Sharpening and adding detail to your photos can make it look like you have had a phone upgrade. Using the various Snapseed sharpening options can make it pop and jump off the screen. 

1. Tonal Contrast

Firstly, what is contrast? If you increase contrast, you are increasing the difference between two things. When you have a line in your photo, either side of the edge of that line is brightened and darkened to increase the perception of sharpness. Tap on the Edit pencil icon, then Tonal Contrast. Tap on Adjust to reveal the submenu or swipe up and down on the screen.

High, mid and low tones. Editing the mid and low tones are where you will notice the strongest effect.

2. Details tool

This tool sharpens the whole photo. Tap on the Pencil edit icon > Details. Next, tap on Adjust to reveal two options: Structure and Sharpening. Structure – applies the sharpening to the areas where there is evident contrast. It will make the darker side of a contrasting edge darker and the light section of an edge lighter. Sharpening – indiscriminately sharpens every single pixel (dot) in the image. 

3. Selective Tool

This is my favourite tool to apply strong sharpening in very specific parts of the photo. After opening your photo, go to the Pencil edit icon > Details. Tap on the + symbol and tap on the photo. Pinch and zoom to increase/decrease the selection of surrounding pixels. Swipe up and down to access Structure.

4. Stacks (layers) and Masking

To access the Layers, tap on the icon on the top right side that resembles an undo arrow atop two stacked tiles. Next, tap View edits to reveal a 'Stack' of each adjustment made. Tap on a previous adjustment to reveal a fly-out menu of a bin icon to delete and adjust icons to refine the edit. 

What is masking? When you make an adjustment, the new version of the image is stacked on top of the previous version, hiding the previous layer. Masking is the process of selectively revealing and/or hiding parts or all of the previous layer. The benefit of masking is we can specifically apply varying strength of ANY editing tool to exactly where you want. 

Summary 

When sharpening my photos, my typical workflow involves Tonal Contrast to add some depth to the mid-tones. Next, Details add sharpness to the whole photo. The Selective tool adds heavy sharpening to specific areas of the photo. Lastly, I will use the Stacks and Masking option to apply more controlled sharpening over specific areas of the photo. 

This video lesson is extracted from the Blurry to Tack-Sharp Photos: 4-Step System. More details on the system can be found here

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Read the full article at https://www.smartphonephotographytraining.com/editing/snapseed-sharpening