Adding Depth of Field Effects to Your Images
One of the great filters added to Photoshop is the Blur Filters. I use them all of the time, but what if you don’t have Photoshop and want to add a blur? Well, you are not without hope. Let me show you a little trick.
If you take and change the Clarity and Sharpness sliders to negative, you in essence apply a bit of a blur, so why not use your adjustment tools to create fields of blur?
crank the Clarity and Sharpness down
Simply crank the two settings down to -100 and start painting with the Adjustment brush, or use the Radial tool.
However, one of my favorite ways is to use the Gradient tool. This applies a gradual blur that you control… and if you understand how it works you can give your image a pseudo-tilt shift blur or just blur out areas to degrade the depth of field. For instance, let’s look at the Aged photo from last week. If I start adding gradient blur areas around the buffalo, it now looks like the lens was of lower quality and had more pockets of blurriness which adds to the effect of telling our eyes the image is older.
Notice the multiple Gradient tool points that are applied… use as many as you need
Just a couple of quick pulls of the gradient tool cursor and you have a unique area of blurring. Play around with it, you will see how easy it is…
final image with blurring applied
Personally I think this is a filter too far. Why not get the image right in camera first and then enhance the image with photoshop afterwards. This smacks a little of image recovery than enhancement. http://www.studio-grey.net
do you have a technique if artist decides to have the entire image blurry? using Lightroom of course
I’ll try with the gradient tool. Sounds like a gradual, more realistic depth-of-filed type blur. I can always use the adjustment brush to mask out anything I don’t want blurred. Thanks
It looks fake. Lightroom needs a much better way to do this.
lightroom actually has.You can uhttp://www.wildlife-photography-tips.com/lightroom-tutorials.htmlse brush and masking to do it much more efficiently……..
Seriously? That’s the exact same technique applied to a brush instead of a grad. It’s still very hard to apply apply the right amount/characteristic of the blur.
If your dealing with local adjustments that requires more complex masking, you still need to head over to photoshop. Lightroom is incredibly powerful, but when you get into this amount of work and modification to the actual image, you need you use the right tool; This is like scrubbing floors with a toothbrush instead of a mop.
“This is like scrubbing floors with a toothbrush instead of a mop” — Love the analogy.
I find the best tool is the AlienSkin Exposure LightRoom add-on: http://www.alienskin.com/exposure
Nice trick, I will definitely use this!!
I get same effect using the Adjustment Brush by highlighting the background then pulling down the sharpness slider. I also use the exposure slider to darken the background to give more attention to the foreground.
I get same effect using the Adjustment Brush by highlighting the background then pulling down the sharpness slider. I also use the exposure slider to darken the background to give more attention to the foreground.
Nice article. It is amazing how many different ways to achieve similar results. I learn something new every day, and than try to apply it to my workflow. Keep’em coming Pete.
Thanks,
Jacob
I feel pretty comfortable working in LR5
LOVE this technique. I’ve used it to selectively enhance or alter the color of light in a photograph, having watched a video that David Ziser had produced a few years back. I’ve learned a lot in just reading a couple of the KillerTips, even though I feel pretty comfortable working in LR5, having attended an introduction to LR3 with Scott and Matt a few years ago in Philadelphia…THANKS for sharing these great techniques!