Saving soft-focus action shots

Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 179 Location: Lubbock, TX

Wasn't quite sure if this should be in People, General, or Critiques. Mods please feel free to move it if necessary.

Lake shots from last weekend. There were several that weren't sharp but the action was still good. I was trying to find a way to "artfully" save them. After a lot of fiddling around I ended up going with the a simple watercolor conversion in P-Shop using heavy lines to hide the soft edges. Works for my purposes, but I'd like to get input from folks here.

In both color and high(er)-contrast B&W...

Thanks!
Brad

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:45 pm

I like the color image best. The watercolor filter normally would be used in this type of shot, but if it works for you, that's what matters.

Have you tried the smart sharpen filter, with the only the skier selected?

I'm sure if you post the original other members could give it a shot to try and sharpen it.

Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 179 Location: Lubbock, TX

Quote:

I'm sure if you post the original other members could give it a shot to try and sharpen it.

By all means! I'd love for someone to take a crack at it.

Link to unconverted image in 1024x768:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1229/879675138_afd1113960_o_d.jpg

Unconverted image:

Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 9:20 pm

I'm sorry, the focus was softer on the original than I thought. I could get it sharper but then you start getting that pixelated look, not so bad on 4x6 but anything larger it looks bad.

I tried to blur more of the picture and get the focus more on the water skier. With the shutter speed you were using 1/1250th the motion should have been frozen, were you on another boat, maybe had some camera shake? Anyway, I'll leave it up for a while.