Correcting for lens softness

Forehead

My current research suggests that the oftentimes "soft" images shot with my Nikon E5400 isn't all that uncommon. I also found that there are DxO software modules for various camera-lens combos (mainly DSLRs but a few fixed-lens ones such as the Sony DSC R1, Nikon E8800 but not yet mine) but, until (unless?) DxO comes out with a module for my camera, what else can I use to correcct for lens softness? :dunno

wxwax

All you need is a basic sharpening tool in any photo editing software.

Forehead

That DOES seem to work, mostly.

wxwax wrote:

All you need is a basic sharpening tool in any photo editing software.

wxwax

Forehead wrote:

That DOES seem to work, mostly.

If basic sharpening doesn't work, and you have Photoshop, try this technique. It's much more aggressive, and will bring out the noise in high ISO shots, but the results are sometimes miraculous.

colourbox

If basic sharpening (Unsharp Mask) doesn't work, and you're in Photoshop CS2, next try Smart Sharpen with the Lens Blur option. It's a more lens-oriented way of sharpening than Unsharp Mask.

If you do the High Pass method, you can suppress noise by applying the sharpening through an edge mask so that the sharpening doesn't apply to flat areas.

wxwax

colourbox wrote:

If basic sharpening (Unsharp Mask) doesn't work, and you're in Photoshop CS2, next try Smart Sharpen with the Lens Blur option. It's a more lens-oriented way of sharpening than Unsharp Mask.

If you do the High Pass method, you can suppress noise by applying the sharpening through an edge mask so that the sharpening doesn't apply to flat areas.

Good tip!