Sharpening increases the contrast of neighboring pixels. The Sharpen Brush Tool gives you full control over the areas that are sharpened and has a cumulative affect. You can easily apply clarity and unsharp mask sharpening selectively with a few strokes of a brush!
Settings
The following settings can be adjusted from the context toolbar:
Width—the brush (stroke) size in pixels.
Opacity—how see through the brush is.
Flow—how fast the brush effect is applied (1% is very slow, 100% is immediate).
Hardness—how hard the edges of the brush are. The brush appears softer as the percentage decreases.
More—tap to display the Brushes dialog to access advanced brush settings.
Mode—allows you to set the brush mode behavior to Clarity, Unsharp Mask, or Harsh.
Force Pressure—Toggle to control brush size with pressure if using a pressure-sensitive device. This overrides brush defaults.
Symmetry—when the Lines setting is set to greater than 0, repeats the brush stroke around a number of axes (defined by the value). The center axis point can be repositioned by dragging it.
Mirror—with symmetry enabled, causes brush strokes to be mirrored along the X and Y axis.
Lines—with symmetry enabled, defines the number of axes around which the brush stroke will be repeated.
Locked—when enabled, prevents the symmetry line from being moved.
About the sharpening modes
The three modes available from the context toolbar have slightly different effects on the underlying pixels.
Sharpen Brush Tool