Stay sharp

George Cairns demonstrates how to get a balance between sharpening detail and keeping artefacts at bay

Use Nikon’s Capture NX-D to sharpen images and remove noise

Getting your photographs looking sharp can be a challenge. What looks as if it’s in focus on your Nikon’s LCD screen may turn out to be soft when viewed on your PC’s bigger display. If you shoot with a wide aperture such as f/2.8, key details may become blurred due to the resulting shallow depth of field.

Shooting small subjects up close (such as our pollinating bee) can cause the background to become very soft, even when using a narrower aperture such as f/7.1. Fortunately, Capture NX-D’s sharpening tools are designed to tease out details in a soft-looking shot by increasing the contrast around the edge of objects in the image and giving them more impact.

However, when you sharpen a shot you run the risk of exaggerating noise caused by high ISO settings. Our start image was captured using ISO400, so there’s plenty of noise present. Particles of noise are especially noticeable in the photo’s smooth background bokeh. We’ll demonstrate how to get a balance between revealing important detail (such as the bee’s fur and flower’s pollen particles) while reducing the presence of ugly chrominance and luminance noise.

Sharpening can also add other artefacts such as blown-out highlights, clipped shadows and distracting haloes, so we’ll show you to recognize and avoid those too, all from within the Capture NX-D application.

Capture NX-D’s sharpening tools are designed to tease out details in a soft-looking shot