Sharpening images with local contrast enhancement
This technique requires the photoshop plugin Nik Color EFX Pro, a bit spendy but this plugin is massive and contains a closely guarded secret tool that can create images that looks insanely sharp with no haloing or other artifacts.
With your image ready for sharpening, select Nik Color EFX pro and locate the Tonal Contrast filter. The Tonal contrast filter sharpens your images with local contrast enhancement and is extremely presise. The settings are vary intuitive so just play around until the image is tack sharp.
OK out of the filter package and by default a new layer copy is created on top of your original image.
Since sharpening images with local contrast enhancement is so presise, any noise in your image will be picked up and exagerated. Select the shapened layer, hold down ALT and click on Add Layer Mask. This creates a hide all black layer mask, effectively removing all sharpening.
Now select the paintbrush tool (Hit B), hit 1 on your numerical keyboard to set the opacity to 10% and make sure your brush is set the a hardness of zero so it’s as soft as possible.
Now paint over the areas you want sharpened, paint multiple times to slowly build up the effect.
