My "Akira Fujii" effect

[AstroJason (Jason)]

Hi all,

Been going through some of my images from this year's SPSP and forgot I had these shots. On the first night a thin layer of high cloud came through early in the evening. It created a kind of "Akira Fujii" effect on the stars. I used to love his images and this was a chance to get that look.

Would like to know the technique he used to create the bloated look on the bright stars without the need for a night with cloud like this. Although his processing was done on film, I'm unsure if it would be possible to replicate his processing technique in PS. I have heard he may have used a diffusion filter but I recall he has kept his actual true process a secret? If anyone has any idea how to create the look in PS let me know!

Higher res shots available on my Flickr page here.

Thanks for looking.

Jason

[Star Catcher (Ted Dobosz)]

Interesting effect Jason, do you think it may have been dew rather than clouds?

Ted

[alocky (Andrew lockwood)]

Had a similar effect from very high clouds, it's quite nice for wide fields. I always assumed Fuji de-focused his lens to create that effect. Never tried it myself! Be interesting to hear what other methods had been proposed.
Cheers,
Andrew

[colinmlegg (Colin)]

You can achieve a similar effect with a diffusion filter. Personally, I prefer the natural version... fog, clouds, steam.. or a thin layer of sea spray or dew on the lens.

http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam...diffusion.html

[AstroJason (Jason)]

Hey Ted, although it did dew up that night, I remember seeing this "blurring" effect visually as well which is what prompted me to take these shots. So it was definitely a cloud of some sort.

Andrew, I have tried to defocus the stars before, the result is not the same as this. There is something happening just with the brighter stars whereas dimmer stars do not seem to be effected by this sort of cloud.

Colin, I may look into getting a diffusion filter but like you I do like the random nature of getting a natural version of the effect. Close ups of the images taken with diffusion filters on that page seem to leave some sort of artefact which seems distracting. I am still interested in seeing if there is a way to do this sort of thing in photoshop.