NEED TO SAVE THIS PHOTO!

Overread · Jul 3, 2015

You're asking the wrong questions here.
You're asking how to save the photo; but to all practical intents its unsavable. So what you need to do is pause and go back to the photo and give us a lot more detail. How did you take - what method did you use? Aperture, shutter speed, ISO - metering mode, camera mode, autofocus, tripod or handheld etc.... Detail all the technical details.

Furthermore as you took a LOT it sounds like then we would want to see a couple of others that also failed and hear their details too. That you spent ages and still failed suggests that there is something wrong with your method that you are overlooking or unaware of. By providing more detail (check my signature for more tips) you can best get feedback that will help you identify and fix the problem so that next time you DO get the shot you want .

bianni · Jul 3, 2015

Here is an edit but it' better to reshoot

wfooshee · Jul 4, 2015

There are some "scene" modes that look for the closest subject to focus on, and that may be what happened here.

Scene modes take control away from you, and usually in ways you don't even know about. They are the most under-described features of any camera that I've ever seen (I so wanted to say "scene" there....)

Get AWAY from scene modes, they are NOT useful. The most automation you should use is A or S for metered auto-exposure, and in this instance, I don't think even that would work, as it's so strongly backlit. (Oh, of course auto-focus is OK, but even that failed you here, because you didn't have control over what the camera selected for focus.)

TCampbell · Jul 5, 2015

As a learning lesson, consider how this happened... depth of field is too shallow (using a higher f-stop would have helped) and also the camera focused the fabric in the lower part of the image. If you allow your camera to pick it's focus point, it'll typically use the point which can achieve focus at the nearest focusing distance. To avoid this, you should pick a focus point which you position on your subject's eyes to lock focus and use a depth of field that gives you everything you need in sharp focus. Depending on lens and focus distance you might have eliminated this by using something around f/8 or even f/11.

Here's Photoshop CC's "smart sharpen" filter (applied at 225% sharpen with a radius of 2.5)

There's not much you can do to bring back the out-of-focus areas without it starting to look like a painting. Look at the sunflowers in the background and you can see this starting to happen. I backed off the sharpening because I already think it looks over-sharpened -- but I was trying to push it to see what photoshop could do with your subject's face.

You might actually consider just turning it into something that looks like a painting. Corel Painter is a little over $400, but Painter Essentials is about $50 and it'll do this. They have a feature called "photo painting" which uses your photo as the base, and then applies brush-strokes in the style you want (and using the brush type you want) to produce something that looks painted (lots of painting styles).

Claudillama · Jul 5, 2015

TCampbell said:
As a learning lesson, consider how this happened... depth of field is too shallow (using a higher f-stop would have helped) and also the camera focused the fabric in the lower part of the image. If you allow your camera to pick it's focus point, it'll typically use the point which can achieve focus at the nearest focusing distance. To avoid this, you should pick a focus point which you position on your subject's eyes to lock focus and use a depth of field that gives you everything you need in sharp focus. Depending on lens and focus distance you might have eliminated this by using something around f/8 or even f/11.

Here's Photoshop CC's "smart sharpen" filter (applied at 225% sharpen with a radius of 2.5)

There's not much you can do to bring back the out-of-focus areas without it starting to look like a painting. Look at the sunflowers in the background and you can see this starting to happen. I backed off the sharpening because I already think it looks over-sharpened -- but I was trying to push it to see what photoshop could do with your subject's face.

You might actually consider just turning it into something that looks like a painting. Corel Painter is a little over $400, but Painter Essentials is about $50 and it'll do this. They have a feature called "photo painting" which uses your photo as the base, and then applies brush-strokes in the style you want (and using the brush type you want) to produce something that looks painted (lots of painting styles).

View attachment 104647

wow that's pretty impressive!! thank you so much for trying and explaining how you did this! Will come in handy in the future!!

Claudillama · Jul 5, 2015

TCampbell said:
As a learning lesson, consider how this happened... depth of field is too shallow (using a higher f-stop would have helped) and also the camera focused the fabric in the lower part of the image. If you allow your camera to pick it's focus point, it'll typically use the point which can achieve focus at the nearest focusing distance. To avoid this, you should pick a focus point which you position on your subject's eyes to lock focus and use a depth of field that gives you everything you need in sharp focus. Depending on lens and focus distance you might have eliminated this by using something around f/8 or even f/11.

Here's Photoshop CC's "smart sharpen" filter (applied at 225% sharpen with a radius of 2.5)

There's not much you can do to bring back the out-of-focus areas without it starting to look like a painting. Look at the sunflowers in the background and you can see this starting to happen. I backed off the sharpening because I already think it looks over-sharpened -- but I was trying to push it to see what photoshop could do with your subject's face.

You might actually consider just turning it into something that looks like a painting. Corel Painter is a little over $400, but Painter Essentials is about $50 and it'll do this. They have a feature called "photo painting" which uses your photo as the base, and then applies brush-strokes in the style you want (and using the brush type you want) to produce something that looks painted (lots of painting styles).

View attachment 104647