Sharpening a soft photo

If you're shooting in low light, or shooting handheld, the chance of having soft pictures is pretty great. Even if you autofocus the camera, the movement of the subject, due to the longer exposure time, can lead to softness. Now, there's no magical fix to remove this, but you can make it a bit better. Let's zoom to 100%, and take a look at our photo here. Now, this is a soft image. However, I love the face, and I love the look. And for posting to social media, it's going to hold up okay.

I'm going to put a little bit of contrast in, and take the Sharpness slider over. Notice, without; with. As we drag Sharpness over, however, noise was added, so it becomes important to pick some of that up. You may also want to use a little bit of Definition to bring out some of the details. Let's zoom back out. Before, after. It feels better to me.

That previous image we were looking at could also benefit from a little bit of sharpening. Now, let's take a look here at a reasonable size, and by dragging the Sharpness over, you see that some of the details come out. Now, it's very easy to overdo this. In fact, it's very easy for iPhoto to even freak out as you drag to the right. So, you need to be careful, and put low values of Sharpness in. Follow that up with a little bit of de-noising, and potentially some Contrast.

That's looking a lot better; before, after, and you see that the Sharpening, plus intensifying the Contrast for the dark areas makes the image appear a bit crisper.