Saving Shots Compromised by Atmospherics

[Warren D]

I think we've all been there, the shots look good on the lcd but get them home and they just lack the snap/sharpness they should. We know the lenses are ok, and we realize we got bit by the atmosphere, heat waves rising even on cold days. I've been playing with some of my shots that show these atmospheric effects and have found that Topaz Sharpen AI works amazingly well. The attached shot was blurry but the osprey sharpened up nicely. The out of focus BG does look odd, I could get around this by masking and/or selecting just the subject for sharpening treatment.

 

[Butlerkid]

Sharpen AI is fine if you mask for the bird. I'd suggest blurring the background.....not sharpening it. That would give a more 3D appearance to the image.

 

[DRwyoming]

The out of focus BG does look odd, I could get around this by masking and/or selecting just the subject for sharpening treatment.

As Karen posted above you can mask while still in the Topaz tool. But another approach that's pretty simple for a LR/PS user is to do all your major crops and edits prior to sending the file to Topaz and then edit the image as a copy with LR adjustments. After Topaz has done its thing and the sharpened image is back in LR I'll select both the pre-Topaz and post-Topaz images in LR and use the Photo menu to edit them as layers in PS. Making sure the topaz sharpened image is on top of the layer stack I'll add a mask to that top layer and then paint black over the background areas where I don't want any topaz sharpening applied so the original image shows through in those areas.

I find it a bit more natural to do my masking in PS as it's real easy to switch the paintbrush color back to white (keyboard shortcut X to swap foreground background color) if I've masked out too much and want to reveal a bit more of the sharpened layer.

When it's all done to my liking I'll flatten the layers and save it back to LR for any further edits or for export.