Took this photo in hurry. It seems to have both a focus problem and camera shake.Tried to correct it with focus magic but found it impossible to balance the two problems.Would appreciate any help as it is one in a series of photos.TIA

how's this look?

Craig

What a neat photo .
Looks great to me. What steps did you take to achieve this??
Cinderella

Here's what I have.

I think I have the contrast a bit to high, but I was trying to bring out as much detail as possible.

If you like it, I will tell you what I did.

Just seeing what it looks like...

Oh...and Faton3s...I want to know what you did...I've had them all side by side and the one you posted is the better work up.

Please share your work flow....thanks...

i just installed 'Focus Magic', the demo version. this seems to do a pretty good job. all i used here was the plugin 'fix out of focus blur'. didnt even try any of the other aspects of this program yet. the demo version lets you do 10 images then presumably quits. this plugin is all i did to this image. you might note down in the lower left of the image where the time stamp is, that that is now out of focus. it will give you an idea of how much was corrected.

Craig

Ok, here goes.


1. I used a curves adjustment layer set to screen. Reopened curves, and bought up the midtones. Adjusted opacity to taste.

2. Here is the magic step: :happy: NOTE: I learned this trick from Katrin Eismann's book, "Photoshop Restoration and Retouching 2nd Edition". This is a great book to own.

I made a blank layer, and merged visible.

I set this new layer to overlay.

Now, click on Filter, then Stylize, and select Emboss. (Yes, Emboss can be used to sharpen, and sometimes does a wonderful job.)

With the Emboss window open, I used these settings:

Angle: 111
Height: 2
Amount: 137

A trick is to try and set the angle, in the direction the light is shining in the picture. Height, and Amount is to taste.

3. Made another new layer, and merged visible.

I set this layer to softlight, and applied a 2 pixel high pass filter to it, to bring out more detail.

4. Used a plugin called Quantum Mechanic, to remove the red and blue artifacts.

NOTE: In this step, you could convert to LAB mode, and run the dust and scratches filter on the a and b channels, to remove color artifacts.

5. Made a new layer, and merged visible once again.

This time, I ran unsharp mask on this new layer with the settings:

Amount: 132
Radius: 1.5
Threshold: 6

Now it looks to sharp. So I did a trick I got from a Russel Brown tutorial.

I duplicated the newly sharpened layer, and set one of the shapened layers blending mode to lighten, and the other one to darken.

I then set the opacity of the darken shapening layer to 85%, and set the opacity of the lighten sharpening layer to 40%.

This removed the white halos, but added some much needed detail.

With this trick, you can control the white, and black halos you get from unsharp mask seperatly. Thank you Mr. Brown. :happy:

It sounds like alot more work than it really was. Took me about 30 mins, and I am not real quick with this program yet.

I hope this helps.

Craig,

That does look good.

I didn't realize focus magic does such a good job. I will have to check it out.


I wish they really developed software like you see in some spy movies. You know, the ones where the video image of a bank robbery can't be made out. Then they run it through there "super sharp 2000" top secret program, and it looks as good as a dvd.

Maybe someday it will be real.

fats,

I wish they really developed software like you see in some spy movies. You know, the ones where the video image of a bank robbery can't be made out. Then they run it through there "super sharp 2000" top secret program, and it looks as good as a dvd.

i know. i was thinking the same thing not too long ago ;)

Craig

edit: oh, and the focus magic works both as a plugin and a stand-alone.

Thanks for the help everyone.Had another go with focus magic(focus first then motionblur seemed to work best) and then used soften retouch brush and skimmed the edges on the lighter side to get rid of the small halo effect.Seems to have come up not to bad. Pity only 10 pics with focus magic demo as it is a very quick way to work with blur.Thanks again and even though i may not use the photos it opened more doors to explore and helped me get to the final result.

looks good. you might want to clone out that now blurred time stamp too.

you might also try 'Unshake'. i didnt try it on your image and i generally only use it for worse images than yours, but it might also work... and it has no 10 image limit. if you like it, please support the folks that write these apps. and no, i'm not one of them :)

the link for unshake is: http://www.hamangia.freeserve.co.uk/

Craig