Whats up with these photos

joebloggs123

Hi, I have been around a few wedding shows today and in a lot of photo books today the photos were all soft and blurry like this:


I prefer photos looking clear like this:


why do so many have the photos like the first one? and what are they doing to them?

Thecageyone

There is an effect some people like called soft focus, looks like that.

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/soft-focus/

It's either done by creating a layer and using a blur filter in photoshop, than overlaying it and adjusting opacity. Or, simply reducing the clarity and contrast in lightroom. I don't personaly like it myself, but different strokes and all that.

Arciphel

Jesus wept...

falsers

When I got married I had one fella tell me that was the "romantic" shot. Looked like vaseline smeared on a lense to me

PCPhoto

its soft focus - the idea.... I believe... is so that the "lines and wrinkles" do not stand out as much.

Canon have a 135mm soft focus lens where you can turn on/off the soft focus.... Personally I prefer little or not post processing and I like my images to be sharp.

magicbastarder

i've seen worse than the above. not as immediately obvious, but a bit more disturbing. eyes and teeth whitened, wrinkles removed from skin, etc.; the wedding party looked like extras from interview with a vampire.

pullandbang

falsers wrote: »

Looked like vaseline smeared on a lense to me

Funnily enough in the days before Photoshop, that's what some photographers did to achieve this effect.

colblimp

Arciphel wrote: »

Jesus wept...

So would you if you had nails through your hands and feet!

Trigger76

Im not a pro, I hate wedding photos (no offence to anyone) and I think nearly always the work is over priced....anyway....

First one is awful in my opinion. Aside from the composition which I strongly dislike, and aside from the posed nature of the pic ,.... The soft focus idea should be used in moderation. Ive no problem with anyone using a mask sparingly to knock out a few crows feet, maybe brighten up the aul pearly not so whites etc but an all out assault on clarity and definition wouldnt be my cuppa tae at all.

2nd one, I wouldnt be a fan of at all, but if youre gonna take that shot and present it to a client .... at least for the love of all things symmetrical.....position yourself so you can actually be symmetrical and level(or edit to be so).


T

Trigger76

magicbastarder wrote: »

i've seen worse than the above. not as immediately obvious, but a bit more disturbing. eyes and teeth whitened, wrinkles removed from skin, etc.; the wedding party looked like extras from interview with a vampire.

hahahh thats a brilliant description.

Crispin

I prefer my photos to be straight.... :cool:

joebloggs123

Never noticed the angles.
I just picked them from the first sites i came across when searching. The first one is not the worst I noticed yesterday but was an example of the type of photo i wanted to show.
So many wedding books were riddled full of photos like that and I think it's horrible. There might be a photo where this is really good effect but not an entire album full of it.
At least now I know how to describe it when getting a photographer to make sure they dont do it with mine.

Thanks everyone.

Heebie

The example you uploaded really just looks like an incredibly ****e photoshop job. The woman's skin looks like it belongs on a muppet. =O (and I don't mean muppet that did the photoshopping!)
Just.. YIKES!

The guy's hair looks like there was a ton of unevenly done dodging, it's overall blurry.. maybe someone trying to use a gaussian blur to get rid of the pores in the woman's skin?

It really doesn't look like soft focus.. maybe "selective soft focus" or "selective in all the wrong ways soft focus".. it's really horrid.

I hope the photographer isn't reading this thread.

the one in front of the church is much nicer.

smelltheglove

The first looks possibly like the glamour action in paint shop pro at 100%