Madewira

Those who uses an average and budget lens may be disappointed with its sharpness quality. For example, my own telephoto lens, Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM has a mediocre clarity when used in maximum aperture. To avoid this dull, I usually switch to a smaller aperture value such as ƒ/6.3 or lower while it could losing some bokeh effects.

Again, thanks to Adobe Photoshop. We could turn a cheap lens to be more powerful. And this tutorial make no use of Unsharp Mask filter. I totally unsatisfied with Unsharp Mask’s result since it degrades some color noises and object’s surface clarity.

Step 1: Dupe

First thing first, you’ll need to Duplicate your original photo into a new layer. Just drag it to New Layer button on the bottom of Layers window to do so.

Step 2: High Pass

Call the High Pass filter from Filter > Other menu to the rescue. It magically overpass your image clarity based on given value. Put a small radius around 0.5 - 2 pixels here.

On Landscape photography which has more complex objects, a less smaller value would works properly. But if you are doing Still-life or Macro photography, it is recommended to use 2 - 5 pixels radius to enhance its dimension.

Step 3: Blend It!

However, you can decide to use Soft Light or Overlay blending mode right here. Frantically said, Overlay mode will gain more level deepness.

Finally…

Let compare the original and enhanced result. Should you think your lens were merely inadequate, it’s just a normal effect. No offense at all

Have a good day and keep it real.