Rangefinder Magazine
June 2006

Photoshop CS² How² by Eddie Tapp
MZ Soft Focus

January 1976, day trip to Yosemite Valley: Snow covered most of the earth as I drove “Ole Gray,” a friend’s Chevy van that was missing the driver’s window and heater, in the freezing cold air to a location near Yosemite. I stopped the van to create images with my Hasselblad, using my chrome-ringed Carl Zeiss Softar 1 filter, which had the perfect amount of scratches to yield unmatchable results. Getting back to Modesto and checking my equipment, I noticed that my Softar 1 filter was missing. It wasn’t on the lens, in the case or anywhere in the van. Realizing that I must have dropped it at the only location where I stopped, my heart sank. I knew that losing this one-of-a-kind soft-focus filter would bring a certain style of my work to an end.

Several decades later I was teaching a Photoshop workshop at Winona, where the legendary Monte Zucker and Jack Reznicki had signed up. As Monte was leaving to catch a plane early on Friday, he turned and said, “Why doesn’t Photoshop have a built-in soft-focus filter?” I took that as a challenge and created what I call the MZ Soft Focus filter technique. For the first time in nearly 20 years, I was able to achieve that special Softar 1 (with the perfect amount of scratches) look again—but this time I used Photoshop to get superb results. In the following steps we create an action, so first open an image and flatten the layers if needed. Bring out your Layers and Action palettes, and create a new action set. (Readers of March’s “Photoshop CS2 How2: Double Border Action” article may recall the action set “Production Enhancements.”) Begin recording a new action by selecting the “Create a new action” icon. Name it “MZ Soft Focus 1,” and click Record.

Step 1

With the Background layer highlighted in the Layers palette, go to the Layer menu and select Duplicate (or use the keyboard shortcut, Cmd/Ctrl-J). Double-click on the name of the new layer, “Layer 1,” and rename it “Darken.”

Note: Naming the layers is important when recording an Action so there is no conflict if you play the action on a layered file that already uses the name “Layer 1.”

Step 2

From the Filter menu select Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius approximately to the size of the file. This file of model Kate Gorney (photographed by Jack Reznicki using a Canon EOS 5D) is about 36MB, so I used 36-pixel Radius. However, this is one of the optional areas that can be changed in the action later if you prefer a different result.

	Step 3 Change the Blending Mode of the Darken layer to Darken, and set the Opacity to 30%.

Step 4

Duplicate the Darken layer and rename the new layer “Lighten.” Set the Opacity to around 50%, and switch the Blend Mode to Lighten.

At this point you’ll start to see the real beauty of this technique.

Step 5 Next, hold down the Shift key and select both the Lighten and Darken layers; continue to hold the Shift key, and click on the “Create a new group” icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. This will position both layers into a Group. It’s also a good idea to rename the Group for the sake of the action.

Step 6 Create a layer mask for the Group by selecting the “Add layer mask icon” at the bottom of the Layers palette.

Step 7 In the Tools palette, select the Move tool and then select the Brush tool. This will allow the action to select the Brush tool when you play the action. The Brush will be used to paint back sharpness in Step 9.

Step 8 Hit the “d” key to set the colors to the default, and then type the letter “x” to switch black to the front. Stop recording the action by selecting the “Stop playing/recording” icon in the Actions palette. This is all you need the Action to do, as the next step requires painting with the Brush tool.

Step 9

Zoom your image to the 100% zoom ratio (View > Actual Pixels). Now, by painting black on the white mask, you can paint in extra sharpness in areas such as the eyes, nostrils, lips, and as Monte suggests, sometimes hair highlights and jewelry. Here you can experiment a bit by using various opacities, brush sizes and edges. If you use a Wacom tablet you’ll find it fast and easy to vary brush size with your brush stroke when painting these areas.

At this point, you have successfully created a beautiful MZ Soft Focus 1 effect that rivals my lost Softar 1 filter.

MZ Soft Focus 1, 2 & 3:

With some images you may want to decrease the Opacity setting of the Group, and with other images you may want to increase the amount of soft focus. To create the MZ Soft Focus 2 and MZ Soft Focus 3 filter effects, all you have to do is duplicate the Group. Drag the soft-focus Group to the “Create new action” icon to make a copy, and once again to make a second copy if you want to increase the soft-focus effect.

What’s so different about this technique is using the two Blend Modes at various opacities. The settings can certainly be adjusted one way or the other if you edit your action (or modify the action using the Group Opacity control). Back when we shot film, a soft-focus filter would diffuse the highlight region; if you printed using a diffused printing technique (diffusing under the enlarger lens), it would diffuse primarily the shadow region. The MZ Soft Focus filter serves both regions with optional controls. Shooting with soft-focus filters on digital cameras can cause the digital files to be too flat and irretrievably diffused. An on-camera filter can also make it difficult to get sharp focus in areas such as the eyes, thus requiring advanced sharpening techniques that still might not yield the same quality as the MZ method. I think you’ll love the results, especially when you see the actual print. Yes, each time I visit Yosemite Valley I still look for the location where I lost my Softar 1 filter. I know it must still be there and hope to find it one day—not to shoot with it, but to frame it.

Eddie Tapp will be writing a new tutorial-based book series called Eddie Tapp on Digital Photography, published by O’Reilly Media. The series will cover specific areas of photographic technology that today’s pros need to master. Topics will range from color management and workflow, to production techniques and output. The first book covering workflow management is due to be released in July 2006. In addition to being an award-winning commercial photographer, Eddie Tapp is a Photoshop World Dream Team instructor.