Anything you can do for a photo with to soft of a focus?

[triplej96]

Anything beyond unsharp mask in PS? Or am I just completely screwed?

[ChrisA]

Anything beyond unsharp mask in PS? Or am I just completely screwed?

There is nothing that can recover detail that the original exposure did not capture.

[Photo Tramp]

There is nothing that can recover detail that the original exposure did not capture.

In other words you're completely screwed.

[NewportPreacher]

The smart alecky answer: Reshoot

[maxwell1295]

The even more smart alecky answer: Pretend you did it on purpose.

[triplej96]

The even more smart alecky answer: Pretend you did it on purpose.

Here is my favourite answer so far!

I didn't get paid good enough for a reshoot Thanks for the answers everyone.

[davemdsn]

Here is my favourite answer so far!

I didn't get paid good enough for a reshoot Thanks for the answers everyone.

Well, this changes everything. If you got paid you need to reshoot. It could reflect badly on you and have an effect on your ability to get paid work in the future. Don't look at it like how much money you make today, but rather how much money you can make from the good publicity of giving great service. Just my $.02.

[triplej96]

Well, this changes everything. If you got paid you need to reshoot. It could reflect badly on you and have an effect on your ability to get paid work in the future. Don't look at it like how much money you make today, but rather how much money you can make from the good publicity of giving great service. Just my $.02.

I actually just got off the phone reshoot is next week .

[christinelandon]

Good. Now, as to the original soft exposure, whip some artistic filters on that puppy and see what you can make of it! Just because an image won't work as a "nice, sharp photo" doesn't mean that it won't work as some other sort of image, after all.

Get experimental, have fun, see what you can do with digital post-processing!

[ftpaddict]

"I wanted it to look like that!"

OR

"It's not a bug, it's a feature!"

[MPrince]

I agree with christinelandon. A couple of years ago I took a photo of my brother-in-law and his wife. We were on a moving train, the shot was not quite in focus, and I couldn't get the white balance quite right.

So I converted the image to b&w, put a soft glow on it, and turned it into a very nice portrait, which I gave to them as a Christmas present.

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes you CAN make a "bad" photo good in PP.

[Grimlock]

You could try the "octave sharpening" technique from Skin by Lee Varis. A lot of stuff in that book demands CS3, but this method is doable in Elements:

1-Create 4 duplicate layers of the background layer. Set the blending mode to "luminosity" for all of the dups. Zoom out to 50% of original size to better judge the sharpening effect.

2-Turn off visibility of the top 3 dup layers for the time being(click on the eye icon in each one). Go to the bottom-most dup, and apply UnSharp Mask at 500%, Radius at 0.5, and Threshold to zero. Leave opacity at 100%.

3-Go to the dup layer just above that. Turn on the visibility, and apply USM again, but at Radius of 1, and reduce the layer's opacity to 50%.

4-Go to the layer above that, turn on visibility, appy USM at Radius of 2 and reduce opacity to 25%

5-The last dup layer (the top one) gets USM at Radius 4 and opacity to 13% after you turn its visibility back on.

You wouldn't necessarily need all 4 layers to get the desired sharpness-I used only the bottom 2 on a portrait where the subject managed to be moving just enough to be a bit blurred. Also, the technique can leave a "cut-out" edge effect around the subject that would be noticeable under certain conditions.