Useful Photography Tip

Useful Photography Tip #107: How to Make an Image Look Sharper Than it Really is in Less Than 30 Seconds

Chris Gampat
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08/23/2014
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Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Nikon D810 high ISO samples Speakeasy Dollhouse NYC (3 of 9)ISO 8001-80 sec at f - 2.5

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We’ve done a slightly longer tutorial on how to make an image look sharper, but what if we told you that you can do it in Adobe Lightroom in less than 30 seconds and without even touching the sharpness sliders? Sounds crazy, right? Well, the reality is that it is completely possible.

Like our other tutorials, it begins with proper in-camera exposure techniques. For the absolute best sharpness from a lens straight out of the camera your best bet is to use some sort of diffused flash. It could be as simple as bouncing a flash off of a wall. If not, then consider stopping your lens down just a bit and exercising the reciprocal rule of shutter speeds to ensure that your image is blur free from camera shake.

Then if you bring your image into Adobe Lightroom, all you’ll need to do is raise the overall exposure of your image by around 1/3rd of a stop, lower (deepen) your black levels, raise your contrast, and raise the clarity of your image by just a tad. And to be honest–you’re done. The human eye looks at images with deeper blacks and puts a stronger emphasis on other colors in the scene to be able to naturally find objects. In this method, you’re actually fooling the human eye into thinking that something is sharper than it really is.

Give it a shot and see how many people you can actually fool with it.

 

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.