http://www.digitalcameraworld.comCANONSCHOOL
SOFTWARE
SOLUTIONS
Get to grips with Canon’s free Raw image organizing, editing
and sharing software – Digital Photo Professional 4
PETER TRAVERS
CANON EXPERT
Peter’s been a passionate
photographer for well over
20 years. He’s worked on
PhotoPlus since the very
first issue, back in 200 7,
and has been the magazine’s
editor for the past six years.01 NASTY NOISE
Browse to sharpen_start.CR2. Zoom in
to 100%. The flowers look soft. Set the
Sharpness panel dropdown to Unsharp
Mask. Set Strength 100%. The flowers
look sharper but we’ve exaggerated
noise in the background and face.02 HORRIBLE HALOS
Push the Fineness slider up to 10. This
dramatic increase in the spread of the
contrast change creates dark lines (or
halos) around the girl’s fingers and the
edges of the flowers. This is a clear
example of an over-sharpened shot.03 BALANCING ACT
Post-production sharpening is a balance
between increasing edge contrast while
minimizing artefacts. Reduce Strength
and Fineness to 6, set Threshold to 3,
now toggle the Sharpening checkbox
to compare pre- and post-sharpening.STEP BY STEP IDENTIFY ARTEFACTS
Learn how to recognize – and therefore avoid – ugly sharpening artefacts
reating a shot
where all the
important details
are sharply focused
can be something of a
challenge. For example, by
using one of the Basic Zone
shooting modes such as
Portrait, your Canon will
automatically focus on the
closer foreground subject.
However, it will also set a
wider aperture to ensure a
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this can cause some of the
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details to become blurred too.
The camera will choose the
closest collection of AF points
to focus on. This may not be
the subject’s face (as is the
case in our example image).
You can always set t he
camera’s AF points manually
to ensure that the subject’s
face is the main point of focus,
and by using a Creative Zonemode, such as Av or M, you
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f/22. Although this can help
ensure that a wider range of
objects are in focus, it will lose
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more attractive portrait.
Even if you get the balance
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sharp while blurring the
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that the areas on which the
camera focused are still a littlesoft when viewing them
on your PC’s larger display.
Fortunately Digital Photo
Professional can help you
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sharper. It does this by
increasing the contrast around
the edge of objects in the
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out. However, you can also
exaggerate unwanted artefacts
such as picture noise, so
post-production sharpening
is a delicate balancing act.Sharpen your shots
Create prints with more punch while keeping those nasty artefacts at bay
C
DOWNLOAD PROJECT FILES
TO YOUR COMPUTER FROM:
http://downloads.
photoplusmag.com/pp159.zip