portrait enhancement with blur-sharpen-clarity

[unni]

This is an example showing the excellent capability of selection brush, refine edge, inpainting brush,
lens blur, usm sharpen,clarity and denoise tools of AP. Approximately 20 minutes work on the image.

I was invited to the first classical performance of my neighbor's daughter. This is something like a graduation for the
performer , done under the careful guidance of the master and other seniors in the same field. The invitees are mostly elders
and their role is basically blessing the participants. These children are around 10 to 12 years old and have been learning the south Indian dance
called Bharathanatyam for the last five years.The highly refined classical fine art has a traceability of more than 2500 years.

I had casually taken my Nikon D7000 and 70-300 lens. The seat was about 150 feet from the stage, so I expected only average shots with the slow lens.
Settings: ISO 1600, f5.3, 1/640,@220mm,hand held,no flash.

Two layers of image were made. The children were selected using the selection brush and refined. Then the "children mask" made.
In the lower most layer, the same selection is applied and then a grow selection was done by 15 pixels. Then from Edit>Fill>Inpainting.
This will remove the children and fill with the surrounding background data. This layer is then lens blurred twice. Now background is ready.
The top most layer is the original. Due to the children mask, the background is masked out of this layer. The unsharp and clarity layers
are fully black . White painted only in selected areas like ornaments, eyes,some parts of dress. There are many tutorials available in
internet on background blurring. It gives more details. I find this image good, considering the high ISO, slow lens, DX format and
other limitations during the shooting.

 

Best regards,
Unni

First shot - Edited, Second one - original, Third one - AP layer details