Some Photoshop advice please!

sunlioness · Jun 11, 2008

This is a photo of Theo, my cat I took recently.
It's a bit blurred and not lively enough cause I didn't use any flash cause that would scare him away.
Any advice on what I could do in Photoshop to make it better?
Thanx

Overread · Jun 11, 2008

hmm well saving a blurred shot is very tricky.
First try the Unsharpen Mask - this sharpens photos and is better generally than the sharpen tools.
Set it to 0.8 radius and threshold 2. As for the amount slider move it so as to get the photo sharp, but not overly sharp.

After that the only other way is to use downsizing - take the original photo and (for examples sake) lets say its 3800 pixels on the longest side.
Resize it to 2000 - whilst keeping aspect ratio - and then run the unsharpen mask again (about 70%ish I find is a good ballpark amount here). Then resize again to 1000 pixels on the longerst side and unsharpen again (again about 70%). That should give you a good sharper result form a larger original.
ps - I that is also the sharpening method I use when posting photos to the web - resizing always reduces the overall sharpness of a photo so its always good to sharpen them up a little after.

Also here is a site with some very good and understandable editing advice
http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/articles.htm

kundalini · Jun 11, 2008

No offense, but personally I would use this as a lesson to improve your photographic skills on rather than trying to salvage in PS.

As far as flash is concerned, do you have an external flash? There is a trick/tip for shooting flash with animals...and people with a hotshoe flash.

Sw1tchFX · Jun 11, 2008

For flash photography, if you had your flash in manual, there would be no preflashes, thus nothing to scare the kitty away.

Out of focus is out of focus, impossible to fix without shooting another photograph.

You can set your white balance to whatever the appropriate color temperature would be, but that's really about it.