I’d appreciate feedback on a post-processing effect I’m trying to accomplish with Adobe’s ACR. Adobe recently enhanced ACR / CC with “Radial Filters” as something of a specialized Adjustment Brush + Gradient.
Something I’ve wanted to be able to accomplish is to get the equivalent of a “zoomed-in virtual spotlight” on members of a choir, praise band, etc. IIRC, this was possible with previous versions of full PS, but removed for some versions, and then maybe re-implemented for CC. I'm trying to do more and more in ACR/LR and less and less in PS.
From a crow’s nest and even with very nice 70-200mm f2.8 telephoto zoom on a 1.6 crop camera, I don’t have a lens with a long enough optical focal length to take a head-and-shoulders close-up of a choir member, or to get minimal DOF to provide emphasis.
- To me, a choir picture with 15+ people is very prone to being cluttered
- You can “digitally zoom” with heavy cropping in ACR, but image quality goes down, and you don’t have context for the image
- Also, it is rare to get most or all of the people in the image to have good expressions (not bored, eyes opened, not yawning, not frowning, not yacking, etc)
- Also, the stage of the sanctuary tends to be Very Cluttered, with mic booms, chairs, etc.
I’ve uploaded three series of pictures, going from close to "As Shot" to ACR's radial virtual spotlight filter
- http://berean.zenfolio.com/131210_virtual_spotlight
- starting with close to “As Shot” with minor white-balance and Basic LR slider tweaks
- Using 200mm focal length on Canon “cropped 1.6” T3i, for equivalent of 320mm focal length
- then cropped, zoomed in, and centered
- then mild “spot-light” using LR radial filter
- then stronger “virtual spot-light”
- The sliders for the radial filter involve "outside feathering" of lower exposure, contrast, saturation, clarity, and sharpness.
