Enhance Resolution Easily In Lightroom

A new feature from Adobe will help tease out more detail from low-sized captures

- Sean McCormack

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being connected with nature – out away from people, but still surrounded by life. This photo location didn’t even have roads! It was shot on the Saltee Islands off the coast of Wexford. This shot is from my first trip there with a Canon 20D. It’s a mere 8MP camera – but with new technology, we can easily overcome the low size for larger prints. This is done with Adobe’s Super Resolution technology, which can double the resolution on each axis. This gives a file four times larger. It looks great and works on TIFF and JPEG, as well as raw. For raw files, you get a full DNG with Kelvin white balance, so it acts like you shot a much larger original raw.

With any shot, you sometimes have to make compromises. It was a really overcast morning, so this was photo was taken at ISO 800. Because the lens was at 500mm, a 1/125 sec shutter speed was used to reduce camera shake, despite the underexposure. So let’s fix the exposure, then make it larger.

Enlarge the file

Once you’ve edited the file, press Ctrl/Cmd+S to save the metadata. Use Ctrl/ Cmd+R to show the file on your computer, then open it in Photoshop via Camera Raw. Right-click on the image and choose Enhance. Make sure Super Resolution is turned on. Back in Lightroom, right-click on the folder and choose Synchronize Folder.