Sony Mavica FD91

All these images are taken with the Sony Mavica FD91.

How to remove jpeg artifacts

First take your original (just point and shoot, all automatic settings). Crop and resize as required. Then in PhotoShop, make a duplicate layer. Make the transparency of this top layer 50%, then do a Gaussian blur with a radius of 3 (only on the top layer). Now flatten the image and save as a good quality .jpg.

To help you see the difference I have a before and after shot below. This treatment works very well for this subject. But it can also work for other subjects as well. The effect it gives is a softening (dreamy look) to the image, yet it still retains most of the sharpness. The effect is rather similar to using petrolium jelly smered on a filter with convensional photography. It should work very well for female portraits. Have a go, it can make a big difference to the image. Try various Gaussian radii settings from 1 to 3

Also using the technique improves images that have been enlarged from the original size. i.e. You can resize a 1024x768 image to 1280x1024 and not degrade the image as much.

Before

After

Now an example of using one of my stock of sky images (the example above in fact) to enhance a picture with a bland sky...

Leek Church before

and after with sky added

with gaussian blur and darker
sky to add mood.
447K big image (1284x1083)

I should also point out that this image is made up of four images all taken hand held, then I used Quick Stitch to put them together. This shot would not have been possible with out this method or using a wide angle converter in front of the lens. Spot metering was used to expose for the shadows of the church.

Another example where you have Edge Effects

Maintained by Michael Oates
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Last modified October 4, 2005