soft glow

joshhuntnm

here is what I did to this one:
created a new layer
blurred it a bunch
reduce the opacity to 30%
select the eyes and mouth
create another layer, putting this one--the eyes and mouth on top
oh, and cloned out a little slobber.
all this to create a little soft glow. it is more pronounced (for some reason) before I uploaded it to smugmug)

ian408

Cute shot. One I'm sure you'll enjoy sharing at the wedding

What you're seeing is sharpness. You can turn it off by selecting "Gallery
Customization", scroll down to the sharpness section and set accordingly.

joshhuntnm

so smugmug defaults to sharpen every pic?

Shudderz

joshhuntnm wrote:

so smugmug defaults to sharpen every pic?

They only sharpen the display image. They do not change your original or what prints...see the below for more details....

It can be changed in your gallery's customization page

A Quote from the help pages:


Resizing & sharpening
SmugMug uses the Lanczos algorithm to make display copies because it preserves the most detail. It is not often seen in software like Photoshop, because it is CPU-intensive.
Any time an image is downsampled (to go from your original to SmugMug's large display size, for example), the image loses sharpness. The usual way to restore sharpness is to apply unsharp mask. A typical value, and Photoshop's default, is 50%. By default SmugMug applies only 20% (0.20) because Lanczos does not lose as much sharpness when resizing.

Our default is a compromise between landscape, product, and wildlife photographers who like their images sharp, and portrait photographers who prefer a softer look.

If you are a Power or Pro subscriber, you can set the amount of sharpening on any gallery on the customize gallery page. You'll find the three parameters you're probably familiar with (amount, radius and threshold) and an uncommon one, Sigma.

Note 1: These settings do not alter your original. Prints are made from your original so increasing unsharp amount can mean your photos will look sharp online but soft in print.

SmugMug chose 20% for Amount because we find it usually matches the sharpness of the original, which is our goal.

Note 2: When you change sharpness settings, they apply to images you upload after you make the changes. They do not alter past uploads, unless you do something that will cause us to make new display copies, such as rotation photos.

Note 3: Amount is the parameter most often changed. Our default of 0.20 is equivalent to 20% in Photoshop.

Note 4: Here's more advanced info on how our parameters compare to Photoshop, and what Sigma means.