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:
“We were that generation called “silent,” but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period’s official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)