How soft is too soft - can this be rescued?

[joel_p]

<p>Dear all,<br /> i have been trying to sharpen the following photo of my daughter, especially around the eyes. I can't really get it to an acceptable level without generating too much noise. I have tried the PS and Aperture sharpening tools and have experimented with Nik Software. At what point do you toss the image and start again? Any suggestions on technique or software would be most appreciated.<br /> Cheers,<br /> joel</p>

[peter]

<p>Your image has not been attached. I find that recoveing a <em>too soft</em> (rather than "just out of the camera normally soft ") image to one of the hardest and least successful tasks to pull off without generating heaps of noise or obvious over sharpening. Especially if the loss of sharpness is due to camera movement during a long exposure or mis focusing, its damnably difficult to get any outcome that is really satisfactory. Even with PS CS4 which has a sharpening function that purportedly fixes blurring due to camera movement.<br />What settings are you using and are you using USM? Using a larger pixel range may give better apparent sharpness but its hard to pull off as too much quickly becomes obvious.<br />One thing I always consider when this happens - if I have to give up on sharpening efforts - and it sometimes happens to me too no matter how careful I am - is go the "other way". i.e. Instead of trying vainly to get an acceptably sharp image deliberately blur it more, apply "glow" and deepen contrast to give a "modern art photo" look. This can be done in PS or whatever (I actually more often use Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2) in various techniques that apply Gaussian blur amongst other things. You could also Optik Verve Virtual Photographer which is a free PS plugin with a few tools that allow you to try such things. (Its kinda fun besides.)</p>

<p>Here is one of mine that was never really sharp due to a low shutter speed but I have gone the other way to get a quite nice result anyway. I guess it shows that photos dont always HAVE to be sharp to be OK. Sorry I cannot recall the specific techniques I used, off hand.</p>

<p>Anyway its jsut a thought if you get too stuck!</p>

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