by soft, do you mean that the edges on the plane are too smooth, or that the lighting effects seem a bit too 'airbrushed' ?
Bingo !!!
if it's the latter, i didn't soften the image, but i did use dodge and burn to add lighting to the plane to make it look better on the background. that soft look is really what i'm aiming for, but if you know a better way, please share, i'd love any tips you can give me
Dodge and Burn are ways to "soften" too.
Do you have the ability to vary the intensity of "dodge" and/or "burn" when applying them ?
Don't get me wrong ... the picture is beautiful ... I just think that the edges and some of the detail on the plane would look better if they were just a little "crisper". Before the age of digital picture and all these fancy editing tools, photographers use to actually apply vaseline to a clear filter to get the "soft" effect.
I use PhotoShop ($$$) or Gimp (Freeware) which provides all the "tools" (dodge/burn/etc) along with canned "filters". When applying a filter I am given the ability to set the amount of "softening" that I want to apply ... usually via a slider ... which then applies the filter in a "preview" mode so that you can see what it will look like before you really apply the effect.
