Soft Focus: Large Format and Photoshop…

[jim kitchen]

Dear Group,

While sitting back and watching all the great soft focus images, and how masterful the authors are, I decided to test whether I could mimic that effect within Photoshop, so I thought I should give this simple method a whirl, since I do not have a soft focus lens in my backpack nor do I wish to have a lens capable of this fabulous effect sitting idly by.

I thought that Photoshop might be able to do me a favour.

For those of you that might be interested, I attached is a small PDF file that demonstrates the effect, and the procedure. My apologizes to those that own a lens capable of this effective specialty without using any concocted digital trickery. The demonstration images are at the end of the PDF file.

The file is available here: http://largeformatgrouppdf.jimkitche...ocus_Notes.pdf


jim k

[welly]

That's pretty effective. Good work and nice tutorial.

[Bob Salomon]

There is soft focus and then there is diffusion. To my eye this is more of diffusion then soft focus. A true soft focus lens, like the Imagon, diffuse highlight into the shadows and causes spectral highlights to bloom in the shot. I don't see the spectrals doing anything in your example.
Check work by photographers like Frank Cricchio or the old master Imagon portrait shooters like Tibor Horvath or Monte Zucker for examples of soft focus Imagon images and soft focus Softar images.

[bob carnie]

Wow I haven't heard Tibor Horvath's name mentioned for years. I printed for him in the late 70's and he was a lovely man and lots of fun to work with. I actually shot one wedding for him and hated the experience but he was great to work with in the darkroom.

There is soft focus and then there is diffusion. To my eye this is more of diffusion then soft focus. A true soft focus lens, like the Imagon, diffuse highlight into the shadows and causes spectral highlights to bloom in the shot. I don't see the spectrals doing anything in your example.
Check work by photographers like Frank Cricchio or the old master Imagon portrait shooters like Tibor Horvath or Monte Zucker for examples of soft focus Imagon images and soft focus Softar images.

[Bob Salomon]

Wow I haven't heard Tibor Horvath's name mentioned for years. I printed for him in the late 70's and he was a lovely man and lots of fun to work with. I actually shot one wedding for him and hated the experience but he was great to work with in the darkroom.

I got to work 23 seminars with Monte around the USA one year and two years later spent 18 weekends with Tibor at his seminars in the US.

They were quite an experience.

So you got to shoot at that greenhouse he used?

[jim kitchen]

Dear Bob,

You may be correct about the term "soft focus" but do I not use these lenses in my portfolio, so I would not know whether soft focus and, or diffusion has the same meaning. Then again I do not propose that this method is a replacement for a lens, and as a matter of fact I made that comment in the first line of the PDF. This document simply demonstrates a soft focus event using Photoshop, which happened to be my only intent...

The process seems to work as a baseline event, and any creative open mind could probably benefit using this technique, while they add or create digital features or trickery that could mimic spectral effects.

Again, thank you for your comments...

jim k

[Jim Edmond]

Jim's technique might be useful with small sensor digital cameras where intentionally throwing the background out of focus is difficult (if not impossible).

[Peter De Smidt]

Thanks Jim.

[bob carnie]

Bob
I worked for Tibor for around 5 years, I was his custom printer for that period, I shot one wedding and realized I was not made for the wedding world.
I do not remember his green house, His home had a lot of natural light though.
His studio on Eglington was eventually taken over by Sam Scirrino who is a good friend but it was more a traditional electronic flash studio.

I also met Monte Zuker in 1974 and then later 80's and Mr Horvath and Mr Zucker were good friends, it seemed.
Thats a lot of workshops to be with Mr Horvath, I bet you have some fond memories of him.

When I printed exhibition or portraits for him , he would insist on being in the darkroom with me.. He wore the most distinctive colonge you could imagine* so I always knew when he arrived* and we batched his work so that he would be with me for the afternoon.
Mornings I would test all the negs to within 1 or 2pts correction for his colour and then he would be phoned and he would come over and make his grand entrance.
Everyone at the lab, loved Tibor and it would take him awhile to get into the darkroom.

He never told me how to dodge and burn, but would just talk to me non stop about his past and trips he went on and we worked through his negatives.
He had a funny habit of ramming his hand into the light path very quickly on ever final print I made. I would ask him wtf is that all about and he said to me that by doing that he would insure every image had his hand involved. Sometimes I would have to correct his touch a bit but we both joked about this every time he came in.


As you can tell , I really admired and respected Tibor and thanks for bringing his name forward, because he was great and well before his time.

Bob

I got to work 23 seminars with Monte around the USA one year and two years later spent 18 weekends with Tibor at his seminars in the US.

They were quite an experience.

So you got to shoot at that greenhouse he used?

[Bob Salomon]

My fondest memories of Tibor was trying to convince him to meter for the shados. He insisted on metering for the highlights and then try to get detail in the shadows. But it worked for him. The other was doing a seminar with him in Pittsburgh and he ran well overtime answering everyone's questions. So I missed the last plane out of Pittsburgh and had to sit in the waiting room with all our Broncolor flashunits till the next morning. Having that much equipment meant that you could not go to sleep. It had to be watched. So you drink a lot of caffine and my drink of choice was a Coke. Fortunately the drink cart was open for most of the night but I started to chew on the ice cubes. They seemed kind of crunchy though. Looked in the cup and saw that there were big insects in the ice. Went to the vendor and we looked in the ice chest. It was full of bugs.

Didn't go to work the next day!