Advanced Sharpening for Portrait

This advanced sharpening tutorial will let you creating overall feeling of sharpness, without emphasizing the texture of the skin.

Step 1: Once you have opened your image, now you must duplicate your background layer by dragging your background layer to the 'Create New layer' button in your Layer Palette or go to layer>duplicate layer.

Step 2: Use the USM filter on your duplicated layer (filter>sharpen>unsharp mask)

Step 3: As you can see, now the texture in the skin appear to be accentuated as a result of the sharpening. To fix it, press and hold the alt key while clicking on the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of your Layer Palette. Holding the alt key will fill the layer mask with black. Now choose your brush, switch your foreground color to white and start to paint over the areas on the face where you want to apply your unsharp mask filter. I chose the lips, eyes, eyelashes, and hair.