Definitely one of my favorite portraits I've taken recently
is this one,
and I don't seem to photograph females
all that often, so I was really pleased how this turned out.
However,
all is not what it seems because overconfidence on my part
very nearly ruined this portrait because when I got back home
looking forward to doing some editing,
it was then that I could see
my camera had focused on her hair and not her eyes.
But thankfully, I, or rather
some software, was able to fix it.
And that's exactly what I want to show you in this video.
Now, I've added an article on my website
showing how I set up, lit and took this portrait;
a simple one light set up from above in front of the subject
and aimed down to a reflector held just below chest height.
There's also a video showing the same setup.
The editing is slightly different,
but you'll still get the idea.
But before any of the main editing could be done,
I had to see if I could fix the focus issue
because if her eyes weren't sharp, this portrait
might as well be binned, and I'd only taken one shot.
Now I know there's
a bunch of software out there claiming it can work miracles
when it comes to fixing blurred or out-of-focus images.
I didn't know which one to turn to,
so I went online to find out and get some recommendations.
First of all, I found this article over on Adobe.com.
The article explains what causes Blur, what deBlur is,
and how all you have to do
is use the sharpening adjustments
in Lightroom’s Detail panel.
But in reality it's not quite as simple as that.
But the article
even goes on to say, Go out and snap some quick pictures.
You can always adjust blurry photos later.
Not the best advice I've ever heard.
There are, though, three bits of software
that are very well known and claim to work miracles.
This is not a paid promotion.
I've not been asked to do this video.
The companies don't know I'm doing this video.
I'm not affiliated with these companies
and no money or product has been exchanged as payment.
I just messed up
and I needed to try each of them
to see if I could possibly save the portrait.
So the three I ended up using were Luminar Neo, On1 Noise A.I.
2023 and Topaz Sharpen AI.
So kicking off with Luminar Neo in Lightroom,
I go to the photo menu, then edit in and choose Luminar Neo.
I'll edit a copy, choose the TIFF format,
the ProPhoto RGB color space, 16 bit
and will stick with a resolution of 240 pixels per inch
with no compression and then click on edit.
This opens Luminar Neo and once in the main workspace
I then go to edit and choose the super sharp option.
I'll leave it in the universal setting
and I'll choose low first of all.
And when I do, we get this
all the fancy AI animation, but it's actually doing nothing.
But this plugin does actually take quite a bit of time
and then eventually you get your result.
If I do a before and after, you can see it's not done much.
So let's try Medium.
Again we get the pointless animation
and then the end result, which is definitely not good.
I could choose the face enhancer option
to see if that does anything,
but that does some weird stuff and changes the face completely.
If I go before and after,
you can see how much that has changed the entire portrait
rather than fixing just the blur.
So Luminar Neo super sharp for
this portrait is definitely a no go.
Next we have On1 Noise AI.
So again in Lightroom I'll send over a copy
with the exact same settings as before.
When On1 Noise A.I.
opens, we have these noise
and sharpening sections so we can work on the noise
and sharpness separately or together.
By default, it first of all goes to the noise section
and we can see a before
and after by dragging this line left and right.
Left hand side of the line is before
and right hand side of the line is after.
But there's no noise to talk of anyway in this picture,
so we're not seeing a difference.
So let's just jump to the Tack Sharp AI section.
The Tack Sharp AI deblur slider is all the way to the max,
and we also have this micro sharpening slider.
If I move the preview line back and forth,
you can see this isn't perfect by any means,
but the eye detail is definitely a little bit better.
But the sharpening has introduced lots of noise
and that noise has also changed the skin tone
so that on its own is not the best result.
But let us now try the noise and tack sharp
sections together by clicking on both.
We’ll give it a moment or two to process.
And there you go.
So now let's look at the before and after.
Actually, that's not bad at all.
It's really quite good.
The eyes are definitely improved
and also the skin tone has come back to what it was.
So if the third bit of software to try doesn't work so good,
then this will probably be the best we can get.
So last of all, then let's try the Topaz software.
In Lightroom exactly the same settings
and straight into Topaz sharpen AI.
Now I actually know the result
this software
gives on this portrait because I actually ended up using it.
But check this out.
Literally a second or two
after bringing the image in, it's processed and look at that.
Look at the eyes.
I can press down and release to see a before and after.
But that is insanely good when you consider what
the eyes were like before.
There's also more controls I have here for tweaking
the result.
I can change the blur type, increase or decrease
how much of the blur is removed, suppress the noise
and remove artifacts all by just moving a slider.
Incredible stuff.
Now when I was editing the portrait for real
I first of all sent the portrait into Photoshop.
I duplicated the image
and sent the duplicate into Topaz Sharpen AI.
Then once it had processed and was back in Photoshop,
I added a black layer mask and then used a white brush
to only bring back the sharpness in the eyes.
But that's just a personal taste for the look I was going for.
But yeah, very, very impressed.
Now, when I actually did this for real,
I must admit I was feeling very, very skeptical
because we see all the time, don't we,
when companies are advertising how amazing their software
is at fixing Blur and out of focus images.
But those images are ones
that they've qualified, ones that they know they're going
to get the best results with.
But when you actually do
use their software on an image of your own,
that's as bad as the ones that the companies
advertise working on
and it works as well, it is completely mind blowing.
Really, really clever stuff.
Now, is Topaz
the software that I’d recommend
all the time now for doing this kind of stuff?
Not at all, no.
It just worked really well on this portrait,
but I'll be perfectly honest,
I hope I never have to turn to Topaz, Luminar Neo or On1 for
fixing a blurred or out-of-focus image ever again.
But I'm really glad that software like this exists.
I mean, who would have ever thought that this was possible?
Amazing stuff, but that's all for this video.
So if you found it useful in any way, I'd really appreciate
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That's me. I'm done.
I'll catch you in the next video.