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All D-SLRs allow you to tweak the JPEG’s saturation, sharpness, and contrast in camera before you take a single shot. You can stick with the camera’s default JPEG settings and shoot okay pictures (as right), but by going into the D-SLR’s menu and fine-tuning the file parameters, you can make some subtle but effective improvements to your image. Here we show you why it pays to take control of your JPEGs in order to get better results without fuss.

Three Simple Steps To Better JPEGS

Refer to your camera’s manual to find the best way to alter the settings of your JPEG. The most useful areas to look at are saturation, contrast and sharpness. The results may be subtle but even a small improvement in the image is worthwhile. Here are our basic recommendations…

Improve saturation

This is the easiest way to get punchier results. Crank the saturation up and watch those colours look more impressive. Some scenes lend themselves to high contrast, particularly landscapes, while pictures of people generally look better underplayed.

Boost the contrast

Many cameras default this setting to auto. This means that the camera decides how to render every shot you take, occasionally creating inconsistencies between pictures. By lowering the contrast you increase the amount of highlight and shadow detail that is retained, which is good for people shots. Increasing the contrast will improve other types of shots, particularly black & whites.

Increase sharpness

Beware! This won’t make out-of-focus pictures sharp, but it will help make sharp pictures look a little sharper. Budget cameras tend to use high levels of sharpening anyway, so keep it on normal unless your pictures consistently look a little soft, in which case set it just above standard. Any higher will probably produce horribly over-sharpened results.