Imaging

[D80]

Can someone tell me what is meant by "soft" pictures. I am new to digital photography. Thanks

[Debbi]

Soft would refer to not in focus.

[kenw]

More specifically, soft usually refers to a very slight out of focus.

It may or may not be intentional: some subjects like close-up portraits can benefit from a smidge of softness, lest every pore on the nose be crystal sharp. Like all things, it isn’t an absolute and is totally a subjective call.

Softness can also be caused by simple resizing; and some editors can create softness when compressing your final edits to jpg format.

[srwatters]

Softness and focus are not 100% related. You can have a properly focused image that shows softness due to diffraction, camera shake, or other optical phenomena. Post processing can also introduce a lack of edge definition. Sometimes by mistake and sometimes with a purpose.

So it's hard to tell the cause of image softness without seeing the camera data, equipment used, and post processing steps.

I'm sure that helped 0%, but is in the interest of full disclosure.

[D80]

Thanks Scott, Ken, and Debbie. Appreciate the feedback!

[Daniel Bates]

I'll finish beating the dead horse with a definition by counterexample: soft != sharp.

[johnastovall]

It can mean lack of using the UnSharp tool. All Digital images due to the nature of the data capture need postproccessing sharping.