What many people don’t know is that all digital cameras create slightly soft, unsharp images.  If you have a point and shoot compact camera, then it has smarts inside it which add sharpening to the image after the picture has been taken.

On professional shoots, the photographer will shoot without sharpening, and after processing the image in whatever way is required will finally sharpen the image depending on how it is going to be used.

If the image is to be used for print or publication, then there is one technique.   If it is to be used for the web, then there is a different technique.

What you don’t want to do is use an image sharpened for print and then resize it for the web.

While sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes the affect can be really significant.   The resizing of a sharpened image can introduce all sorts of artefacts, like jagged edges, moiré patterns and blotchy images.

If you’ve seen sort of "grainy" or "gritty" images on web sites, this is probably the cause.

Much better is to talk to your web designer and brief your photographer on the size of images you require, they can then prepare them specifically for your website at the right size with an improvement in quality.

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