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What to do with soft focus.

Tuesday, 19th May 2009

Written by: cass

What do you do when you have a shot that you really love but the focus is soft, or off altogether?

I recently did an impromptu shoot with friends and I captured this shot of the cutest little guy.  I love his energy and focus on the ball what I don’t love about the shot is the soft focus on the action point on the shot.  And the lighting and hard shadows on his face is a little distracting too.  But the energy made me want to perform a “save” on this shot.
CassJustCurious 2009-05-16

 I spent an hour playing around with the shot to see how I can change it in photoshop to reclaim it as a shot to love.  Here’s what I did:

  1. Made the image monochrome in a charcoal color
  2. Added a vignette (I know, I know it can be over-played) to take away some distraction from the shot.
  3. Increased the exposure and lowered the Black Point so the shot took on a dramatic effect.

Lexi's new friend Dylan

What do you do with shots that have a soft focus but you happen to love?  Do you file them in that digital trash can?  Or do you try to save it?  Do you think this shot was worth the save?

Related posts:

  1. How to Get Soft Diffused Light from Your Flash
  2. Vignette for Free
  3. Focus
  4. Vignetting – When and Why to Vignette
  5. How to Create High-Contrast Black and White Images

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  • nice result - I'd have also tried a high pass filter
  • I have to say the color version is a better version then the photoshopped one. The mono image just has the "I PS'd this to try to save it look" but it just doesn't work.
  • I think I would like to see this photo cropped, in color...and focus in on him looking at the ball in his hand... although, not too much of a crop, 'cause you want to keep the color of his hair in the shot :)
  • Allena
    I tend to agree with Bec. At web resolution I don't even notice the soft focus in the first shot, but you've lost his eye to blackness in the second. When a shot is just a little soft, I've had good results from the Photoshop "unsharp mask" filter, often selecting just the points I want to sharpen--in this case most likely his eye, mouth, and hand.
  • Thanks
  • "What do you do with shots that have a soft focus but you happen to love?"

    I consult the masters...

    "I’m always amused by the idea that certain people have about technique, which translate into an immoderate taste for the sharpness of the image. It is a passion for detail, for perfection, or do they hope to get closer to reality with this trompe I’oeil? They are, by the way, as far away from the real issues as other generations of photographers were when they obscured their subject in soft-focus effects." -Henri Cartier-Bresson

    ...and of course, his classic...


    "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson
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