How to Enhance Photo Quality in Lightroom & Increase Resolution

Do your photos suffer from quality loss from grain, high ISO noise, compression artifacts, or low resolution? Lightroom's Enhance feature can fix all of that. This feature uses AI to reduce noise, recover detail, and increase resolution without touching what's already good about your photo.

We'll walk you through how to enhance photo quality in Lightroom step by step, and how to pick the right Enhance option for your specific situation.

Part 1. How to Enhance Photo Quality in Lightroom (3-Steps)

Lightroom's Enhance feature is a dedicated tool available in the desktop app that handles noise, low-resolution, and fine-detail recovery. It heavily uses your GPU, so processing speed really depends on how powerful your graphics card is and how large your source files are.

There are also minimum system requirements to check before you get started.

If your system is compatible, follow the steps below to enhance image quality in Lightroom. We will be using Lightroom CC v9.3.

How to Improve Image Quality or Resolution in Lightroom

Step 1

Open Your Photo in Lightroom CC

Click Add Photos to import the photo you want to enhance into Lightroom desktop.

Step 2

Choose Your Enhancement Option

Open the Edit panel and scroll down to the Detail section. From there, you'll see three options:

• Denoise
• Raw Details
• Super Resolution (for doubling image resolution)

Pick the option that fits your situation (more about this in Part 2 below). If you select Denoise when working with a raw file, Lightroom will automatically apply Raw Details as well.

Step 3

Export the Result

Preview the result after the enhancement. If you're satisfied, export it via File > Export.

Part 2. Choosing Between Denoise, Raw Details, and Super Resolution

In Lightroom's Enhance feature, the options include: Denoise, Raw Details (previously Enhance Details), and Super Resolution, which are designed to handle different types of image quality problems.

To sum up:

• Denoise and Raw Details both improve your image quality at the same resolution.
• Denoise is for noisy, grainy photos shot at high ISO or in low light.
• Raw Details is for sharpening edge detail and improving color accuracy.
• Super Resolution is the option to use when you want to learn how to increase resolution in Lightroom.

Note: Super Resolution can't be applied to images with a resolution higher than 128 MP or with dimensions greater than 32,500 pixels on either side.

Part 3. Common Mistakes When Enhancing Photos in Lightroom

Even with a simple tool like Enhance, there are a few things that catch people off guard the first time they use it.

1. Not Checking the File Type

Lightroom Enhance doesn't support all file formats, and each mode has its own list of compatible types.

Denoise and Raw Details are exclusive to RAW files, while Non-RAW files like JPEG or TIFF can only be processed by Super Resolution. For other formats (e.g., HEIC or PNG), you may need to convert them to a supported format first before improving image quality with Lightroom Enhance.

2. Ignoring the Larger File Size After Enhancement

Enhanced images get significantly larger, so you need to make sure you have enough disk space before running Enhance on a large batch. If you apply Super Resolution to a 24-megapixel raw file, the resulting enhanced DNG will have 96 megapixels or four times the original.

Newer versions of Lightroom use JPEG XL compression to reduce this somewhat, but you should still expect enhanced files to take up more storage than the originals.

3. Applying Enhancement More Than Once

You might think that running Denoise or Super Resolution twice would improve the result further. Well, it doesn't. Applying Super Resolution a second time doesn't double the resolution again in any meaningful way. It only adds more processing time and a larger file with no real quality gain.

The same goes for Denoise. Stacking it on an already-processed file can over-smooth details and make the image look plastic or artificial. Just run each enhancement once on the original file.

Part 4. What to Try Next If Lightroom Enhance Isn't Enough

Lightroom's Enhance feature covers most common quality issues in a photo, but it has limitations, such as:

• Denoise and Raw Details are restricted to raw files.
• No option for images that are too damaged or compressed to respond well to AI upscaling.
• Processing can be slow on mid-range systems.

If you're having trouble with Lightroom Enhance, you may want to consider switching to Wondershare Filmora, specifically for its AI Image Enhancer.

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How to Enhance Image Quality in Filmora

Step 1

Import Your Photo to Filmora

Create a new project and import your image to Filmora. Add it to the timeline to start editing.

Step 2

Enable the AI Image Enhancer Feature

Select the image track and head to Image > Basic on the right panel. Find the “AI Image Enhancer” settings, select the model, and click Generate.

Step 3

Export the Enhanced Image

Save the image by clicking the Snapshot button. Choose the location you want to store it, then export it as a JPG or PNG file.

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Download the APP

Scan to get the Filmora App

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Part 5. Tips to Enhance Photos More Effectively in Lightroom

Learning how to improve image quality in Lightroom is only part of the process. These three tips will help you get even cleaner, sharper photos.

1. Improve Specific Areas With Masks

If your photo only has problems in specific areas, you can use Lightroom's Masking tool to paint over or select specific areas and apply adjustments only there. From there, apply sharpening, noise reduction, or clarity changes just to that selection. The rest of the image stays untouched.

2. Use Dehaze to Clear Up Foggy or Hazy Areas

Raw photos that look flat or washed out due to fog, haze, or atmospheric conditions can be fixed with the Dehaze tool first, found in the Effects section of the Edit panel. It works by boosting contrast in flat areas of the image without touching the parts that already have good contrast.

Remember to apply it locally, not globally. If you drag the Dehaze slider across the whole image, it will affect skin tones and well-exposed areas that didn't need fixing in the first place. Use the Masking tool to select just the hazy area and apply Dehaze only there.

3. Enhance Multiple Images in One Go

If you shot a series of photos in the same lighting conditions, you don't have to enhance each one individually. In Lightroom CC:

1. Apply your adjustments to one photo
2. Go to Photo > Copy Settings and choose which adjustments to copy
3. Switch to Grid view and select all the images you want to edit
4. Go to Photo > Paste Settings to apply those edits across the batch

Final Words

You now know how to enhance photo quality in Lightroom, as well as which option to pick for your specific situation. Use either Denoise for grainy high-ISO shots or Raw Details for sharper edges and better color accuracy, and Super Resolution when you want to increase photo resolution in Lightroom.

Lightroom, however, works best for RAW files. If your problem revolves around JPEGs, heavily compressed images, or formats Lightroom doesn't support, Filmora's AI Image Enhancer is a practical alternative you can try next.

FAQs on Enhancing Photo Quality in Lightroom