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Any advice for trying to touch up an out of focus shot?
I’m editing an interview. The shooter is slightly out of focus. I’m wondering what, if anything, I can do to improve it in post. I’ve used the sharpen effect in FCP X. Anything else? I’m guessing the answer is no…..but that’s why this forum rocks.
Attached is a screen shot of the interview: outoffocusshot.png
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5 Replies
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Try publishing the “Unsharp Mask” filter from Motion, and then draw a mask around his face or even his eyes, to limit the filter to that area.
Here’s a quick mockup:
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I’ll second the unsharp mask. Even just sharpening the eyes can be enough to hide that it’s slightly out of focus.
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Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland -
Is there a reason to do that and not to just sharpen the whole thing?
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Over sharpening can look pretty fake. If you only sharpen the eyes, and maybe the face, it will look more natural. There’s no reason to sharpen what’s already sharp as it may cause “ringing” in the video.
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Besides the sharpening, another technique a sometimes works is to layer additional versions of the shot, and adjust the highs, mids, darks separately, even applying the sharpen filter to only one such “channel” in the luminance. Then you adjust the opacity of each layer to get a pleasant result. it’s not really *sharpening*, but making a difference in “apparent sharpness”.
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