One of the things I’ve learned at Camera Club is that it’s very easy to overdo it when editing your photos in Photoshop and other photo editing software.

Believe me, as soon as your photo is displayed using a projector onto a MASSIVE wall, all the minor problems are exposed.  It’s quite alarming how different you perceive your own work, once it’s been blown up to that size.  So, it’s quite common for photographers to try and enhance their photos using editing software like Photoshop and Paintshop Pro before submitting their photos for review.  The problem is that sometimes the editing can make the problem a lot worse.

Take editing your photo for sharpness for example; if your shot is even slightly on the soft side (in other words, not perfectly in focus), you get penalized.   So, it’s advisable to always slightly sharpen your photo before submitting it for review (or printing).

The problem with sharpening, is that there’s a fine line between sharpening the photo to enhance it and make it perfect, and then having a complete disaster and over-sharpening it. The other problem with sharpening is that people assume that all blurred photos can be saved by sharpening… and that’s not the case… sometimes photos are just too blurred to be fixed.

As an example, here’s a photo SOOC (straight out of camera).