Posts Tagged ‘Soft focus filter’

Applying digital filters to photos, particularly photos taken using a phone, is extremely popular. You can achieve many effects in modern software that previously required photographers to use a physical filter in front of the camera's lens.

However, this doesn't mean you should dismiss the use of physical filters. Some effects can't be replicated in software. And even if the effect can be duplicated, it still won't give quite the same result. In this article we'll look at some creative reasons why you should give physical filters a try.

Soft focus filters are used for reducing the local contrast in an image, and sometimes also for adding a kind of dreamy glow. The main use for this is in portrait photography - the filter reduces the appearance of fine detail such as skin pores, giving a smoothing effect.

The effect is not the same as just blurring an image. A good quality soft focus filter reduces the contrast of fine detail rather than blurring it away.

Soft focus effects were often used in Hollywood films in the 1950s for scenes with the leading actress. If you look closely when watching these films you can clearly see how the look of the image changes when a scene alternates between showing the male lead and the female lead.

Because of their heavy use in Hollywood, the look given by a soft focus filter is sometimes referred to as the 'Hollywood look'. In this article we'll look at several ways you can produce the same effect in your own photography.

There are a wide range of different photographic filters available. These filters usually screw on to the end of your camera's lens, and alter the image in some way. There are filters for darkening the sky, filters for cutting down on the light level, and filters for changing the color of an image.

But some of these filters can be quite expensive, so in this article I want to look at some cheap alternatives. Of course the alternatives aren't as convenient or as high quality as a proper camera filter. But if you can't afford the full price of a proper filter, a cheap alternative may well do the job.