Unsharp masking (USM) is an image manipulation technique, often available in digital image processing software.
The "unsharp" of the name derives from the fact that the technique uses a blurred, or "unsharp," positive image to create a "mask" of the original image. The unsharped mask is then combined with the negative image, creating the illusion that the resulting image has greater visual acuity than the original. In the context of signal-processing, an unsharp mask is generally a linear or nonlinear filter that amplifies high-frequency components.
Read more about Unsharp Masking: Photographic Unsharp Masking, Digital Unsharp Masking, Comparison With Deconvolution
Famous quotes containing the word masking:
“Love, love, love—all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)