How To Sharpen Your Footage In Post

This brilliant tutorial from Casey Faris, on How To Sharpen Your Footage In Post, is a fantastic and well-informed step by step guide on how to fix footage which is slightly out of focus.

The process is more complex than just throwing on a “sharpen” filter, but is still simple to follow and the results are far better.

Casey Faris is a YouTuber who posts videos about colour grading and editing tips.

While this tutorial on How To Sharpen Your Footage In Post is done on Adobe Premiere, the steps can easily be translated to Final Cut or any other editing software.

Now this obviously won’t help if your focus is way-way off. However, If you have slightly missed the focus on your actor or object, this will come in handy.

How To Sharpen Your Footage In Post

Casey also gives information on sharpening (and not sharpening) in camera and the settings he uses. In general, you should avoid adding in-camera sharpening, as it has a tendency to add grain and/or texture to the footage.

The technique he uses is the “Unsharp Mask”. This filter has more controls to help get the person or object in the out of focus footage to look sharp without making the rest of the footage look unnatural.

Again, this tutorial isn’t saying all your shots should be in perfect focus or have no texture. Depending on what you are shooting and what look you are going for, that slightly missed focus might be perfect. It all depends on your film and what story you are trying to tell and how to visually show that.

But for those looking to fix a slightly out of focus shot, this is perfect for you.

If you have any tips on how you sharpen footage, please leave a note in the comments for our other readers.

Source: Casey Faris Youtube