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Hi this is Mike with 107 Designs, we're going to be talking about lens blur and depth of
field in this screencast. This is a real quick way to throw some depth of field effect on
a photograph that you have. But it comes with fair warning. I'm going to show you two samples,
in the first one we're going to come out with a pretty nice result. In the second one I'm
going to show you what things to look out for and avoid. You may have to work with some
manual bits and things to make it not look fake.
All right, so the first photograph we have is this (I just snapped these this morning,
so you know, don't make fun). I've got, I threw out some silverware on the table, I've
got some knives and a fork in the middle. In this photograph, most of the things are
in the same plane of focus. You can see that the knife in the foreground is kinda the same
focus as the knife in the background. And that just doesn't look good. Maybe I want
to highlight this fork a little bit, right? So, how do we do that?
We're gonna make just a real quick couple of changes to this photograph, and it'll come
out looking pretty nice. First thing we're gonna do is go into our Quick Mask mode, which
is the letter Q on the keyboard or you can press this button. And then we're going to
select the Gradient tool, making sure that we have the Reflected Gradient selected and
not the linear or any of the others. OK, so we've got the reflected gradient. Well what
does reflected gradient mean? It means that when you pull a gradient, you start from one
point like the fork and you pull it out the other way... any gradient that you make is
mirrored on the opposite side of your starting point. So you probably know this already,
but if you hold down the shift key while you're dragging the gradient, Photoshop will limit
you to the nearest 45 degree angle. You can see how it sort of locks in to the nearest
45, which is helpful, because this, we want this real linear, straight line, from the
fork out to the knives. I'm gonna pull this gradient, from let's say, the fork to between
the second and the third knife in the background. Now I'm going to let it go and you'll see
what we end up with. We've got this depth of field setting that we're shooting for because
this transparent area is around the fork and the table. You can see the wood grain and
the fork, they're all kind of in the same plane, and then, sort of this more opaque
red setting where this mask is covering up the knives in the foreground and the background.
Now the reason this photograph is going to work pretty well for us is because the knives
and the fork are all in the same plane, nearly, effectively, as the surface. All the background
image in our shot is just the table top, so it's not that far away from the knives and
the fork. So that's why this is going to work. Take note of that for our next photograph,
you'll see why this can be a hangup.
So now we're going to get out of Quick Mask mode by clicking this button, or pressing
Q, it just jumps out of Quick Mask mode. You'll notice our selection's already made for us.
We're going to go up here to Filter, quickly we're gonna choose Blur, Lens Blur is the
one we're shooting for. Let me drag this over into the screen here. Let's zoom in on this
a little bit. I want to zoom in... I want to look at the knives in the foreground, in
the background, and I want to look at this fork and the table wood grain right here along
there, along that plane. That looks pretty good.
Here's the setting you can play with, if you're unhappy. Depending on the size of your photo
and the amount of blur that you want... is the Radius setting. Now if I loosen this up,
if I pull this down a little bit, you're going to see that it makes it look a little more
realistic by knocking down the radius a little bit. Going up to higher levels is pretty aggressive,
it can start to look fake pretty quickly. Just take not of that. I think I can get away
with something around here without looking too fake. I'm just going to scan across this
photo and take a look... yep, I'd be pretty happy with that. It's obviously highlighting
the fork more, there's a little bit of blur int he foreground and background, but it's
not too, it's not just bat-you-over-the-head, you know, fake. I'm going to click OK and
you'll notice that applies the filter and now I've got this nice, pretty nice photograph.
The fork is obviously highlighted and in focus, and the knives are not, and it doesn't look
terribly fake.
So that's the first one. Now let's jump over to this other. Notice that in this (by the
way) photograph that we're taking a shot where things are, where the depth of field moves
vertically through the photograph. This other one we're going to look at, the depth of field
moves horizontally through the photograph. I set up (same table), set up some martini
glasses. Notice that in this one, the item closest to us is not on the bottom of the
image, it's on the right side. So this time when we make a blur, we're going to be blurring
from let's say, we'll pick one near the middle or something like that, and we're gonna be
blurring toward one side and the other, left and right. But here's the hangup: notice that
the background, the majority of the background in this photo, is not in the same plane as
these glasses are. In fact it's pretty far away. I've got a wall back there, a piece
of art on the wall, a chair, a window, and all that. So this could get pretty hairy.
We're going to try it anyway and I'll show you why it looks kind of fake.
So the same thing, we're gonna enter Quick Mask mode, select our Gradient tool, make
sure that we've got a Reflected Gradient, and we're gonna pick this second glass. I'm
just gonna pull out, just a little bit, from this second glass, OK? Now, here's where you
can really see why this is going to look fake. In this transparent area, which is where our
plane of focus is going to be, I've got this foreground of the table, which is obviously
not even close to the same plane as the second glass, the glass stem itself. then all the
way in the background, I've got part of the wall, part of the artwork on the wall, and
then the out of focus areas... should have different amounts of out of focus for how
far away something is. Like this window in the background is obviously more distant than
the lip of this glass, alright? But effectively the blur is going to be the same for both
pieces in the photo. So it's gonna look pretty fake. We're going to do it anyway just to
see. We're going to get out of Quick Mask mode, our selection's made, then we're gonna
go into Filter, we're gonna Blur, Lens Blur, and now let's take a look at this. We'll zoom
in. I'm gonna bump up... in this photograph, I'm gonna move the radius up to about 13 or
so, maybe we can get away with that.
Here's the thing to notice, all right? If we cropped this real tightly around the glassware,
and then we manually sort of messed with the wall area and the table, we could probably
get away with this. But the really noticeable fake parts are going to be the artwork in
the background and the table in the foreground. So just take note of that. If you have a photograph
that you want to apply a little depth of field effect to, keep in mind that it could look
fake pretty easily. We're going to go ahead and click OK and see how this turns out. Let's zoom in a little bit and see what we
have. You can see what I was talking about right here. We have this straight up and down
plane of focus and everything else is out of focus, it just doesn't look real. It doesn't
look good. In fact, in the same plane of the stem of the glass, we've got this edge of
the glass that's right in front of our face. Which this whole glass should be out of focus.
So this is a case where you'd want to make several layers and sort of chop some stuff
away and manually blur some things that are obvious mistakes and layer them on top of
each other. It can be quite a lot of qork to make it look realistic, but that's really
what you'd have to do to fake depth of field on a photograph like this. So anyway I hope
this helps someone out, and join us again next Saturday for another screencast, and
we'll talk to you later on. Bye bye!