The Soft Focus Solution

Mark Laurie

Specializing in female portraiture, the soft focus filter was always a well-used tool. When we shifted to digital we began looking for ways to replicate the effect digitally. We had quickly found that a sharp digital image gave us a wider range of creative choices once in the computer.

I'll go through a couple of approaches with you.

The first we call our Playboy effect. In addition to using it when working on the final images, I have created an action for applying the filter to images during my viewing presentations. On the low rez presentation images it gives my clients a quick sense of what the retouching will do, often being the difference between a sale or a discard.

Select your image to enhance. Do all of your prep work; cropping, color balance, sizing and so on. My brave model Marla, has her unretouched image for us to work on, Fig1. The close up in Fig 2 shows the smile lines with skin texture that a sharp lens picks up. Great for that old jazz musician character face, not so popular with my female clients. The sharp eyes show a lot of sparkling life.

A quick reminder on file size/resolution, always keep in mind the impact of file size. The larger the file size the greater your settings will have to be to match the effect on a smaller file. If you follow these steps but get a disappointing result, either increase the settings or run the filter through a few times.

To begin, make two copies of the background layer (Crtl/Option J or drag the layer to the palette bottom to the layer copy icon.) Activate the top layer.

Go to Filter>Render>Lighting Effects. Fig 3. Adjust the spotlight circle in the preview window so it just touches the edge of your image. You can grab the square handles for sizing. Adjust the intensity up or down until the hotspots of your image are starting to blow out. At the bottom of palette change the channel to Red. Move the slider below that towards mountainous. The further over it goes the stronger the effect. I usually set it around the 90 point.

This creates an ugly image (Fig4) that will be the basis for the blur mask.

Crtl/command A to select all, then crtl/command C to copy. Go to the channels palettes; create a new channel. Crtl/command V to paste the lighting effect into it. Select the RGB channel. Return to the layers palette. Delete the lighting effect layer.

Now load your channel into the image with Select>Load Selection. Change the channel to the one you pasted your lighting effects into; usually this should be Alpha 1. Fig 5.

Press crtl/command H to hide the selection markers. Go to Filters>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Adjust the soft focus effect to your likening. You can turn the preview on and off to see what the difference is. This will work better if you have your magnification set to 75% or higher. Deselect your selection. (crtl/command D). You should have two layers up now, the top being the blurred image and the lower being the original.

Now we have the image softened, with the strongest effect being on the reddest areas. We want to bring back some sharpness in selected areas like the eyes. Create a quick mask, the icon at the bottom of the layers palette, 2nd in.

Press D to set your foreground color to black. Press B to activate your brush. Select a soft brush about the size of the subject's iris. You might find it hand to magnify your selection so you can be more exact with the masking. Set your brushes opacity to somewhere between 20% and 60%. Brush over the areas you want to be sharp, if you go over the same area a second time it removes more of the mask until the mask is completely gone.

If you make a mistake press X to switch the foreground color to white, you can now paint the mask back in. To see what your masking effect looks like, Fig 6, turn off the lower layer by clicking on the eye beside its icon.

Flatten your image (from the layers palette menu select flatten image). Go to the channels palette and delete the alpha channel.

Back in the layers palette, we can add one more step to the image. Go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Set the options to Gaussian and check monochromatic. You will want to adjust the amount slider so the grain is just barely visual. This will vary with your file size but is usually very low, in this example of a 3MB file our amount was 1.5.

The noise gives a mild texture feel to the image and a sense of sharpness. You can retouch the bits out that the filter did not hide. A great time to play with the Healing brush. The masthead picture shows the final image with some mild retouching.

There are always several approaches to an effect so here is another. In this digital capture image of Pam, Fig 9, we have our start. Do crtl/command J twice to get two copies of the background layer. Rename the middle layer Highlight and the top layer Shadow. Turn the Shadow layer off by clicking on the eye beside it.

Activate the Highlight layer. Change the Layer mode to lighten. Reduce the layer's opacity to around 50% to 60%. By changing these settings before you begin the filter you can see how the two combine. Go to: Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Set the blur so the features are still visible but with no sharp features, Fig 10. This Fig shows you the effect without mode set. It's not too critical but an area you can play in to find your best effect, a bit stronger is better than weaker.

Activate the Shadow layer. Change the Shadow Layer Mode to Darken. Change the Opacity (quick key tip, hit V for the move tool then type the number you want for the opacity level, i.e. 6 = 60%) to about 45%. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Blur the features again but not as strong as we did the highlight layer. Let some experimentation be your guide.

With the Shadow layer active, link it with the Highlight layer. Click the empty square on the Highlight layer below the icon of the brush of the Shadow layer. In the Layers menu (access by the triangle upper right of palette) select merge linked.

The properties of the two layers merge, along with their opacities. Fig 11. You can still adjust this combined layer's opacity to finicky the effect you like.

Like the previous approach, we need to get sharpness back into the eyes and mouth. Repeat that process here. Another way to see the effect of the mask is hold the shift key down and click on the mask, it turns it on and off.

Some things to watch when sharpening the eyes is your depth of field. The farther items don't sharpen as much, which means go light on the masking tool's opacity.

Fig 12 is the finished effort. You can see the dramatic difference between what we started with, Fig 13 and Pam's final image. All before we do the finishing retouching.

There are other ways to create soft focus filters and many third party plugins doing the same. By making an action on these you can automate the steps and experience tremendous time savings.

Photo Quote: To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event. - Henri Cartier-Bresson