Installation of fonts temporally (until the program is closed). Deletion of installed fonts. List of all installed fonts with several display options. List of the fonts from a folder with several display options. Several options for organizing fonts in categories and managing them. It can print a list of all or some of the installed fonts with an example of each font. Scratchpad area for testing the look of any font (installed or from a folder). Dual English/Spanish version.

Please feel free to share your favorite fonts and font sites and any viewers that you use so we can all learn together.

 

I love how my Cuttlebug makes easy embossed papers for scrapbooking, and I wanted the same effect for my digital papers. So, after playing around with PSE. here’s a simple way to get the same effect

Open a new canvas for your paper.  PSE has a preset called Scrapbooking which will open up at 3600 x 3600 pixel paper at 300 dpi. Fill your canvas with a color of your choice.  I used Edit > Fill Layer and then selected color.  This will cause a palette to appear and you can choose a color.

Go to the effects menu (top right corner), make sure filters are selected and select Texture from the dropdown menu.   Choose the Texturizer effect.  Click Apply.  This will bring up the Texturizer menu.   There are 4 default textures available in the Texturizer menu.  To use a non-default texture, click the triangle to bring up the Load Texture menu.  Click Load Texture.

PSE will now bring up a file window where you can select a custom texture file.  The texture file must be in PSD format.  I downloaded  a free floral texture here  to play with the idea first. (You’ll need to open the file and save it to .PSD and then close the file.)  Select your file and click OK.  This will apply the texture at the default settings.  Scale changes the size of the embossing texture.  Texturizer will automatically wrap the texture.  Change the scale to your desired size.  I changed mine to 105%.  Relief changes the depth of the emboss.  I left mine at the default of 20.  Light changes the direction of the light.  I changed mine to Top Left.  Invert flips the emboss so that the peaks are valleys and vice versa.

Now you can make your very own embossed papers using any design you can think of!

Let me introduce you to another free powerful Program – Livebrush. It is a drawing application. It employs an easy-to-use brush tool that reacts to your gesture. By combining simple motion controls with brush styles, Livebrush offers a fun and unique way to create graphics.

From the research I did this program is amazing in that you can take real photos and give them all kinds of effect, easily and for free. It’s also used to create seamless vectors.  It’s a free download and will run on most modern computers and operating systems. Livebrush is an Adobe AIR application. It’s not made by Adobe, but rather runs in Adobe’s AIR framework. When you install Livebrush, AIR will be installed as well (if you don’t already have it). Creating graphics in Livebrush is as easy as drawing a line. The brush tool combines simple motion controls with styles and decorations. This is a great tool for those of us who love of Bamboo or Wacom Tablets.

When you first open Livebrush, a new “project” is started by default. The Livebrush interface contains six basic elements: The “paper,” or drawing area, the Project Bar and Tool Bar, plus three panels: Styles, Tool Settings and Layers.

Let’s get right to the fun part — drawing. Make sure the Brush tool is selected, then choose a style from the pre-sets in the Styles panel. Paint a line with the brush to get a feel of it.

Livebrush adds a new layer in the Layers panel for each stroke. These layers can be turned off and/or deleted. You can also change the color of the locked background layer by clicking on the swatch at the top right corner of the panel.

Take a look at the Tool Settings panel. Under the Behavior tab, there are settings for Velocity and Friction. These are the two basic settings which determine the behavior of the live brush

Velocity: Adjust this slider to set the “speed” of the brush when drawing. A higher setting will let the brush keep moving after you’ve stopped drawing.

Friction: Sets the “resistance” of the brush. A higher setting slows the brush while drawing. With no friction at all, the brush would keep moving indefinitely. Try different combinations of velocity and friction to see how they interact.

Mouse Up Complete: When checked, the brush will stop immediately (regardless of the velocity or friction settings) when you release the mouse click.

To get a sense of how each brush will behave, you can click the Preview icon (an eyeball) at the bottom of the Styles panel. Click through the styles to see a demonstration of each. You can change the color of the preview background, by clicking on the swatches menu in the upper left corner, or you can just delete it.

While in preview mode, you can change the settings of each style and get live, updated previews. You could spend all day doing this! For example, preview a simple smooth brush, then as it’s previewing, change the color, the opacity, the line type, etc.,

You’ll notice that some brushes add swirls, leaves or other flourishes to the line as you draw. These are called decorations, or “decos,” for short. The decos are not part of the line, but are small graphic files that are added to it, based on the settings of the given style. Decos can be GIF, JPG, PNG or SWF files.

To see these in motion check out this short demonstration highlighting some of the capabilities that LiveBrush has here.

What types of projects would you like to learn how to do using the LifeBrush tools?

I think that with the economy today and all the tutorials mostly revolving around software that is a few hundred dollars a piece, when getting into scrapbooking and photo editing, some may be turned off just simply because they cant afford it. I like to share programs that are free and powerful to give people options and also ideas for their software collection. I think that Aviary is a really powerful, user friendly program and would like to highlight some of the features now available.

“Aviary is a suite of powerful creative applications that you can use right in your web browser. We're on a mission to make creation accessible to artists of all genres, from graphic design to audio editing. Let Aviary and Worth1000 artists perform design services for you.”  – Aviary.com

Phoenix Image Editor

From basic image retouching to complex effects, Phoenix delivers the key features of a desktop image editor with the simplicity and accessibility of a web-based application. You can edit your images with undo and redo, brushes, magic wand, and blend modes, work with layers, groups, and layer masks. Intuitive drag and drop interface, collaborate with other users. Follow step-by-step tutorials to learn new skills, import images from Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook and use your Phoenix creations in other Aviary tools.

Peacock Visual Laboratory

Peacock does so many amazing things that we decided to call it our "Visual Laboratory". Experiment with pixel-based images in completely new ways. Check out the new user-created wiki for in-depth documentation. You can drag, drop, and connect generators, effects, resources, and controllers, combine terrains, patterns, computational effects, and more to create stunning art, follow step-by-step tutorials to learn new skills.

Raven Vector Editor

Use Raven to create fully scalable vector art appropriate for logos or tee shirt designs. You won't find a similar tool on the web. You can work with paths, lines, curves, and objects. Control stroke, fill color, and gradient, work with layers, groups, and layer masks. Import scalable vector graphics (SVG) files, collaborate with other users. Follow step-by-step tutorials to learn new skills, and import images from Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook.

Falcon Image Markup

Use Falcon and Talon to quickly capture images and web pages from your browser and crop, resize or mark them up. Using Talon, Aviary's Firefox extension, you can screen grab and edit in Falcon instantly, resize, rotate and crop images easily. It's a perfect tool for bloggers and designers, click any part of a picture to instantly get its color. Great for matching designs. Files, loads instantly, even on slow connections. Jump right in without annoying wait times, draw arrows, rectangles, text and doodles on any image. Adjust colors, outlines and size.

Myna Audio Editor

Use Myna to remix music tracks and audio clips. Apply sound effects and record your own voice or instruments! Trim, Loop, Stretch and Reverse your audio clips, width editable loop points, and interactive time stretch capabilities, easily add fade-ins, fade-outs, pan from left to right, and modify gain over time, with editable control points, add non-destructive effects to your audio clips including Pitch Change, Reverb, Delay, Parametric EQ, and more. files, Import your own audio files, or search one of our provided libraries. Mix it down and export directly to your desktop or publish back to your account, collaborate with other users. Follow step-by-step tutorials to learn new skills.

Toucan Color Palettes

Used alone or in conjunction with our other creation tools, Toucan gives you the features you need to inject color into your creative process. Choose up to 20 colors per palette using color association rules or an uploaded image, toucan knows all about color theory, and you can even see a color deficiency preview, collaborate with other users. Follow step-by-step tutorials to learn new skills, import images from Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook, and use your Toucan color palettes in other Aviary tools.

Talon Screen Capture

Aviary is the most simple way to capture screenshots without having to use any additional software. The Aviary extension for Google Chrome adds a small toolbar icon which will allow you to quickly capture webpage screenshots and download them to your PC or share them with your friends.

To view some of their more popular tutorials check them out here.

What types of projects would you like to learn how to do using the Aviary tools?

 

When I first got into physical scrapbooking, like many other went out and bought a cricket, I learned very fast how costly and expensive this little hobby can become. I started doing some research thinking there had to be a way to use this amazingly powerful machine without buying the cartridges at $70 a piece which didn’t always have the graphics on them I wanted.

I came across Sure Cuts a Lot by Crafters Edge and it had all the answers that I was looking for! This program could take any scalable vector graphic and turn it into something I could cut out and use!!! So I immediately learned that Inkscape was the easiest program to learn how to turn Jpeg and Bitmap images into SVG files. (explained in the previous 2 tutorials)

We’ll need to download SCAL (sure cuts a lot) and open it up. "Sure Cuts A Lot" will run in trial mode and will cut a horizontal lines through your design as a DEMO watermark until you purchase a license. You have 15 days to try out the software. After 15 days, if you wish to continue to use the software, you must purchase a license. I have found this program has paid for itself in saving me the cost and limitations of the Cricut cartridges. Right now they are running a special for $59.95 which is less than one cartridge.

Open Sure Cuts a Lot, Click File> Import SVG. Find the SVG file we created for the black cat silhouette in the previous tutorial (image can also be found here and follow the steps to the previous tutorial). There you go, you can now make it any size you need! Put any cartridge into the Cricut, turn it on load your mat and paper and click “cut” (looks like a pair of scissors) in SCAL (Sure Cuts A Lot).

Some free sites that have SCAL files ready to download can be found at the Quilling Patch, Homegrown Art, and here at Scal Top 50 with some free and paid sites. Also some free SVG and vector file sites can be found at Free SVGs, Vector 4 Free, Vecteezy, Vector Vault, Bittbox, and iStock Photo has monthly free vectors if you sign up for them.

There you go, you can now create and cut any image you want using the Cricut.

 

In this tutorial I’m going to explain how you can use Inkscape to create Scalable Vector Graphics or SVG files. Inkscape is a free vector graphic design alternative software similar to Adobe Illustrator and CorelDraw, only it doesn’t cost you a penny. It is maybe not as powerful as its higher priced rivals, but certainly powerful enough to design high quality vector graphics. I use this method to create SVG files that can then be imported into Sure Cuts a Lot, which is a program that allows the Cricut to cut out any image without using the costly cartridges.

While doing research for this tutorial I was surprised to see how many awesome uses there are for inkscape some of the best I came across are here, here, here and here. These teach you everything from making stamps to creating graphics and flyers and thought they could be useful to a lot of you out there.

First you will need to go to Inkscape and download the latest version 0.47.  We’ll need a graphic to work with, silhouettes as well as anything that is black and white would work best for what we want to accomplish.

For this tutorial I’m going to use this one. Right click and save image to your desktop. Open Inkscape. Then open the cat we just downloaded. (File>open>black cat silhouette)

Next click on the image so you see arrows on all side and corners of the outline box around your image.  Next we’re going to click on Path>Trace Bitmap (Shift+Alt+B). You’ll see the Trace  Bitmap window pop open with an outline of our image, Click update and then Click Ok.

Next we need to save it, so click File>Save as. Change the image extension from .jpg to .svg in the drop down box.

If you don’t want to download Inkscape (which I highly recommend because it’s free), you can always use Vector Magic. This online software converts bitmap images to scalable vector graphic art with the world's best auto-tracing software for you. You get 2 free tokens which can be used to convert 2 separate images into vectors. It gives two pricing options $7.95 monthly or desktop edition at $295 for each license. We can use this image to download. Then go back to the main screen of Vector Magic so we can upload the image we just downloaded click the  “Upload Image to Trace…” button. You will see the image open in a split window. At the top right you will see a button that reads “Download Result” with a big green arrow. Click on that, the next screen will ask you to sign up for a free account, which you can do. You will then need to use the email verification code to activate your account and then you will be able to complete your image download from an .svg format.

There you have it, an easy way to create your very on vectors.

 

First, let me go over the difference since there are so many types of files out there, it’s easy to get confused and mixed up as to what each one is. When getting into making your own elements, the question I often get asked is what type of file should they save it in. Because of that common question, I'm going to explain all types of graphic files in hopes to clarify this confusing topic.

Bitmap Graphics:

Bitmap graphics are the most common graphic format in use on the web and, indeed, on the computer.  Bitmap graphics are composed of pixels, each of which contains specific color information. A pixel is minutely small; a single image may be composed of hundreds of thousands of individual pixels. Much like cells revealed from a piece of tissue when seen under a microscope, these pixels are only clearly and individually visible when the image is magnified.

At any given size, a Bitmap graphic contains exactly the amount of information (pixels) required to display it. No more and no less. Increasing the size of a Bitmap Graphic is akin to pouring a drink from a smaller glass to a larger one. For the drink to occupy the full volume of the larger glass, we must add additional fluid. The original concoction is diluted, the flavor weakened.

Because the computer is not especially skilled at guessing games, Bitmap images that have been scaled larger are frequently blurry. After extreme size increases, individual pixels "blocks" are more apparent (as though we held a magnifying glass up to it) and the image is said to be pixilated. Slight blurriness can be combated by sharpening the image with the filters provided within many graphic programs, but an enlarged image will never be as clear as the smaller original. 

There are 3 popular bitmap images used today:

The GIF format is one of the most popular formats on the Internet. Not only is the format excellent at compressing areas of images with large areas of the same color, but it is also the only option for putting animation online (unless you want to use Flash or other vector-based animation formats, which typically cost more). 

Used For: Generally, GIF files should be used for logos, line drawings and icons. Avoid using it for photographic images, and graphics which have long stretches of continuous-tone in them. When you're designing GIF files, avoid using gradients where possible to minimize the file size.

The JPEG format, with its support for 16.7 million colors, is primarily intended for photographic images. The internal compression algorithm of the JPEG format, unlike the GIF format, actually throws out information. Depending on what settings you use, the thrown out data may or may not be visible to the eye. Once you lower the quality of an image, and save it, the extra data cannot be regained so be sure to save the original.

Used For: As a rule, the JPEG format should be used on photographic images, and images which do not look as good with only 256 colors.

The third, and newest, file format that's widely supported by the Web is PNG (pronounced Ping). PNG was developed to surpass the limitations of GIFs. Image file stored in the Portable Network Graphic (PNG) format; like a .GIF file, contains a bitmap of indexed colors under a lossless compression, but without copyright limitations; commonly used to store graphics for Web images.

Used For: Most scrapbook elements that you come across will be saved in .png format because when stretched will not lose shape or color and do not become pixilated.

Vector Graphics:

Rather than being composed of pixels, Vector graphics consist of points, lines, and curves which, when combined, can form complex objects . These objects can be filled with solid colors, gradients, and even patterns. Vector graphics are mathematical creations. For this reason, the programs that are used to create them save instructions on how the image should be drawn, rather than how it looks. This is the key difference between the two types of graphics. Because the computer has a description of how the image should look, it can be redrawn at any size, in any position, without losing any quality. A vector graphic resized to 5 times its original dimensions is simply reproduced, exactly, at the new size. It can also be freely manipulated without losing coherence, like a rubber band that can be stretched an infinite number of ways.

Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG) is the file type for most common vectors and are used because they can be searched, indexed, scripted and, if required, compressed. Most Cricut Cartridges have preloaded SVG files on them which allows you to manipulate the image without the quality being compromised.

In the next few tutorials, I’m going to give examples of how to create your own vectors and even use them to create embossed paper and also how to use them to cut images out on your Cricut.

  

 

Most of us upload our pictures or print them the way they were captured by our digital cameras. A lot of people that I know think that as soon as they hear about the techniques to sharpen pictures, that it’s going to be too much work or too complicated. I want to show you it’s not. Most cameras, especially in the "pro" category will capture an image without applying any sharpening to it, resulting in images that appears "soft" or even slightly "out of focus."

Some of the usual causes of blurry digital photos include:

• Camera shake (the most common)
• Incorrect focus
• Motion or your subject's movements
• Either too much light or insufficient light
• Low digital photo resolution

First lets go over what sharpening means and what it does. Sharpening enhances the definition of edges in an image. Whether your images come from a digital camera or a scanner, most images can benefit from sharpening. The degree of sharpening needed varies depending on the quality of the digital camera or scanner. Keep in mind that sharpening cannot correct a severely blurred image.

I’m going to go over a few programs you can use to sharpen your pictures.

Photoshop Elements:

Open Photoshop Elements and do File - Open - select the picture you want to work with.

In the menu select Enhance> Auto Sharpen. You should see slight changes in the sharpness. As a general rule of thumb Perform all other changes (color correction, saturation changes, distortion corrections, etc.) before sharpening. Save a copy of the corrected, but unsharpened version. (And you’ve already saved a copy of the original, right?)

Make A Copy

Open Photoshop Elements and do File - Open - select the picture you want to work with.

Immediately, save it as a different name, with a psd (Photoshop) extension. For example, if your original image was named IMG0001.JPG, then save it as IMG0001.psd (i.e. use the default extension of the image editing software you are using). This way, you will preserve the original file (IMG0001.JPG).

If the Layers Panel is not on your desktop, drag it from the tabs at the top into your work area. If necessary, drag the bottom edge down so you can see more than one layer. You will see your picture (probably named "Background") in a layer.

Double click on that layer and rename it as original. (You could leave it as "Background" but renaming it is a good habit, since you may want to add a real background in some cases.)

Now, drag it to the new layer icon (the middle one at the bottom of the Layers Panel) to create a new layer, original copy.

Click on the original copy layer to select it as the one you want to work with. (Remember, we never want to muck with the original layer.)

Sharpen

If not already selected, click the original copy layer to select it.

From the menu bar, select: Filter – Sharpen – Unsharp Mask… and type in Amount = 200%, Radius = 1.2, Threshold = 4. Click onPreview to view the original and sharpened version. Yeah!, I hear you say already. You may select different values, though the above values are a good starting point.

Separate Darken and Lighten Pixels

Now, copy the sharpened original copy layer by dragging it to the new layer icon. You'll end up with original copy 2.

Double click on original copy and rename it darken.

Double click on original copy 2 and rename it lighten.

Select the darken layer by clicking on that layer.

Set the blending mode to darken: See where it says, Normal in a drop down box at the top of the Layers Panel? Click on the down arrow and select "Darken":

 

Select the lighten layer by clicking on that layer.

Set the blending mode to lighten: Click on the down arrow and select "Lighten":

What we have done is separate the darken and lighten pixels into two layers. Now, we can control each layer separately.

Adjust Sharpness

If you are following this tutorial in your own Photoshop Elements and using our image, you'll notice that the lighten pixels (the highlights) are a bit too bright. (You might have to zoom in 200% to see things clearer.)

Click on the lighten layer to select it and adjust the Opacity until you are satisfied. (Ensure Preview is ON.) In my case, I select 26%.

Likewise, select the darken layer and adjust the Opacity until the darken pixels (the dark edges) just "jump out." I select 90%.

Each picture you sharpen will require different values, so if you are using your own image, adjust to your own liking.

There, you have it. Pretty simple, huh?

Here are some online programs to help with sharpening, if you don’t have PSE or want to see what else is available:

Focus Magic uses advanced forensic strength deconvolution technology to literally "undo" blur and recover lost detail.  It can repair both out-of-focus blur and motion blur (camera shake) in an image. Sharpen some of your photos (up to 10 for the free trial)

50 Free Online Tools

15 Useful Online Image Editors