(Hey, here's a new idea... Tutorial Tuesday on Wednesday! Doesn't that sound great? LOL! I had this post all ready and then forgot to activate it yesterday. My bad!)
Don't you HATE it when this happens? You take what you hope is a darling photo, go home and pop your memory card into your computer and find this...
Gah! Put this blurry photo on your scrapbook page and you're doomed. Actually, odds are you'll never use it at all. I used to even delete them completely till I tinkered around and came up with this technique. Yes, it's true, I actually figured this one out on my own. Yay me! This is how I personally do it, but every photo is a little different so you'll have to adjust your settings as you go.
First, run an unsharp filter. This was my settings.
My photo is dark (which is why it ended up blurry in the first place. Sun is setting earlier and earlier these days. Sob!) so I'm going to adjust the shadow and highlights.
And these are the settings that worked for my photo...
And here's where I'm sitting right now... starting to improve already.
Pretty grainy, so I'm going to soften it up with the diffuse glow filter.
Now it's really looking better, but these sweet faces are way too grainy for my liking.
I'm going to fix this with my blur tool.
And set the strength at 20%.
Using a very soft brush I brush over their faces, avoiding the eyes, till that darn grain is gone. I take my time with this step (because I have to have everything just perfect, but for some reason the effect isn't showing very well here. Probably because the save-for-web is pixelating it too much. You'll just have to trust me that their faces are smooth and UNgrainy, if that is indeed a word)
Adjust the curves a bit...
And end up with this...
And I've made a darn fine photo. Check out the difference...
I hope you enjoyed this! Come back next Tuesday for another helpful tutorial!
I used Heather's Somebunny Loves You and Beary Good Friends kits for this page.
wow!!! that is an amazing difference!! total transformation and what an easy to follow tut! thank you!
Posted by: lizzyfizzy | September 25, 2008 at 03:46 PM
awesome tut, thanks for the tips
Posted by: meems | September 25, 2008 at 04:02 PM
WOW! Thanks, another way of doing this. I have a photo of Levi that is really blury now maybe I can save it?
Posted by: Nonnie917 | September 25, 2008 at 05:07 PM
that is fantastic :) thanks so much for sharing :)
Posted by: TeresaP | September 26, 2008 at 12:29 PM
Amazing! Thanks so much for showing us this. My camera has been acting goofy lately and not autofocusing correctly all the time so it is most appreciated.
Posted by: scrapsofcandy | October 21, 2008 at 04:13 PM
OMG -- this is awesome. I am going to try this tonight. Thanks Sweetie.
Posted by: Laura M | October 25, 2008 at 04:13 PM
wow! thanks so much for sharing!
Posted by: Leslie | October 27, 2008 at 10:20 PM