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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Are there focus-enhancing programs?

Stephen Pruitt

Stephen Pruitt

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Hi all. . .

Let's assume we got a great performance but the shot ends up pretty soft in a spot or two and there's no way to cut away. Are there any programs that can realistically sharpen focus on otherwise soft shots? And if so, are any of these programs available as plug-ins for Premiere Pro? Finally, what are the trade-offs involved in using such a fix (if it indeed exists at all).

Thanks much.

Stephen
 
If memory serves, I think Adobe is coming with something like that in Photoshop... probably the next release. But as far as something for moving pics, not that I know about. But if they can do it to a single image, eventually they will be able to do it to moving images.
 
my suggestion: try to animate a little sharpening in the spot and see where that gets you. otherwise, animate the blur to be consistent, then apply subtle sharpening over the entire shot. anything more serious than that calls for lots of $$$'s in post or a reshoot. unfortunately, there's not any magic solution to cure focus issues.

elsie, the thing your thinking of calculates camera shake and tries to correct the motion blur for it. as far as i'm aware, that will not help shots that are simply out of focus.
 
Furnace on Discreet and now on Nuke is a bit helpfull on this subjects.
 
An out of focus shot is essentially a low-passed image where spatial frequencies beyond a certain point (which point depends on the degree of softness, the extent to which the shot was 'buzzed') are not recorded.

These high frequencies are impossible to recover.

You can do various kinds of 'sharpening' passes that might, if used correctly, help make a slightly soft shot less noticeable.

I'm not a post expert. In terms of physics, it would be possible to synthesise high frequency information based on the existing information, in the same way that in sound mixing, exciters and sub frequency enhancers can be used to synthesise harmonics and sub-harmonics that are not really there. If this technology existed, and I don't know if it does, it would help lessen the perception of softness and would be most effective if used on subtly out of focus material for short durations.
 
Yep, Martin. . . that's EXACTLY what I need about now!

Too bad it only exists in the movies. . .

. . . just not my movies.

:-(

Stephen
 
Oh Martin, thank you for the link to the video! Brilliant! About a quarter of my work involves analyzing surveillance camera videos. Some of it is straightforward photogrammetry, but I love it when a client wants a video "enhanced". No problem, they see it done in the movies all the time. It must be real. I'll just call my contact at the FBI... Seriously though, I can usually help a bit, but I don't have any magic mojo. Yet.
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
Let's assume we got a great performance but the shot ends up pretty soft in a spot or two and there's no way to cut away. Are there any programs that can realistically sharpen focus on otherwise soft shots? And if so, are any of these programs available as plug-ins for Premiere Pro? Finally, what are the trade-offs involved in using such a fix (if it indeed exists at all).
Click to expand...
With most of these, what you wind up with is over-enhanced soft footage that looks real "edgy" and has a lot of aliasing and artifacts. Plus it tends to enhance any noise and grain already in the exposure.

In some cases, apparent sharpness can be improved just by adding contrast and very mild enhancement. But Paul above is correct: there ain't much you can do. I've worked on many, many TV and feature projects where they shot 10 takes: 9 of them with great focus, and 1 with a great performance and bad focus... and you can guess which one gets into the final.
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
Hi all. . .

Let's assume we got a great performance but the shot ends up pretty soft in a spot or two and there's no way to cut away. Are there any programs that can realistically sharpen focus on otherwise soft shots? And if so, are any of these programs available as plug-ins for Premiere Pro? Finally, what are the trade-offs involved in using such a fix (if it indeed exists at all).

Thanks much.



Stephen
Click to expand...

How long is you shot? I can give it a try in our flame. if you give me a select of the r3d.
 
that's the point of the new "light field" sensors tehy're developing that capture everything and allow you to choose your focus in post but to my knowledge there's nothing like that yet
 
Saw a 'making-of' on the 'Rules of Attraction' BluRay http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292644/ that featured a very cool difficult scene (definitely worth a watch. I saw his technique stolen recently on a tv commercial). Unfortunately, Avary noticed after shooting that it was out of focus - and he was able to save it to some degree (still a bit out of focus, but better). You might try using NeatVideo first to remove any noise, as you don't want to sharpen noise.
 
paulherrin said:
...

elsie, the thing your thinking of calculates camera shake and tries to correct the motion blur for it. as far as i'm aware, that will not help shots that are simply out of focus.
Click to expand...

Paul, I may have dreamed this but I really think I saw something, and I thought it was here on Reduser, that suggested Adobe had actually managed to take a single out-of-focus photo into Photoshop and re-focus it. But I have no link to anything relating to that, so it could be as you say.
 
Elsie N said:
Paul, I may have dreamed this but I really think I saw something, and I thought it was here on Reduser, that suggested Adobe had actually managed to take a single out-of-focus photo into Photoshop and re-focus it. But I have no link to anything relating to that, so it could be as you say.
Click to expand...

Elsie, I think this is what your talking about. I saw this a while ago...

 
Matt Ryan said:
Elsie, I think this is what your talking about. I saw this a while ago...

Click to expand...

Matt, yes. This is what I was thinking of and according to this it is as Paul said and probably not what the OP was asking for. Thanks for the memory correction.
 
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