Sharpen

Use the sharpen transformation to add edge clarity to a delivered image variant.

Overview

Sharpening can help resized images retain perceived detail, especially in thumbnails, product cards, and generated images that become slightly soft after resizing.

Syntax

Field	Value
Canonical parameter	sharpen
Alias	sh
Accepted values	true, a sigma number, or an SDK object with sharpening fields

Example

https://cdn.imgwire.dev/{organization_id}/{environment_id}/{image_id}?sharpen=4

image.url({
  sharpen: 4,
  format: 'auto',
  quality: 'auto',
});

imgwire images url img_123 --sharpen 4 --format auto --quality auto

Before and after

OriginalSharpened

Compare Original and Sharpened

Best practices

• Use sharpening after resizing when smaller variants look too soft.
• Keep sharpening subtle for photos and product images.
• Test at the actual rendered size, not only in a full-size browser preview.

Common mistakes

• Oversharpening until edges look harsh or noisy.
• Using sharpen to compensate for a very low-quality source image.
• Applying the same sharpen value to every image type without visual review.

Related pages

• Blur
• Resizing Algorithm
• Quality

Last updated at: May 9, 2026