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I agree, it's impossible to see what you mean exactly without seeing the image, but I suspect you may be seeing slight halos,  color shifts and artifacts, which make the image look blurry.

One trick to prevent this:

After you fool with the image, but before doing the Unsharp Mask (which should be done as a last step), change the image mode to Lab Color (Image > Adjust > Mode > Lab Color). Don't worry, you can change it back later without any loss of color or quality.

Now go to your Channels Palette (Window >Show Channels if it's not visible). Click on the Lightness channel. You'll be applying Unsharp Mask to the image's luminosity only.

You'll see a greyscale image on screen; that's okay. Now apply the Unsharp Mask filter; fool with the sliders. In general, you can use higher values than you would on an RGB image, but be sure the radius isn't much over 1 pixel.

Now you can change the Mode back to RGB.