Should i sharpen my photos

In this final step, you will add some sharpening to tailor the image to the way you display it. Prints require a different level of sharpening than images displayed online. First we will do the Input Sharpening. Start by bringing your photo into the Lightroom Develop module.

If you start with a RAW file, Lightroom will default to increasing the amount of sharpness to Lightroom will not automatically add any sharpness to a JPEG since that is already applied during the conversion process. The Amount slider controls intensity of the sharpness. Within the Develop module, just scroll down to the Amount slider and increase it to around In many cases, a simple increase of the Amount slider to 50 is all you need to do to apply image sharpening.

As shown below though, there are three additional sharpness sliders that let you control the process further. There will be many of the times you will want to fine-tune your Input Sharpening. To do so, you will use the three sliders below the Amount slider.

Here is a what these sliders do for you:. There are a few ways you can check your work as you sharpen. First you can see the effect of the sharpness increases in the detail panel directly above the Sharpness slider:.

The best way to check your work is to you can press the Alt key Option on a Mac while adjusting the sharpness sliders. Doing so will cause the screen to turn grey and help show the effects of your sharpening. If you are going to spend some time sharpening your photo i. Pressing the Alt key while making your sharpening adjustments will make your sharpening much more effective and precise. While you are adding a baseline of sharpness to your images, there are a few other tools to use.

The first is the Clarity slider. This does the same thing as sharpness, except that it applies to midtones. You will probably see more of a sharpening effect from this tool than from using the Sharpening slider.

Increase it to about as a starting point, and then adjust it to fit your picture. Lightroom has recently added another tool to make your pictures look a little sharper. It is called the Dehaze tool and it is all the way at the bottom of the Develop module.

The Dehaze tool was designed to eliminate fog and haze from your pictures , so this is not something you are intended to use every day. If you look even closer, the shadows in between the weave of the matt are a lot darker too. Because these edges are more apparent, the fruit takes a central role in the image. It stands out a lot more. I also see the spots on the apples are a lot more pronounced. All of this should make sense. Remember, sharpening algorithms and filters work by darkening dark areas and brightening bright areas.

More of the image clashes with itself, and that makes it more visually interesting. Photoshop include a preview feature with all of the filters you use. Too Much Sharpening. Do you see how there is almost no gradation in color? Contrast this with the more gradated pixels in the original image. Even after you apply a sharpening filter, most of your pixels should look like the original.

When you sharpen too much, everything starts to look like the amorphous yellow mass that has become the pear. The only solution is to sharpen less. Unless you intend to convey softness perhaps in baby pictures, etc. As a general rule, point-and-shoot cameras sharpen more because their users tend not to edit their photos heavily. Creative control is the reason you would purchase a digital SLR, after all.

Some people are under the impression that sharpening will help them recover lost details in pictures that are otherwise too blurry , dark, or bright to be usable. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

It makes the details you already have appear to stand out a little more. Can a sharpening program make this image less blurry?

Can it give us back some of the detail lost on the child's face? And this is the result. The parts of the image that were out of focus are still blurry. In extreme cases, overdoing the radius will cause a halo effect at large, contrasty edges. The third Sharpening control is Detail, and it affects whether sharpening is applied to fine details or just big, bold edges. In high-ISO captures, this Detail adjustment should probably be kept lower to minimize the appearance of noise.

Lastly is the Sharpening control called Masking. This slider is neat, because it, too, helps determine whether the aforementioned sharpening adjustments are to be applied to every little contrast edge, or just to the big ones you select. Moving the Masking slider toward minimizes the inadvertent, unwanted sharpening in random areas of the scene, which can be increased by the Detail and Radius controls.

I like to employ this tool to rein in aggressive sharpening established with the three previous sliders. The higher the masking level, the more small details and fine edges are eliminated from the sharpening protocol.

It turns the preview to black and white and clearly reveals how the sharpening is working. Ultimately this type of RAW capture sharpening is just the bare minimum necessary, the first step. However there are a few consequences to adding sharpening. Consequences such as:. So we need to be careful. Why are you choosing to edit this image? What is the story you want to tell? What is the story you want the viewer to create in their own mind?

What is the emotion you want to evoke in the story? The answer you get from those questions allows you to then choose what elements you want to use to illustrate that story. You get to decide where you want your viewer to look at by the use of those elements. In this case, we use sharpening in conjunction with other elements to create that focus.