Forgot Password
Pentax Camera Forums Home
 

Reply
Show Printable Version Search this Thread
06-10-2016, 08:22 PM   #1
Pentaxian
dosdan's Avatar

Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 1,741
Deconvolution for correcting slightly missed focus & motion blur

I've been shooting junior soccer for 7 years in stills, and this year in video, as well as a number of years of shooting junior athletics. I've found the deconvolution in FocusMagic useful for correcting slightly missed focus or motion blur issues. I've also looked at Topaz Labs InFocus and RawTherapee RL Deconvolution sharpening. For the work I do, FM is the simplest way to get a slightly OOF image looking better. It also offers motion-blur correction which is relatively easy to use and can produce impressive results.

This 2010 K20D + 55-300 @300mm FL cropped image (8.5% of the original 14.6MP frame) of a soccer goalie in action is out-of-focus and, due to a relatively low 1/640s shutter speed (semi-overcast), has motion blur on the ball. I wanted to keep it, but didn't know if I'd be able to fix it sufficiently.




Focus Magic suggested a 7px radius choice which works well for the player, but this over-corrects the foreground grass and does not sufficiently clear up the writing on the ball.




I ended up applying FM 4 times:


1. Duplicated original image layer in Paintshop Prox X4 and applied FM Fix Motion Blur, 16px blur distance & 10° blur direction.

2. Applied FM Fix Focus 1px to slightly sharpen up the ball. Masked this layer so that only the ball remained.

3. Duplicate original image layer and applied FM Fix Focus, radius 7px, to sharpen the goalie. Masked this to just him.

4. It does not look natural to have a (now) sharp player standing on unsharpened grass, but I did not want an overcompensated foreground. So I created another copy of the original image layer and applied FM Fix Focus, radius 4px, to it. This gave a foreground that was acceptable and the grass around his feet looked better integrated. I masked this sharpened near-region to show only from the bottom of the image up to just under the bottom of the netting and also included the white goal bar on the right.

I also decided I wanted to de-emphasise the red netting. So the rest of the background received a Gaussian Blur of 4px.

Then I collapsed all layers, applied Clarity and Local Tone Mapping and the Topaz Labs Detail 3 plugin. Since 7px is a big adjustment for a relatively small image, (due to the significant cropping), I've applied a 2-3px softening brush along some of the edges to conceal processing artefacts.





Dan.


Last edited by dosdan; 06-10-2016 at 08:32 PM.
06-10-2016, 08:35 PM - 1 Like   #2
Moderator
Site Supporter
Loyal Site Supporter
Sandy Hancock's Avatar

Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Adelaide Hills, South Australia
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 11,254
Impressive result. It is a level of processing well beyond my patience threshold though
06-10-2016, 09:48 PM   #3
Loyal Site Supporter
Loyal Site Supporter
UncleVanya's Avatar

Join Date: Jul 2014
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 28,168
QuoteOriginally posted by Sandy Hancock Quote
Impressive result. It is a level of processing well beyond my patience threshold though
ditto
06-11-2016, 03:32 AM   #4
Pentaxian
dosdan's Avatar

Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Brisbane, Australia
Photos: Gallery | Albums
Posts: 1,741
Original Poster
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:

  1. Ball-layer on top
  2. Goalie (top)
  3. Goalie (bottom)
  4. Foreground players
  5. 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.
06-13-2016, 01:59 AM   #5
Veteran Member
LensBeginner's Avatar

Join Date: Sep 2014
Photos: Albums
Posts: 4,696
It's a really nove way to use those tools... I've tried correcting small focus mistakes or movement blur, but it's not easy to get a beautiful and consistent result, not with a single application anyway...
Reply

Bookmarks
  • Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook
  • Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter
  • Submit Thread to Digg Digg
Tags - Make this thread easier to find by adding keywords to it!
ball, blur, fm, focus, foreground, image, layer, motion, photography, photoshop, radius
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Depicting motion: Panning and motion blur slackercruster Mini-Challenges, Games, and Photo Stories 109 09-07-2021 09:59 AM
Motion Blur Shots StevenMatchett Photographic Technique 4 09-27-2013 08:37 AM
Trouble with motion blur Crust Pentax K-01 10 02-11-2013 04:02 PM
Motion Blur Portrait jmbradd Post Your Photos! 2 03-11-2009 01:30 PM
Motion blur Donald Post Your Photos! 3 04-30-2007 07:23 PM



All times are GMT -7. The time now is 09:22 AM. | See also: NikonForums.com, CanonForums.com part of our network of photo forums!
  • Red (Default)
  • Green
  • Gray
  • Dark
  • Dark Yellow
  • Dark Blue
  • Old Red
  • Old Green
  • Old Gray
  • Dial-Up Style
Hello! It's great to see you back on the forum! Have you considered joining the community?
register
Creating a FREE ACCOUNT takes under a minute, removes ads, and lets you post! [Dismiss]
Top