nice softer image
 

i just got finished recently editing a short i shot with an xl1s and the letus35xl. extremely pleased with shots i got.

have been playing around with color correcting alot of stills in photoshop lately and have been using a technique of taking the same photo in two layers and mimicking a double exposure shot by blurring the top layer and lowering its opacity till i got a soft look i liked.

tonite while watching some of my edited footage i realised that it might work on my footage too in premiere.. so i did it the exact same.. two layers of the same footage.. used gaussian blur on the top one then lowered its opacity until i liked it.. i got a nice soft glow effect.. kind of like the pro mist give.. but i have total control over it by lowering and raising opacity..

just never read anything like that before.. worked nice for me.

and you have to give the lower image an s-curve to take out the white milky look

Unfortunately a lot of other people have been doing this before you. :/

But you can also try:

A- quasi-Linear light processing. Apply a gamma of 0.45 (or 2.2), then blur, then a gamma of 2.2 (or 0.45). This will give a diffusion that looks closer to what an optical filter looks like.

The same idea can be used to get film-style dissolves versus video dissolves. This is because video is recorded with gamma compression... undo-ing it will move you into linear light space.

B- Use composite mode multiply. It's a different look.

cool.. thanks

Andrew, can you show us a teaser pleeeeeeease?

sample
 

http://www.fotgfilms.com/onceUpon/Herofull.jpg
(1/2 size, white diffusion in post)

http://fotgfilms.com/onceUpon/hero.bmp
(Full size, WD in post)

Can you post a side by side before and after?