Do High Pass (Heavy) Sharpening?

When you want “mega-sharpening,” this is the route to go because it accentuates all the edges in the photo, and making those edges stand out can really give the impression of mega-sharpening. Start by duplicating the Background layer (press Command-J [PC: Ctrl-J]), then go under the Filter menu, under Other, and choose High Pass. Drag the Radius slider all the way to the left (this turns the layer solid gray), then drag it over to the right until you see the edges of objects in the image start to appear. The farther you drag, the more intense the sharpening will be. But, if you drag too far, you’ll start to get large, white glows appearing around the edges of stuff, so don’t drag too far. Just drag until you see the edges clearly appear, then stop. Now, go to the Layers panel, and change the blend mode of this gray layer from Normal to Hard Light for maximum strength (or try Overlay for a less intense effect, or Soft Light for an even lighter effect). This removes the gray from the layer, but leaves the edges accentuated, making the entire photo appear much sharper. If the sharpening seems too intense, you can control the amount of it by lowering the layer’s Opacity in the top right of the Layers panel.