I have an old photo, not damaged, but not very sharp by today's standards. What would be a good way to make it look 'crisper' and bring out details and features better? I figured out how to get a thumbnail in here, yay. Anyway, I know ya'll can do it for me, but I would like to learn how to do it myself. I have tried a few processes on my own, but don't think I know enough about filters and modes and settings to know what works best.

The Unsharp Mask would be a good place to start. I'd also recommend increasing the contrast a little applying an s-curve with the Curves filter.

More manual editing might include dodging the blouse a bit to brighten it, and burning the shorts.

Thanks, sg, I'll give it a go!
*or not...I have no idea what the sliders do. Even with playing around with them, I don't know what I'm trying to do here.
**ok, just read the gimp documentation on unsharp mask, and it had a way to do it manually, so I did it both ways. The manual way came out a tad bit sharper...probably because I didn't have to try and fudge the sliders. I won't put up the thumbnail because it is a large file and takes too long to load onto the page. Thanks for the directions. This method will probably work well on just about any photo.

How about this?


This is what I did:

• automatic white balancing
• selective gaussian blur (delta at 6)
• an "S" kurve for the contrast
• depth of sharpness (see below)
• unsharp mask (radius of 3)
• "heal" some spots

For the depth of sharpness there's a good working technique:

• make a new layer copy of your picture
• desaturate it
• invert colors
• gaussian blur (level depends on image size, I applied 25)
• set layer mode to overlay
• adjust opacity as you like (30-60 will probably do best)

Try it...

( The artifact on the right side was my mistake, so ignore it :-) )

very nice result! I'll run through it and see what I get!

*well, I didn't do so well. Seems when it comes to using the sliders, I don't know enough to use them properly. But when I did it with the manual unsharp mask in the gimp manual, it did come out pretty nice, but not as crisp as yours. Do you remember all the settings you used? My gaussian blur doesn't have 'delta' on it, it has RLE or IIR. I played with curves but wasn't sure how steep the curves should be. I didn't heal anything, not sure what would need it. The image is already b&w, so didn't desaturate. The other 2 sliders on unsharp mask, are they to be left at default?

Hello 2-ton,

here are the settings

Selective Gaussian Blur


"S"-Curve for contrast


Depth of sharpness overlay


Unsharp mask

Thanks...I don't have the same blur dialog...I have no delta so whatever delta is, mine must be a pre-set. Anyway, gonna go work on it now.

*nevermind...I was in the wrong blur filter...now I see delta!
the unsharp mask is done on the original, not on the overlay, right?
ok, done...I think it worked very well, thanks! It's a very nice way to enhance.

Very nice end results!

Hi jenx, thx for sharing that technique, very good the result!