Sharpen Up Your Photos - enjoying it

Make your photo's subject clearer, without oversharpening the background.

In a perfect world, all the photos we take would emerge from the camera perfectly formed, sharp as a tack, and ready for framing at the Louvre.

Of course, reality is anything but: Most digital cameras take photos that are a tad "soft," which is why it's often a good idea to sharpen your images a little before printing or sharing them.
Camera or PC?

One way to sharpen your photos is to let our camera do it for you. Check out your camera's user guide and you'll probably find a way to automatically sharpen every photo as it's taken. That's a simple and painless way to give all your images a little "bite," but it's not perfect. You have no real control over how much sharpening is applied--and worse, the sharpening happens to the entire photo. The foreground, background, sharp and intentionally blurry parts alike are all equally affected.

Instead, I recommend that you sharpen your photos by hand, using the Unsharp Mask tool in your favorite photo editor. To try it out, open an image file in your photo editor. I'll use Adobe Photoshop Elements, but you can get the same results with almost any program. For this example, I suggest picking a photo with a sharply defined subject and an out-of-focus background, like the image that I link here.

More information.......