Sharpening 2

I remember asking one very well respected photographer how many photographs he sharpened on the computer. My question arose because the common comment on photographs is that they are very clear - they are very sharp. This is ususally a positive comment which relates to the quality of the digital equipment and the skill of the photographer. So if you have an ability to make any photo sharper do you use it all the time? His answer was yes.

For the next few months I was sharpening all my photos. If you sharpen too much then it does mean that a curve in your photo can look like a staircase. Also there are many contrasting differences within the same photo, which means that sharpening one line perfectly may mean that another line is over (or under) -sharpened. I don't sharpen everything now, because sometimes I was sharpening so little that I could not see the difference, and I started to wonder why I was spending time on it. You can start to see how sharpening should be viewed as an art and not a science.

One final thought on sharpening. Make it the last thing you do to the photo. If you sharpen and then resize you will change the sharpness.

Happy snapping