This Soft look

MITVIZ · Jun 5, 2013

480sparky · Jun 5, 2013

I don't see any that I would consider 'soft'. The overlying theme, however, seems to be broad, diffuse lighting.

OceanMetTheSky · Jun 5, 2013

It looks more like a work of paintshop pro/photoshop rather than the camera technique.... Kind of looks like a Gaussian blur to me.

Gavjenks · Jun 5, 2013

Well, it looks like:

1) The biggest thing he seems to be doing is slightly to significantly overexposing, so that the light skin tones (usually the brightest parts of the composition here) sort of run together as one big overblown highlight. Also will hide some blemishes. I personally hate this, because it is hiding detail and making them look like... well, featureless, overexposed blobs which they are. But obviously you disagree, and if you want to try your hand at this style, do that.

2) Not using the lower end of the dynamic range of the jpeg. Sort of similar to #1. Exaggerates the blown out creaminess even more, and lowers contrast, which will look smoother. Go into photoshop, open up levels (control L), and slide the very bottom left black slider a little toward the right in "Output levels." or do the same thing more responsibly using curves if you know how. Also don't like it much personally, but it seems to be one thing he's consistently doing. In other words, blacks are never anywhere close to being black.

3) These images are very grainy, which adds a certain sort of softness in a way, by sort of lowering the detail contrast. Going to the opposite extreme (aggressively using reduce noise filters) would look even smoother, but also looks more intentional. Grain is sort of a sneaky way to reduce detail contrast without making it look like you wanted to do that or that it's because of the grain (thus, the viewer might attribute it more to the model, not to airbrushing/photoshop/high ISO). Don't like it either, personally. Makes it looks instagram-y and low-end.

4) It's quite possible that a soft focus effect was specifically added in photoshop, to the entire image or selectively, in some cases. Not sure. if so, it was subtle. Do this by duplicating the image as a new layer, adding a lot of gaussian blur to it, and then setting transparency to something very loe like 10-15%, to add a softness without losing the underlying sharpness of the other layer. If you then erase out the parts of the image on the soft layer that you don't want as soft, you can limit the softness to the bodies to make it subtler.

5) Very low saturation without being black and white. This also lends softness IMO. Also can look instagram-y in some cases, including some of the above, but not all of them.

This is all so consistent that it is pretty obviously intentional. But it is also largely gimmicky and makes me feel icky.

Edit: And yes, diffuse lighting as mentioned above. That is very obvious now that you mention it, actually. Diffuse lighting is a technique I actually recommend, unlike most of the other things he's doing. Soft focus isn't so bad, either.

tirediron · Jun 6, 2013

I'm going to go with: Diffuse, almost flat lighting and a Photoshop/Lightroom action.

amolitor · Jun 6, 2013

Mostly, though, it's hot girls.

Big giant softsomething camera right. Sometimes it's a little higher, sometimes it's a little lower. Probably another one left turned down a bit in some of these. Looks like it failed to fire in one of them, or maybe the photographer was going for a dramatic look in that one.

sometimes we oversmooth the skin a bit, sometimes we add a fake distressed film look. Embarassingly, sometimes we fake-distress the film in exactly the same pattern in two shots.

Mostly, super hot girls. That's probably what you're seeing

MITVIZ · Jun 6, 2013

Thanks for the replies guys, i think i will try this out today with some images i have in photoshop, i love this guy's work and being that i am not a photographer myself i dont know what to look for but i simply just love these images

Gavjenks · Jun 6, 2013

MITVIZ said:
Thanks for the replies guys, i think i will try this out today with some images i have in photoshop, i love this guy's work and being that i am not a photographer myself i dont know what to look for but i simply just love these images

Don't forget to choose the images with the super hottest girls