HOW It WORKS SHARPEN KEY DETAILS

Ensure the presence of sharp details without adding nasty sharpening artefacts to your shot

01 METADATA

You can see from this shot’s metadata panel that we captured the image using an aperture value of f/9. This middle-of-the-road setting helps us get a balance between keeping most of the foreground subject in focus while still giving us an attractive background blur. On a wider aperture (such as f/2) less of the child would be in focus, making it more of a challenge to keep key details, such as the face and flowers, looking sharp.

02 AF POINTS

To help you work out which areas should look sharp, click this button to turn on the autofocus point display settings. You can click the adjacent triangle drop-down icon to show all the camera’s available AF points, or only the AF points that were used when focusing on the subject.

03 ACTIVE AF POINTS

The AF points used to capture sharp detail appear as red boxes, while unused AF points appear as black boxes. This shows us that the camera focused on the girl’s hand and flowers, so we can expect other areas to look a little softer.

04 IMAGE DISPLAY

The only way to see if an area is really sharp or not is to zoom in to 100%. You can then sharpen the shot more effectively and notice sharpening artefacts, such as halos, more easily.

05 SOFT

After zooming in to 100% you can see that the start image’s focused areas actually look a little soft. The delicate texture and detail of the flower is lacking impact. By sharpening the image we can create a print with more impact and reveal delicate details.

06 UNSHARP MASK

This tool’s Strength slider increases the contrast around the edge of objects in the photo to give them a sharper appearance. Don’t push it too far or you’ll add sharpening artefacts. It does the same job as the Amount slider in Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask window.

07 FINENESS

This slider increases the spread of the contrast change around the edge of sharpened objects. If you push it too far you might exaggerate halos and create clipped areas.

08 THRESHOLD

This slider enables you to dial down the combined effect of the Strength and Fineness sliders. It’s a bit like a master slider on a sound mixing desk. This helps you get a balance between sharpening key details while minimizing the presence of artefacts.