Sharpen your images

Fine-tune your photos with sharpening and contrast tools

- By IAN EVENDEN

SHARPENING IMAGES IS something the Nik Collection of image-editing plugins is so good at, it's split its sharpening abilities across two different apps. You get a Presharpener, which is designed to make up for the softening added to a Raw image file by the low-pass filter in front of the camera sensor (so may not be needed for cameras that omit this layer or when shooting JPEGs), and the Sharpener Output, which you'll want to use to prepare your images for the medium you intend them to be shown in.

Like all sharpening software, this isn't "magic". If your image isn't focused correctly to begin with, it's not going to be rescued by any amount of sharpening. If the detail is there, however, you should be able to bring it out, or increase the contrast of an image, by using sharpening tools.

Contrast is also of concern when converting images to black and white, so we'll also look at Nik's SilverFX plugin, which is designed to do just that. In it, you can use presets to quickly transform an image, or spend more time fine-tuning it.

HOW TO Tweak sharpness, noise, and color

Presharpen your image