Another example. A crop from a 2014 image showing a problem area.
K-3 +DA 60-250/F4 @ 250mm FL. 1/1000s, f/7.1, ISO320.
Even at 1/1000s, this fast moving soccer ball suffers from slight motion blur. Here is the FocusMagic screen in "Fix Motion Blur" mode:
You can see that the motion-corrected preview area is sharper, but also noisier.
Here is the original compared to the altered version:
The original is straight from Silkypix with some USM applied. Unfortunately, it appears the focal plane is the net, not the goalie or the ball. So the USM just emphasises the net.
What I did was exported an unsharpened developed 16-bit TIF from Sikypix to PSP, and there created a 5-layer stack:
- Ball-layer on top
- Goalie (top)
- Goalie (bottom)
- Foreground players
- Original image on the bottom
Next I used FM to apply the motion correction using the parameters shown in the screen-grab. There is no "Detect" button in motion-correction mode, but the direction and distance are usually relatively easy to find. I always mask using Topaz Labs Remark 5
after the FM processing, rather than before. Doing it in this order helps Remask 5 to cut off any external haloing.
The goalie layer needed a different FM radius for the head/hands/chest/pants (radius of 4) compared to the legs/boots (radius of 6). This sometimes happens. I duplicated this layer, applied different radii to the two goalie layers and then masked to get separate top and bottom parts of the goalie.
I then merged the 2 goalie layers and the ball layer, and used Detail 3 to give them a medium sharpening.
The two foreground players. I was going to leave them unprocessed, but I decided that I preferred it they were partially sharpened, but not too much, so as not to distract from the goalie and the ball. So I used USM, Radius=3 Strength=75%. I marked around the players down to a horizontal line formed across the image by the base of the net. So only these two players and the grass in front of the net were sharpened.
I blurred the original image layer with a Gaussian Blur, Radius=3, to de-emphasise the netting and the background. Any higher blur radius than 3 made the goalie seem too isolated from the background.
In retrospect, the transition between the sharpened grass and the bottom of the blurred net is too abrupt. I would have been better here feathering the horizontal portion of the foreground layer mask.
Finally, I merged all layers, resized down and then applied a small USM polishing (Radius=0.6, Strength=50%) to compensate for the downsizing.
Dan.
Last edited by dosdan; 06-11-2016 at 03:38 AM.