What is photo softness?

[bascom]

In the reviews here I often read about photo softness as a bad quality. What is meant by softness?

[LoveOfSelene]

In lenses, softness if refered to not being sharp. (wow, it's harder to explain then i thought)

Think of it as the bluryness in an image. Soft images don't have as much detail as very "sharp" ones. As for an example, you might can read the license plate of a sharp image, but in an soft one, you prolly will have a hard time.

It's not all bad though. Some people (like myself) enjoy the softness in picture's of people, as it doesn't show many facial imperfections.

Binh