From the course: Photography Foundations: Night and Low Light

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Sharpening

Sharpening

If you shoot RAW, then all of your images, no matter what type of light they were shot in, will need some sharpening applied to them. It's just a fact of the way that image sensors work. The image needs to be softened before it hits the sensor, so there's a little filter in front of the sensor that softens it. That's a necessary step for the camera to be able to properly interpret color. That means you need to apply some sharpening effects to get that little bit of softness that's been added, removed from your image. Now, the bad news is that sharpening isn't actually possible. And what I mean by that is you cannot take an image that's out of focus and make it in focus. All we're doing when we use a sharpening filter in the computer is creating the illusion of sharpness. Now, we may be treading on deep philosophical ground here because really, what's the difference between having an illusion of sharpness and actually having sharpness? If you do it right, there is no difference. The…

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