Focus Tools
Now focus your attention on the Focus tools. These tools, Blur and Sharpen, are great for touching up an image, fixing tiny flaws, and bringing items into sharper contrast. They can't save a really bad photo, but they can do wonders for one that's just a little bit off. Sharpen can increase the contrast to create the illusion of sharper focus, whereas Blur is most useful to rid the background of unwanted clutter and to deemphasize parts of the picture that you don't want viewers to notice. The Focus tools can be seen in Figure 9.4.
Figure 9.4. The Focus tools, with Smudge thrown in for good measure.
The Blur Tool
The Blur tool, simply put, creates blurs in images. By blurs, I mean a softening or evening out of pixel values. Select the Blur tool from the toolbox. The Tool Options bar will show you the Blur tool's options (see Figure 9.5). When you are working with the Blur tool, you can temporarily select the Sharpen tool (and vice versa) by pressing Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows). The Sample All Layers option is available only when your image has more than one layer.
Figure 9.5. The Blur Tool Options bar.
Options for the Blur and Sharpen tools are much the same as those for the Smudge tool described earlier. You have the same choices of blending mode and the same Strength settings.
Figure 9.6 shows a close look at the Blur tool's effect. The flowers were perfect, but the leaves looked as if they'd been hit with a weed whacker. Some careful blurring can hide the damage. Figure 9.7 shows the picture before and after retouching.
Figure 9.6. The Blur tool in use.
Figure 9.7. Before blurring (top) and after (bottom).
Make sure that, as you blur, you cover the entire area that you intend to blur. A missed spot stands out very conspicuously. Also don't forget that you can change the size of your Brush tool by choosing a different brush from the Brushes menu.
For the Blur tool, I recommend using a brush with a soft edge, but not for the Sharpen tool. When sharpening, I prefer to use a small brush with hard edges so that I know exactly where I am. You'll also find it helpful to work with a magnified view of your picture, just so you have better control over the tool.
The Sharpen Tool
The Sharpen tool is the exact opposite of the Blur tool. Where the Blur tool softens pixel values, the Sharpen tool hardens them and brings them into greater relief by increasing the contrast between adjacent pixels. Because of their equal-but-opposite relationship, they share a space on the toolbox, with a pop-up that lets you choose either one, or the Smudge tool. You can also activate the Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge tools by pressing R (for
retouching ?). Press Shift+R to toggle among the three. Figure 9.8 shows a dogwood blossom, before and after having its center sharpened.
Figure 9.8. Applying the Sharpen tool. Compare the area inside the circle to the same picture before sharpening.
Sharpening is best done in very small doses. If you go over a section too much or have the Strength set too high, you can end up burning the color out of an image, which will probably make it look worse than it did initially. See Figure 9.9 for an example of over-sharpening.
Figure 9.9. Too much sharpening.
Remember, too, that not even the magic of Photoshop can put back what wasn't there originally. Always work with the clearest, sharpest pictures you can manage. Rather than trying to salvage a bad scan, do it again. If your photo is fuzzy all over, instead of trying to sharpen it, set it aside until you start working with filters (see Hour 15).
Try it YourselfUsing the Focus Tools Let's take a quick break here and try out these tools. Open any convenient picture in Photoshop and follow these steps:
|