Taking sharp pictures is a must if you ever want to be taken seriously. It doesn't matter if you're just taking holiday shots or you go shooting on weekends, or if you're a paid professional who has to deliver quality results. Image quality is directly related to sharpness and detail, and these cannot be overlooked.
There are a lot of ways to get a sharp, final image. First of all, the photo has to be flawless straight out of the camera. To make sure you have plenty of detail in your pictures, follow a few simple guidelines. Try to stay away from wide open apertures like f2.8. Most lenses that have a constant aperture will produce decent results even at wide open values, but for the best results, stay in the range of f8 and f11.
(Success Tip:Take better photos with this simple deck of cards )
Try to use the lowest possible ISO speed in each situation. Ideally, ISO 100 or less will give you the best results. A fast shutter speed is also necessary to prevent any motion blur from camera movement. Anything above 1/160th should be fine. It also helps to turn on any stabilizing systems on your lens or in your camera.
Shooting RAW should be the obvious choice, but if you have to shoot jpg, at least make sure you stick to these guidelines.
After that, it's a game of getting as much detail as possible in post processing. There are a lot of techniques and independent Photoshop and Lightroom plug-ins to help you maximize details, but we want to share a very effective method using only Photoshop.
Here is the demonstration made by Michael Woloszynowicz.
Learn more about using Photoshop from these recommended books:
- Adobe Photoshop CC Classroom in a Book
- The Adobe CC Book for Digital Photographers
- Adobe Photoshop CS 6 for Photographers: A professional image editor's guide to creative use of Photoshop for the Macintosh and PC