emulating softness

Hello

 

Is there a plugin out there, or any kind of software, or a manual trick in

photoshop that would simulate the softness of the film emulsion.

 

You know, sort of like, making a normal sharp image look like enlarged film.

 

Film softness doesn't really have a linear radius, so its not that simple

 

Any kind of blur in photoshop doesn't really work, and neither does lens blur or

anything else I could find in photoshop.

 

Any suggestions?

 

I'll see if I can come up with a nice example of the kind

Here is a good example. Notice how its not really regular blur, but some kind of non-linear falloff, don't know how else to describe it.

 

Its someone elses picture, don't know who is the author, so I apologize in advance if its a problem

 

Its a really tight crop from a frame of Reala

sorry, here:

Here's another one. Velvia I believe.

What do you mean by "enlarged film"? If it is what you see through a projector/enlarger, then Lens Blur is the right tool. Just remember to add some grain.

Well lens blur simulates the blur of objects that are out of focus in the lens.

I don't think it simulates diffusion of light in the emulsion

In addition to adding grain, it would also help to add minor posterization. Find an image you want degraded, and we can have a go at it.

<p>I don't know if this is what you want; it's usually said to be something of a substitute for a soft-focus lens. Duplicate the image onto a new layer and blur the new layer. Adjust the type and quantity of blur, and the opacity of the layer, to see if you can get the result you want.</p>

Posterisation sounds like a good idea, but photoshop posterisation doesn't give natural soft "borders" between color areas, like film does.

 

Take any image you want for the raw image, I don't have any specific picture I want edited for now.

Hi Edgar, I do not know the answer to your question. However if I were trying to get that result I would reduce the pic from 72 DPI downward until I got the results I was looking for. Hope this helps.

Anything like this?<div></div>

Film "emulsion" is not soft.

 

Enlarged images are not "soft".

 

If film softness was due to enlargement it would be linear.

 

Suggestions? I strongly suggest you get your perceptions and language of the same in order.

"Is there a plugin out there, or any kind of software, or a manual trick in photoshop that would simulate the softness of the film emulsion."

 

What you're probably looking for is a filter that will continously decrease contrast as a function of increasing image detail. I'm not aware of a turnkey plug-in that will do this, but you'll want to Google "image processing convolution." You may have to write a bit of code.

Try this. Duplicate the background layer. Add noise (Filter-add noise). Try Gaussian-10%. Use Overlay in Blending Mode. This will simulate the dye clusters found in chrome films. Now use a very gentle gaussian blur on the noise layer - like 1.2 pixels. Again, the idea is to try to duplicate the dye clusters that originally formed around the grain before the grain was removed from the film. This method forms the "grain" and then softens it to look like a dye cluster.

Robert lee

 

I believe you are on to something there.

 

I guess in more technical terms, I'd like to find a way to apply a certain kind of image blur that would emulate MTF behaviour of film on the far end of the curve.

And also try and emulate what film does with high contrast areas, like between two colors or around bright spots, the kind of bleeding characteristics of film emulsion.

All the stuff you can see on 8mm film or when you scan at 4000dpi or more.

How about taking a pic on film and scanning it ?

Leszek

 

Surely you can think of a few reasons why not.

There are no such small formats as 8mm in still photography, and I don't feel like ruining entire slides just to extract a tiny peace.

Also, it doesn't help understanding how films works, what makes it tick.