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Adjust sharpening in Camera Raw

The sharpening controls on the Detail tab adjust edge definition in the image. Camera Raw provides four adjustments to help you fine-tune image sharpness.

Use the Apply Sharpening To preference in the Camera Raw preferences to specify whether sharpening is applied to all images or just to previews.

To open preferences from within Camera Raw, click the Open Preferences Dialog button  in the toolbar. To open Camera Raw preferences from within Adobe Bridge, choose Edit > Camera Raw Preferences (Windows) or Bridge > Camera Raw Preferences (Mac OS). To open Camera Raw preferences from within Photoshop, choose Edit > Preferences > Camera Raw (Windows) or Photoshop > Preferences > Camera Raw (Mac OS).
  1. Zoom the preview image to at least 100%.
  2. In the Detail tab, adjust any of these controls:
    Amount
    Adjusts edge definition. Increase the Amount value to increase sharpening. A value of zero (0) turns off sharpening. In general, set Amount to a lower value for cleaner images. The adjustment is a variation of Unsharp Mask, which locates pixels that differ from surrounding pixels based on the threshold you specify and increases the pixels’ contrast by the amount you specify. When opening a camera raw image file, the Camera Raw plug-in calculates the threshold to use based on camera model, ISO, and exposure compensation.

    Radius
    Adjusts the size of the details that sharpening is applied to. Photos with very fine details may need a lower setting. Photos with larger details may be able to use a larger radius. Using too large a radius generally results in unnatural-looking results.

    Detail
    Adjusts how much high-frequency information is sharpened in the image and how much the sharpening process emphasizes edges. Lower settings primarily sharpen edges to remove blurring. Higher values are useful for making the textures in the image more pronounced.

    Masking
    Controls an edge mask. With a setting of zero (0), everything in the image receives the same amount of sharpening. With a setting of 100, sharpening is mostly restricted to those areas near the strongest edges. Press Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while dragging this slider to see the areas to be sharpened (white) versus the areas masked out (black).