“Soften” Photo

We can soften an image to give a bit of a romantic feel to it.

In other words, the edges of the various objects in the image can be more rounded or smooth in nature.

We can do this using special lenses with the camera, but it costs too much. So, we can do it in “PSP”, and this costs us nothing.

To soften a picture we have to first open it.

Then we click the “Adjust” button in the menu bar, and move the mouse pointer over the “Softness”option in the drop-down menu.

A submenu appears with three options, “Soft Focus”, “Soften” and “Soften More.”

The second and the third options seem quite clear to me as they are used to soften the picture.

The objective of the first option, “Soft focus” is to replace the expensive lenses.

We will go through the various options found in this dialog:

“Softness”: It determines the strength of the adjustment. At lower percentages, the photo is softened only by a small amount. At higher percentages, the photo appears blurred.
“Edge Importance”: It determines how much softening is to be applied to the edges within the photo. At lower percentages, the edges are softened. At higher percentages, the edge details are retained, i.e, less softening is applied to them.

“Amount”: It determines the strength of the halo effect. At lower values, the halo is added only to very bright areas in the photo. At higher values, a halo effect is created around all bright areas.
“Halo size“: It determines the size of the halo. At lower values, the halo is small. At higher values, the halo size is large.
“Halo Visibility”: It determines the extent to which the halo is visible. At lower values, the halo effect is weak. At higher values, the halo effect is more pronounced.
With the option “Include scattered light,” you can soften bright areas in the photos background.
Click the “OK” button when you’re done.

If we work with selections only the selected part will be adjusted.
We will talk about selections in a later lesson.

 

Photo “Sharpening”

When we move the camera at the time of the recording, it can lead to blurry photos. This problem is easily solved by sharpening the picture.
“PSP” gives us several options which sharpens the photos. You can apply the “Sharpness” option to a selection or to the entire image.

Click the “Adjust” button in the menu bar, and move the mouse pointer over the “Sharpness” optoin in the drop-down menu.

This opens a submenu where we have four options:
“High-Pass Sharpen”, “Sharpen”, “Sharpen More” and “Unsharp Mask”.

The options two and three are easy to understand.

The fourth option, “Unsharp Mask” is used to apply a sharpening of high and low frequency.

In the box “Radius“, we specify a value between 0.01 to 100.00. This determines the distance within which different pixels are sharpened. Photos with close-up subjects and softer details usually require higher “Radius” settings; photos with lots of finer details usually require lower “Radius” settings.
In the box “Strength“, we enter a value between 1 and 100 to specify the overall strength of the command.
In the box “Clipping “, we enter a value between 1 to 100 to indicate the lightness values of the adjacent pixels that have to be strengthened.

This all seems a bit complicated, but its really very easy to understand once you start playing with the settings.
Click the “OK” button when you are satisfied with the settings.

 

Now, a word about the “High Pass Sharpen” dialog.
High-pass sharpens the contrast, edges and areas with lots of detail are retained while the rest of the image remains neutral.

In the box “Radius“, we set the values between 0.01 to 100.00. This is the distance within which different pixels are sharpened.
Photos with close-up subjects and softer details usually require higher “Radius” settings; photos with lots of finer details usually require lower “Radius” settings.
In the box “Strength“, we set values from 1 to 100 which specifies the overall strength of the command.

In the “Blend mode” drop-down list, select one of the following options to determine how the high-frequency sharpened areas are blended into the original image area:

“Overlay”:It removes the neutral tones in the image and makes edge details stand out.

“Hard Light”: It produces greater contrast than the “Overlay” option

“Soft Light”:It produces a softer-looking photo.

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