sharpening a problem shot

[Wookie]

got a lovely shot of a friend's daughter dancing last weekend, but as usual its not quite right, its a bit soft on her face.

There's obviously a basic problem with my shot, too low a shutter speed combined with fast movement, maybe even the focus distance not quite right (the front of the stage is sharp, and possibly the hair on the right, but the speaker at the back is nicely out ). Combine all that with running at maximum ISO 1600 on the 400D and there is quite a bit of noise to foul up the processing too.

but its the shot I got, and what I have to work with,

I am struggling to get the image any sharper, especially the face, and without blowing the skin tones all over the place or fizzling the picture with noise. I'd even accept a slightly soft face (dreamy look) but can't get it right as I think the eyes should come out with a bit of sparkle.

Any ideas on what can be done with it ?

(I am using Canon's Digital Photo Professional for RAW editing and then Gimp for jpeg editing)

here is the shot:

and here is the 100% crop on the essential area for sharpening purposes:

I've had a few attempts with different methods but nothing really works right for me and I'm very novice with this stuff.

All processing ideas welcome, please

 

[Cobra]

Don't know if this is any better? :shrug:
I saturate it using the sponge tool in CS3, then faded it slightly and a little selective sharpening

 

[CT]

What you have here is a blurred shot due to subject movement and possibly also slight oof - the woodwork in front of the stage looks suspiciously sharp.

It's way beyond any image sharpening you should expect to have success with, but all you can do is aggressively sharpen, which is bound to introduce more noise. You could try using noise reduction selectively, but I wouldn't hold out much hope of success.

I've pushed the sharpening as far as is practical...

How big does the final image have to be?

 

[pxl8]

Focus Magic is your friend here, it's got a really good motion blur correction option.

 

[Just Dave]

Hi Wookie

I had a go, hope you dont mind, as CT says its a bit beyond sharpening totally. I also cleaned up the clutter, I'm amazed by how high she jumps.

​

WDYT

Dave

 

[Wookie]

Fantastic stuff, thanks everybody

I don't know what the final image size is going to be so I'm just trying to get the full size image as good as possible because I suspect this one may get framed (for the content, not the quality of the photography ).

So I've spent a lot of today with the big version trying to get anywhere near what you guys are able to do and well . . . :bang: :bang: :bang:

any clues as to how you get the sharpening up, I am trying to sort it with Gimp

dave & CT I reckon tie first on the sharpening

dave how did you change the background to blue? you've done something with the colours of the dress and face too, brings it out better. I'm actually planning to keep the speaker stand, I reckon it gives scale to the jump, but yes the rest of the wall has already been cleaned up and the cable erased.