Techniques for shooting dreamy soft focus style

In our portrait shooting, are all the photos as clear as possible? I think the answer is No. sometimes, we will consider adding some romantic and soft feelings to the scenery, just like a dream. This is what we call soft light photography style</ p>

First, let’s take a look at some of my soft light photography portraits:

In fact, softlight photography has a long history. We can see soft light shooting style photos in many photography works in the 1980s and early 1990s. Therefore, the soft light shooting style can also bring a full sense of the times, so we can also use the soft light shooting technique to shoot attractive retro style portraits</ p>

The little friend will ask, how did this soft light shooting style come from? Don’t worry, let me share with you some soft light shooting skills:

1: use soft focus lens

Know the soft lens

Diffuser: made of transparent glass. The principle of soft light lens is very simple. It is mainly to create micro concave points on the surface or interlayer of transparent lens, which will diffuse the light entering the lens, so as to produce soft light effect</ p>

Generally speaking, three types of soft lenses are available from major manufacturers. Among them, No. 1 soft lens has a weak softening effect, No. 2 is in the middle, and No. 3 soft lens has the strongest softening effect. You can choose according to your own needs in actual use</ p>

In order to achieve the effect that some images are clear and prominent, but the surrounding images are blurred, there are also some soft lenses. Transparent glass or holes are used in some parts of the lens. According to the positions of the holes, these soft lenses are called hollow soft lenses and edge space soft lenses</ p>

Hollow mirror shooting effect:

Tips for using soft lens

Generally speaking, in the shooting environment with soft lens, it is necessary to leave some highlights as much as possible to make the light look romantic</ p>

Tip 1: use the backlight to make the soft light mirror diffract the highlight, and the whole background will form a diffuse light source, making the whole photo look very soft and romantic</ p>

Skill 2: shoot with side light, and direct the strong side light on the model’s body or face, so that the highlight of the body appears particularly soft under the action of a soft light mirror, which is especially suitable for showing femininity</ p>

The use skill of the soft light mirror mainly lies in the grasp of the light. Because soft light photography can also be regarded as an application of emotional light, more use of side light and backlight can better reflect the characteristics of emotional exhaustion</ p>

2, use PS to achieve soft light effect in the later stage

If there is no soft light lens, you can also make use of the strength of the later stage to simply take two photos similar to soft light photography through PS</ p>

Drag photos to PS

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Copy a layer (c t rl+j)

Point Gaussian blur option

Blur radius is 10 pixels

Select soft light for layer 1’s blend mode

Adjust the contrast of the screen appropriately (curve tool is used here)

Final effect:

These simple steps can also achieve the effect of soft light shooting</ p>

Contrast effect:

The main functions of soft light photography include softening the image, reducing the contrast of the picture, adjusting the tone and hue of the picture, or forming a special picture effect according to the creative intention to make the shot picture more interesting and make the characters more shiny and attractive. Therefore, soft light photography is a very attractive shooting technology</ p>

Of course, if you want to shoot a good soft light effect, you can’t rely on the above two points alone. The first is to control the ambient light. Natural light and ambient light must be taken in different ways. Secondly, what scene is suitable for retro lighting? How to control different scenarios? Finally, how to adjust the hue and shade in the later stage to make the characters fuller and more three-dimensional? For example, the following group of works are taken by natural light, and the colors are unified in the later stage</ p>

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