hi hi! I'm not sure if you've been asked this before, but I'm hoping you may be able to answer, if possible. I've used it for a while, but I feel like anytime I do, the photos lose their crisp/sharpness. I've tried every setting possible and I know my photos are lined up perfectly for the set up (via magnifying tool). I believe I've seen other people have this issue too and sometimes just take two photos and combine them later. While I don't mind that it softens some gross edges, I hate losing some of the details for the face or eyes. Anywho, I saw your photos and I'm just amazed at how great they come out! Not sure if you have any tips for IGCSDof (or if you can recommend certain settings for Cyberpunk and BG3 that have helped you?) much love and happy VPing ♥
Hi!
I'll try and cover this in more detail in a video at some point, but in the meantime what you're probably running into is a result of the frame wait setting near the top.
You have the option to choose classic or fast. As it suggests, the fast option will render igcsdof more quickly than the classic option, but the classic option will often be sharper depending on other factors.
I try to use the fast option wherever I can, because I'm very impatient.
You can change the number of frames waited. For Cyberpunk I believe I have that set to 5. You'll know whether you have it set correctly as soon as you start rendering the image. If it's wrong, the in-focus areas will immediately be out of focus, to greater or lesser degree. If you manage to get this setting just right, the in-focus areas will be sharp.
If you're using classic mode, adding frames to wait will increase the render time. If you're using fast mode it generally doesn't as much.
If you're using any kind of upscaling, like DLSS, this is where you can still lose a bit of the sharpness, even if you've got the frame wait number as good as it can be.
So, play around with choosing either classic or fast, and then with how many frames to wait. Hopefully you'll be able to find a setting that works for you. It'll likely be different in each game.
Now, even knowing all of that, I still end up with soft details sometimes in areas that should be in-focus. So I do exactly what you describe. I take a shot without dof, and a shot with dof, and I blend them together in Photoshop afterwards.
The easiest way to do that is to open both pictures up in Photoshop, paste the blurred version as a new layer over the top of the focused version, create a layer mask on the blurred layer, and then use a paintbrush set to black to paint out on the layer mask the areas you want to be sharp. This will let the bottom layer show through. Doing it as a layer mask means it's non-destructive, so if you make a mistake you can switch to a white paintbrush and paint the top layer back in again.
I find this method really useful beyond just making details sharp again. Because of the nature of igcsdof, it's hard to control which areas are in or out of focus, and often more will be out of focus than we want. You can bring more into focus using the layer mask method, giving you more control.
I hope that was useful. Unfortunately using all these tools often means having to accept some level of compromise, but there are ways around most issues.
