Originally posted by JMR Nice shot Marc. One question though- did you sharpen the image and if so, was it the entire image? I find sharpening images where bokeh is prominent tends to weaken the softness of the bokeh.
JMR
Thanks JMR for looking, the comments and the question!
In this instance, the sharpening wouldn't have anything to the petals - the aperture was so shallow it wasn't worth it. I checked that beforehand and reference the original RAW file to confirm. Basically I did some Exposure tweaks (instead of Levels), a light pass in Noise Ninja (no sharpening) and that's it. The fine noise speckles are very subtle before NR - I just smoothed them out. It's only noticeable at least 75% or higher when viewed on my screen and there is no discernible difference between the bokeh or sharpness in the original RAW file and the final JPEG at 100%.
Regards,
Marc