In this paper, we present an adaptive bilateral filter (ABF) for sharpness enhancement and noise removal. ABF sharpens an image by increasing the slope of the edges without producing overshoot or undershoot. Our new approach to slope restoration significantly differs from the previous slope restoration algorithms in that ABF does not involve detecting edge orientations or edge profiles. Compared with the bilateral filter, ABF restored images are significantly sharper. Compared with an unsharp mask (USM) based sharpening method the optimal USM (OUM), ABF restored edges are as sharp as those rendered by the OUM, but without halo. ABF also outperforms the bilateral filter and the OUM in noise removal.