The next thing I do is to sharpen my image somewhat. I do this with Sharpen, Unsharp Mask under the Filter menu. Again, do this step only once because it can drastically change your image. What you want to do is only sharpen the edges within your image. Don't use the Sharpen Edges tool because it gives you no control over how much sharpening you can do. Set radius to 1.5 [A] and threshold to 10 [B]. This controls the width of the pixels that are modified at an edge and the difference in pixel values that must be present to constitute an edge. If the threshold is set to zero, everything in the image is a candidate for being an edge and getting sharpened. This can distort the picture tremendously (so set to 10 or above, experiment). Amount of sharpening can vary between 1 and 100% [C]; much over that and the image gets very distorted (Try it, and see what you get; it goes up to 500%). Keep preview selected [D] and click on the small image box [E] inside the tool to undo the sharpening inside the box and see how the original contrasts with the sharpened image. OK to save results.

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