A little how-to question...

[Miss Kris]

How do you acheive the lovely soft focus while keeping the eyes sharp? I see it lots in professional pics. I use Noiseware and it works great, yet sometimes not quite enough.
Thanks!
Kristine

[bluelemur01]

hi Kristine,
to get that look, I do the following:

Use a good quality lens on my camera with a wide maximum aperture
Open the aperture as far as it will go, like a 1.8 on my 50mm Nikon
Focus exactly on the subject's eyes, then take the picture
The closer you are to your subject, the blurrier the background will be
the further your subject is from your background, the blurrier the background will be, too

There are other techniques you can do, too. For example, Scott Kelby describes a way to achieve soft focus on people in his book Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Digital Photographers. It's a long technique so I can't describe it fully here, but it involves making a soft layer on top of your "regular" layer, then making a mask and painting the eyes, facial features, and anything else you want back in so they look sharp while everything else looks soft. It works really well!

You can probably find descriptions of this or similar techniques by searching Google for "Scott Kelby skin softening" or something like that. I use his technique sometimes & I like it for certain images/situations.

But for me, the most important step is the wide aperture and then focusing EXACTLY on the person's eyes. I will sometimes enhance it a bit in photoshop, but without the right camera work, my results are not satisfying or look fake.

Good luck!
Jennifer

[maryannwise]

theres an awesome filter by kodak. I think its called digital gem filter and it works great, but costs ....heres a link...
http://asf.com/products/plugins/airpro/pluginAIRPRO/

When i was doing pro photography, i used this filter and loved it!

[HeidiKnight]

Jennifer described the technique perfectly. One thing to know is that when a subject is viewed in profile, or their face isn't turned exactly toward you, one eye will be out of focus while the one you focused on will be sharp. I am always doing that.

[Miss Kris]

Thanks so much you guys! I looked into the filter MaryAnn suggested and it was exactly what I was looking for. Plus they had a coupon for the next few weeks so I got it even cheaper. Love that!
I will also be using the tips suggested above in the future.
Thanks again!
Kristine

[bluelemur01]

I took a look at that filter link, and to be honest, I'm not that impressed with the examples they showed. Now it's possible that it could work well, but the examples on that site look overdone and a bit fake. I know it's a LOT more work to find the Kelby technique or a similar technique and use it, but if you write yourself an "action" to automate it in Photoshop, it becomes much easier. And you have the option to control the amount of sharpening & softening exactly by using masks.

Of course since I don't own the Kodak filter, I don't know how well it can work, and it's possible they overdid the examples on purpose to make the effect more obvious.

That is just my 2 cents though!

good luck and happy shooting!
J

[cedarhil]

If you use photoshop, you can make a new layer for your noiseware or even a soft blur to run on, then mask back the eyes. Then if you want them sharper, add another layer and while using the eliptical tool, you can unsharp mask just the eyes for a sharper effect. Did that make sense?