How To Sharpen Your Digital Photography Images
By Amy Renfrey
Let’s start this digital photography lesson by looking at
the digital camera. All digital cameras photograph images
which have a normal pattern of pixels that make up this
image. In some digital photography images a moiré effect is
created. To avoid this, modern slr digital cameras come
with an in built filter that givens a softer effect to the
image.
When you are faced with having to sharpen a noisy digital
photography image you’ll find that some photos are easier
to sharpen than others. This might be caused from having a
too higher ISO. The usual way of adding sharpness to a
digital image has it problems too; it can actually increase
the noise in your image quite a bit. To clarify this point,
what is actually happening is the noise isn’t being
increased as such, it’s being enhanced.
There is a way to sharpen noisy digital photo images
without going into the noise itself. To begin with its
important to understand colour modes in Photoshop. The
easiest way we remember colour modes is when we think of
RGB mode. This is a “channel” of colours which are Red,
Green and Blue. As I was taught by my good friend Lyndie
Jeffry, there are more colour modes where your digital
photo can be altered, adjusted and sharpened.
When I was first learning about digital photography Lyndie
taught me that you can involve the CMYK mode which uses
four colour channels. This stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow
and Black. (Yes I know “Black doesn’t start with a “K”.)
Lyndie explained to me that the best one to use for this
purpose is the L-A-B mode. LAB mode really just related to
the 3 channels it uses. In a nutshell Lab stands for the
individual channels. The “L” really means “luminance”, "A"
the green-red aspect "B" the blue-yellow aspect. When
working in LAB mode you can modify the brightness of your
digital photo and keep the saturating and colours the same.
The way this is possible is because practically no image
information is depleted or lost when you convert to Lab
mode. It also stays good when you convert back again, which
is extremely handy. (Especially with highly valuable photos
such as other peoples wedding photos.) Not everyone uses
this, but it’s a neat trick with some digital images.
In some digital photography images you can simply choose to
sharpen the L channel in LAB mode. By doing this much of
the noise in the image is in the other channels that are
usually not affected by this sharpening effect.
Now this may not work for every single noisy digital
photography image you have. But in some situations it works
very well. I suggest you try it to see the effect you give.
I’ve used it a few times and it’s saved my ‘you-know-what’.
So if you’re in a tight spot with a noisy image, give this
a go, you might be surprised with the results!
By Amy Renfrey
If you want to know how to get suberb clarity and detail in
your digital photography just go to
http://www.digitalphotographysuccess.com