After reading a bit on google about soft focus, and seeing such a large range of conflicting things about what it is. I was wondering if anyone has done anything in poser with this effect? Can you achieve it at render time? Better yet can you control where it effects (like on females only), and not effect the rest of the scene?

Quote - After reading a bit on google about soft focus, and seeing such a large range of conflicting things about what it is. I was wondering if anyone has done anything in poser with this effect? Can you achieve it at render time? Better yet can you control where it effects (like on females only), and not effect the rest of the scene?

Do you have photoshop? Sounds like something you can do fast with a bit of post work.

Do this first:

http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/soft-focus-lens/

Then do this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4BUy_78T6w

Let me know if this is close to what you want. In photoshop you can highlight the area where you want the effect to show most like the female only.

Whilst I think doing this native in Poser, using a variant of BB's Artistic Lens technique would be cool... :)

...applying these type of effects is probably what post production is all about, fundamentally.

You can use a Z-Depth render to provide a selection mask for different scene elements.

I usually find I have to adjust the contrast / levels of the Z-Depth layer, once its in Photoshop, to get enough detail into it, so easily select different scene parts.

CS5 that I have has vignetting and similar options in its factory supplied filters.

BB's thread on vignetting within Poser is worth revisiting though I expect... he directed me to it when I was looking to make a working magnifying glass lens recently...

Yeah, that sort of thing I would do in Photoshop. I don't know if there's anything more recent, buit Flaming Pear used to have a PS plugin called Melanchotron that used to do that very thing and desaturate the colors slightly (you could control how much).

Laurie

Soft focus being the result of the old lenses focusing different colors of light to different planes, it's going to be difficult to reproduce.  Beneath the "blurring" there is a sharp image.  I still have an old Kodak Anastigmat in a medium format camers, gives a beautiful portrait, but cut film and I no longer have my darkroom.  I'd have no idea how to produce the effect.

Doric.