A problem with DSLR’s seem to be that images tend to be a bit soft and fuzzy some times, this might just be because I do not spend 1000 pound on each lens or it might be a general problem. Regardless a solution exist in Photoshop.
Photoshop has a number of sharpening tools the most used one being the oddly named Unsharp Mask (USM). 100s of websites cover the USM and its drawbacks, a good one can be found at The Luminous Landscape. The short of it, too much sharpening a image leaves artifacts on your image like little halos and stuff.
Photoshops CS2 has a better sharpening tool called “Smart Sharpening” but I still prefer a bit of USM, I found a article that discusses both these sharpening tools and gives a sample technique for using the USM on edges of your image only, this effectively removes the problems with halos and so forth and means you can be more aggressive with sharpening your images.
I tried out the above edge sharp technique and really like it, I was considering buying a commercial sharpener but now I decided against it in favor of this technique.
I have a sample image up done with this method you can see the before and after.
I’ve made a Photoshop action for this technique, tested in CS and CS2. It’s very simple it should be the last thing you do to your image right before putting it on the web. Don’t sharpen your full size image then resize it, first resize and then sharpen. Sharpening is as easy as running this action and after some steps it will show a standard USM dialog with preview, you should immediately see the results by dragging the sliders.
The action can be found here, just drag it onto your Photoshop and look in the Actions Palette
