42 votes

How do I make my photos sharp enough for print or selling online?

First, this is a really nice photo! Well done. If the folks at Shutterstock don't like this one, print it and hang it on your wall. I think my photos look sharp but is there anything that I might ...
Caleb's user avatar
  • 31.7k
14 votes

How do I make my photos sharp enough for print or selling online?

Caleb has done a nice analysis in his answer of a number of issues, but the biggest thing to me is that your image has been murdered by JPEG compression in some areas. Looking at this 1:1 crop from ...
Philip Kendall's user avatar
  • 21.9k
12 votes
Accepted

How do I make my photos sharp enough for print or selling online?

To me, it looks like you have compression artifacts in your image (by zooming in on edges, it seems like there is some ringing). Lower the compression rate to remedy the problem or use a raw image ...
HelloGoodbye's user avatar
9 votes
Accepted

Strange sharpening effect in B/W negative scan

It seems that the problem is caused by having Digital ICE turned on for B&W photos. See example here. It's worth noting that the preview must be made again if the Digital ICE checkbox is changed....
RoG's user avatar
  • 310
8 votes

How do I make my photos sharp enough for print or selling online?

I don't think it's a sharpening issue so much as an image quality issue (and possibly image compression). There is a large amount of lateral chromatic aberration in the skyline. If you're shooting ...
SamN's user avatar
  • 91
6 votes

Product photography sharpness?

I only used a lens which only goes up to f5.4, is this the issue? The F-number in lens specs is usually the max aperture (lowest F-number). Most lenses are capable of closing the aperture to obtain ...
xiota's user avatar
  • 27k
6 votes

How do I get the first preview on my camera to look as good as when I'm zoomed in?

It is because the camera is previewing a compressed JPEG on screen with lower resolution than the actual image is. The algorithm of downsampling the image is sometimes too rough to show a nice image. ...
Crowley's user avatar
  • 1,808
5 votes

How do I make my photos sharp enough for print or selling online?

Since you've updated that you shot this with a 6D on a tripod, I can definitely say that I see what looks like a lot of ISO noise that was desperately covered up with way too much noise reduction. ...
J...'s user avatar
  • 611
4 votes

How do I make my photos sharp enough for print or selling online?

When I am trying to absolutely maximize the sharpness, the premise that I start from is that I am not trying so much to increase the sharpness, but to minimize everything that reduces the sharpness. ...
James Monschke's user avatar
4 votes

Is the darktable manual implying that all RAW files need sharpening?

All of your "interpretations" are technically incorrect because there is nothing in the statement or context (as you've described) to imply any of them. You shouldn't read more into the statement than ...
xiota's user avatar
  • 27k
3 votes

Is it a bad idea to use a retina display for retouching?

It depends on what your output is going to be. There is no simple answer to the proper amount of sharpening. Any number of factors can impact your decisions on processing an image. How it will be ...
AJ Henderson's user avatar
  • 34.9k
3 votes

Sharp focus photography with APS-C

There is absolutely nothing about this photo that requires a camera more advanced than your Canon 60D and a $100 lens. The basics are: Good lighting — a whole topic to itself Stop down the aperture ...
mattdm's user avatar
  • 143k
2 votes

Photoshop CS6 "Unsharpens" After Applying Sharpen

The problem appears to be the "preview" doesn't work right. If you zoom to 100% it appears to match your settings. When you zoom out on preview, it will not match your settings. It is very annoying. ...
woodie's user avatar
  • 21
2 votes

Unsharp mask - what do the parameters do?

Let's illustrate what Unsharp Mask is doing: Take image, let's call it I. Create a blurred version of it using Gaussian Blur with radius ...
Royi's user avatar
  • 314
2 votes

Warp-sharp script not working in Gimp 2.8

It's most likely a problem with versions The plugin you downloaded is said to be version 1.5 and though it says (emphasis mine): Version 1.5 updated for Gimp 2.2 and later The official help pages ...
Roflo's user avatar
  • 844
2 votes

Is there Linux software to automatically sharpen appropriately for a given print size?

Unfortunately I can't help you with regards to software recommendations, however keep in mind that to obtain good sharpness on print you will need to take into consideration the paper type - gloss / ...
Samuel Masini's user avatar
2 votes

Sharpness stacking?

In your situation Focus stacking is not the answer simply because there's nothing sharp in your image. Best to polish it up a bit in post and call it done or purchase some better glass. This is ...
Nothingtoseehere's user avatar
2 votes

Sharpness stacking?

In focus stacking, one tries to only use the in-focus areas of every picture to generate a larger depth of field. Think of it as multiple pictures above each other with masks, and only the in-focus ...
flolilo's user avatar
  • 6,467
1 vote

Why does grain increase acutance?

It's an optical illusion. The brain is constantly seeking patterns and filling in detail where there is none. The increase in acutance also occurs with patterns, such as canvas textures.
xiota's user avatar
  • 27k
1 vote

Sharpness stacking?

Stacking to reduce noise and improve OVERALL sharpness is a technique which is already well established in astrophotography (it's called Lucky imaging) and Hasselblad have a proprietary version of it ...
Rufus Doofer's user avatar
1 vote

Sharpness stacking?

Super-resolution methods can in principle be used to get to higher resolution images. But the problem with the picture is that this is already unsharp while when using super-resolution methods, ...
Count Iblis's user avatar
  • 3,616
1 vote

Sharp focus photography with APS-C

The short answer is, bigger is better! The image sensors of the various digital camera types vary in size. The so called full frame image sensor is a copycat of the image size yield of the esteemed ...
Alan Marcus's user avatar
  • 39.1k
1 vote

Is there Linux software to automatically sharpen appropriately for a given print size?

does an amazing job of automagically sharpening photos for a given print size. Ok I really do not know what automagically is. I do not know what specific sharpening for a given print size is either. ...
Rafael's user avatar
  • 24.7k
1 vote
Accepted

How does wavelet sharpening actually work, eg. in RegiStax?

The math is pretty simple. Take an image, Lets call it LPF (Low Pass Filter) of Scale 0. Blur it with LPF Filter (For example, Gaussian Blur). Call this result LPF of Scale 1. Do ...
Royi's user avatar
  • 314
1 vote

Sharpening a portrait with PS Elements

To sharpen an image in PSE: Choose Enhance > Adjust Sharpness. Select Preview check box. Set any of the following options to sharpen your image, and then click OK. Amount. Sets the amount of ...
Goat's user avatar
  • 436
1 vote
Accepted

Sharpening a portrait with PS Elements

Certainly not wrong about there being a thousand and one ways! My personal favourite is to use a high pass filter. Duplicate your image (or duplicate everything and merge it into one layer if you're ...
Toby Gray's user avatar
1 vote

Warp-sharp script not working in Gimp 2.8

This may be way old, but I ran into the same issue and some google fu found this that may be a newer, updated version of the warp-sharpen script (although no apparent credit to Simon Budig who seems ...
hlfritz's user avatar
  • 11
1 vote

How do I make my photos sharp enough for print or selling online?

I am a starting photographer and I always have an issue with sharp images. If you always have an image with sharpness then you have a problem that you need to address. Until you do you are wasting ...
StephenG - Help Ukraine's user avatar
1 vote

How do I use the "Standard Deviation" and "Scale" parameters in Gimp 2.10's GEGL-based unsharp mask?

The documentation of the corresponding GEGL operation can be found here. There, the meaning of the parameters is briefly explained. Standard deviation would translate to radius and scale to amount, ...
Chris's user avatar
  • 961

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible