Soft Effect

Hi everyone, I'm a newbie in digital photography and I'm using A95 to practice taking pictures. I was wondering how can I achieve a soft effect on my pictures. Do I need a filter or can I manipulate it using software? Please see the picture below. Thanks.

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I know many editing sofwares can do that. But I've never did it myself. Run a search in google and you should find what you're searching for.

I have an A95 as well, and I'm quite impressed by the quality of my pics. But follow my advice : edit them and you'll be AMAZED at the results you can get with an A95.

So far I've edited all my pictures, and I realized that every one of them needed some editing in order to be perfect. What I usually do is boost the contrast a little, and more importantly, sharpen them and believe me, they need sharpening (even if the A95 is known for producing sharp pictures).

I've also learned how to simulate a blurry background in a very realistic way.

Here's a picture I took in Quebec city (Canada) a couple of weeks ago. The difference between the original and the edited one is amazing, even if I say so myself

regards

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might I suggest using the aperture mode, and setting it to something like 2.3 or 3.... or maybe you can pre focus on something a little closer if you want to use the automatic mode...

For the skin soft effect can be used any good photo software. Like Photoshop.
For the blurry background ? Well that's a different question. It is very difficult to achieve with small digital cameras (like mine too ).
That's because of small focal length of the lens and the small CCD sensor. And also because at maximum focal length (which at a Canon A95 is 23,4 mm) the largest aperture is f/4,9 which mantain a big DOF.

Still, to obtain a blurry background with such digital camera here are some tricks :
- use maximum focal length (maximum optical zoom);
- use aperture priority and set the largest aperture possible at that zoom ( the lowes F/stop possible);
- came as close as possible to the subject;
- put the subject as far as possible from the background.

Hope this helps.

Wow I just saw the pictures I posted on a different screen and God they look crappy!!! On mine, the original has really fade colors and the edited one is just fine. Anyway!!

About the simulation of a depth of field, I didn't think it was possible to simulate one in a very realistic way. The reason being that it can be very tricky to select the subject that you want to remain in focus, especially if it's got very irregular contours. For example, a person'hair. If your selection is not very precise, you end up with strange artifacts around your subject, especially around the hair.

the trick is to use a combination of selecting tools. I'm working with Paint shop pro version 8 and I managed to create extremely realistic blurry backgrounds, even if it doesn't have the "lens blur option" that's availlable on Photoshop cs. So I'm using the gaussian blurr. And it works very well with...well...a lot of practice.

Thanks all for your replies. I'm using Photoshop to edit my pictures. You know any good sites where I could get some techniques in enhancing images?