I’ve been experimenting with soft focus recently, and this evening I started browsing around for a soft focus filter to add to my kit. Actually, I’m probably going to make my own to fit my Cokin filter holder, but browsing the web is usually a first step for most of my DIY projects.
During my surf, I found a page that featured an action set for Photoshop that included a few example photos of the actions in… er… action. See the page here. I’ve installed the actions and they work well enough… mostly relying on the blurred overlay technique with a few twists for added dimension.
As I continued to surf, I checked ebay for actual filters, figuring that a cheap filter my be a good start to see how this is done in the real world. So, I was a little surprised to see this auction using some very familiar example images to show the results of the real-world filter. (I’m featuring a screen shot since once the auction is over any link to will be dead soon after).
[image title="soft-focus-auction" size="medium" id="511" align="center" linkto="viewer" ]
Um… can we all say “busted”?
The seller is an outfit called Citiwide-Online. I don’t doubt that their filter provides the desired effect, but I wouldn’t expect the example images to be true to the final in-camera result.