Textures to the rescue

[naeno]

Before:


After:


My father-in-law took this picture of my son running for me while we were at the beach. I loved the motion, and story it conveyed, but it was so blurry it had to be rescued.

I opened it in Gimp, and used the clone stamp to clear out the sign in the background and clean up the back of my son's shirt. I duplicated the layer. I adjusted the colors of the sky and beach in separate layers and used a layer mask to get both colors correct. I then applied two textures (one golden one and one sandy one) as layers and changed the layer mode on each of the textures to Overlay. I reduced the opacity of the texture layers until I was happy.

The textures added a nice "painting" effect and made the picture artistic rather than just blurry. What do you think?

[Mytusi]

It surely makes a great difference! I especially like the tones you used. It's warm and it says the story in such a pleasing way Good job saving that moment!

[tingeliM]

First of all, focus is highly overrated! Well, maybe people don't think so in this forum, but in general. And in my opinion. Out of focus photos can be truly beautiful.
I like what you've done with your photo. Very painting-like. =)
But as I said, you could've kept it photo-like also, although it's blurry.

[windrider86]

I like it a lot!!!
For me, the whole painting effect really adds that something extra to a photo that is otherwise an out of focus snap shot.
Well done my friend!

[myfotoguy]

Good thinking! The rescue is wonderful!! I'm just starting to "play" more with effects to recover images, it's so much fun. I'm still in the phase where I have a hard time deciding which effect to go with.

Thanks for sharing this, fantastic!

[Antbag]

That's quite amazing. I'm prone to trash an image like this, that's out of focus. I really haven't considered doing something like that. Clever!

[naeno]

Originally Posted by Antbag

That's quite amazing. I'm prone to trash an image like this, that's out of focus. I really haven't considered doing something like that. Clever!

Trust me, I've tossed TONS of blurry shots. This one just told such a good story I didn't want to let it go!

Thanks to each of you!

[naeno]

Originally Posted by myfotoguy

Good thinking! The rescue is wonderful!! I'm just starting to "play" more with effects to recover images, it's so much fun. I'm still in the phase where I have a hard time deciding which effect to go with.

Thanks for sharing this, fantastic!

Trust me, you'll ALWAYS in the the playing mode! It doesn't go away, and that's what so fun about photography! It took me about 7 textures to finally come up with the combo I liked.

[daddyoproductions]

We have lots of 'story' photos like this that I just can't bear to trash even though they technically suck Great tip!

[olgabe]

What a graceful save! this will look great on a canvas - it already looks like a painting.
Agree with other posterd on saving blurry shots.. I need to keep some of those for experiments like this..