A good digital photo can be over sharp to begin with and so sharpening is not always your first priority. Then again pictures do sometimes come out “less than perfectly focused.” The temptation is to think, “why not sharpen this blurred photo?” But no, everyone tells you, you can’t fix an out of focus shot. And you think, “then why all the tools?”
Out of focus shots, such as below left, can be made serviceable, as shown at right, with Smart Sharpen or Unsharp Mask or there’d be no need for those filters. It’s good to be able to recognize which photos can be brought back to something usable and some basics to make it happen.
Above left the image is blurry overall, and more so where the anemone’s appendages are moving. And that’s what will make this fix work. To look realistic the background doesn’t need to be sharp and the appendages can’t look sharp. So like blurring the shrimp image in the previous post about masking filters, the entire image can be duplicated to a new layer and sharpened with the aim of making the center of the anemone look good. Then similar to the shrimp example, the sharpened background and whipping appendages can be painted out on a layer mask leaving only the center of the subject sharpened, but still looking natural and un-retouched.
to the new home of my underwater scuba photo galleries. Read on and discover why Photoshop should be every underwater photographer's best friend.