Sharpening Edit

[angierae]

Because of lack of light, lack of distance and the fact that he just kept moving!! heh This photo was reasonably well blurred. I followed a sharpening tutorial and will post the original as well as the newly sharpened image. My question is can anybody sharpen it a bit better or is it just too blurred in general?

The left is before sharpening, right afterwards :)

Thanks!

[sorted]

Hi Angie

Had a go but could not get it any sharper myself but any way what a great picture to capture I love him.:)

[DoctorJazz]

Hi Angie,

Here's another try.
First I edited in Lightroom2 for selective areas of sharpening/clarity/contrast, esp.
on the antlers. I also darkened the background around him a little to help show off the antlers.
Then I tried copying the image at a bunch of different exposure levels and did an
"Exposure Fusion" in Photomatix as an experiment.
This is the result. I would ideally like to adjust the white balance now, but am not
that good at getting it right the first time with the exposure fusion technique.
If I can get it better I'll post a new image, but for now I think the overall sharpness
is improved.

First is your revised image, 2nd is my edit.

[coffee]

I upped the sharpening on this image. But you can only sharpen so much before artifacts like hallowing and "grain" get's noticed. First image is the original.

[angierae]

Thanks Elaine :)

And thank you as well Sandy and Joseph! Sharpening has always been one of my week points unfortunately. It seems to be sharpening the background more than the elk and when I edited it, it of course only sharpened the lines while to me... his face is what really needs it the most. Just keep on fiddling and experimenting I guess! :D

[DoctorJazz]

Hi Angie,

I was working on the white balance, and stumbled onto a mistake that I thought
was kind of fun, although not what you were after, I'm sure. Since this is in the edit category, I'll post it.

[angierae]

It is interesting Sandy! I was gonna play with mine and see if I could turn it into the oil painting look. I've done that with blurry photos before and sometimes the outcome is neat. I'll post the result a bit later.

[angierae]

So here's the result of the oil filter. It's hard to tell on the elk himself unless you're zoomed in but the background is a big difference. While doing this I decided to play with adding a canvas texture to the photo as well. To me this is the best result so far, maybe just because it adds detail to his face with the grain.

First is the oil, second the canvas.

[coffee]

Angie, one technique you can use sometimes that helps with a shot that is a little out of focus, is to add a creative filter. Here with PS I added a dry brush filter. It makes the image look like a painting of sorts. But here I added it in a subtle way more for the sharpening affect than anything, but you can see the painting affect when looking at it in full size. I also added some vibrance to it, and painted in some shadows to the body of the animal, and brightened up the distant snow. I also lightened up the foreground greenery of the tree.

[DoctorJazz]

Angie and Joseph,

Those are really fun versions that bring out the elk's beauty nicely.

[angierae]

Hah I like the fact that we both posted filtered versions at the same time. Great minds Joseph ;P

[angierae]

So this is my one last test on this shot. I decided, well if I can't sharpen the subject more...why not blur the background? I think it does make the elk pop a bit more but again, if you look at the larger version he's still blurred. I did this quickly so the elk isn't cut out as nicely as he could be which you'll notice on the larger version as well :P

[DoctorJazz]

Here's one more after working on the white balance.

[julimucca]

Here are my shots at it.
The first is the original, then I added backlighting, contrast, sharpening and some luminance. I then added a portra filter, and some smart blur for the second one.
The third one I worked on the white balance a little and added some more smart blur.
Awsome picture btw!

[jerryph]

Like mentioned, it is hard to make things too sharp before artifacts start to show, but I gave it a try.

http://www.syner-g.org/files/after.jpg

[lila]

Hi,
Wondering if you thought about B/W.I have a few I liked better
that way:rolleyes: Just an idea.I'll try to send it... not sure
I know how.
Lila

[Kaye]

Like mentioned, it is hard to make things too sharp before artifacts start to show, but I gave it a try.

http://www.syner-g.org/files/after.jpg

Jerry, this is an absolutely wonderful edit of this shot. Even upon enlarging to full screen, the artifacts are not too bad! I guess lots of practice makes perfect. Well as perfect as we can get!

[Kaye]

Hi,
Wondering if you thought about B/W.I have a few I liked better
that way:rolleyes: Just an idea.I'll try to send it... not sure
I know how.
Lila

Hi Lila,
Would love to see a B/W of this. Or if you have your own B&W shots, why not try to start your own THREAD. Please give it a try if you wish. If you have any problems, just post and ask.

[Pat]

Hi angierae. "Sharpening" is, I'm afraid, a bit of a misnomer. No amount of sharpening can fix an out of focus picture. What happens in "sharpening" is that adjacent pixels of particular lightness and darkness have those values increased thereby increasing the contrast (not the sharpness) between them. The increase in contrast gives the illusion of increased sharpness. The purpose of sharpening is to make a sharp photo "tack" sharp.
Auto focus will not work without sufficient light. Manual focus probably won't be much better if you attempt to focus via the viewfinder or LCD display. What you need is to become an adept at prefocussing. Judge the distance then set the focus on the scale on the lens barrel. Practice on fence posts or telephone poles that you have measured.
Some cams can be prefocussed to set distances. This might be a handy thing but takes time to set up via a menu. If you have interchangeable lens', prefocussing is a skill that will stand you in good stead.

[kerry06]

Hi Angie. I am new here but really wanted to see if I could do something with the shot you have posted. Hope you don't mind.
I neutralized the colors and came up with this. Anyway great shot. I keep telling myself I'll be there one day.

Kerry

[StephenK]

This is a good image for the Oil painted effect! I've enjoyed what I've seen so far! :^)

This blur thing in photography is a hair-puller.. It's one of those aspects of photography
that creeps in from time to time and is almost impossible to rectify completely through editing... but what an interesting
challenge it is!

When I stumbled across channels masks I looked to see if this was perhaps the magic bullet in this case.... It does help!
Everything depends on how blurry it is... It seems that with slightly blurry photos one can get pretty close.

What the channel mask does is to provide something of a barrier for containing the halo's that tend to creep-in with
heavy sharpening. So you can generally stomp on an image with extreme settings without spilling-out all over the place...

In this one I actually used Unsharp mask with the Amount at 500 and a Radius of 2.0! When run through a luminance channels
mask it kept the sharpening somewhat contained... I then dialed the opacity of that layer back until it seemed generally okay. (in this
case to 46%)

I did a bunch of other stuff to the image but that was the primary approach toward sharpening itself.

I would have loved to have been there when this photo was taken! :^)