Technique - Blurring Archives - John Paul Caponigro

2 Ways To Quickly Add Bokeh Flares To Your Images

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in focus

Photoshop's filter Lens Blur

Lens Blur applied a second time selectively

Bokeh flares added with an image and brushes

The word bokeh (Japanese for blur), the quality of the blur produced in out-of-focus parts of an image, is often used to describe the way a lens renders out-of-focus points of light. You don’t have to have a lens with a very wide aperture to create images with bokeh flares.You can apply bokeh flares to shots with or without analog flares after exposure, using Photoshop.

Blend A Second Image With Flares

There are at least three ways to find bokeh flare images.

3 Color Tweaks To Improve Image Blur’s Depth Of Field

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original

background color adjusted

background color adjusted plus detail blurred

The principles of atmospheric perspective can be used to enhance the illusion depth in two-dimensional images. The three elements of color each encode space. Some colors rise forward – light, warm, saturated. Some colors recede – dark, cool, desaturated. When applied strategically and selectively, they can produce powerful visual effects, making your images appear even more realistic.

You can combine these tendencies (They’re not absolute rules and can all be reversed in the right contexts.) with selective blur to make the illusion of space in your images even more powerfully felt.

Photoshop’s Depth Blur neural filter offers sliders to make it quick and easy to make these kinds of color adjustments and make blurring effects more powerfully felt.

Quick & Easy Depth Of Field Effects With Photoshop’s Depth Blur

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Fully focussed image

Photoshop's Depth Blur filter applied

One contour quickly masked

Photoshop’s AI neural filter Depth Blur is designed to simulate depth of field effects quickly and easily.

Here’s how to use it ...

How To Create More Realistic Blur Effects By Adding A Little Noise

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Add noise with a separate layer.

Noise Makes Images Look More Natural

Be careful not to smooth your images so much that your images begin to look synthetic like they’ve been rendered by software rather than captured by hardware. Over-smoothing can happen when you aggressively reduce noise, retouch at lower opacities, or create blur effects. You can use noise to restore a more naturalistic appearance. And, there’s a way to do this in Photoshop that will allow you to control what kind of noise and how much it’s applied indefinitely.

Add Noise Effects On Separate Layers

When you add noise to digital files, place it on a layer that is separate from the image(s) so you can control both independently of one another. This way you’ll have extraordinary control and flexibility. When noise is placed on its own layer you can eliminate or change it at any time in the future, reduce its opacity, localize it with masking, desaturate it, target it into specific channels, move it, scale it, blur it, and much more. Here’s how to do it in Photoshop.

1 Create a new layer (Layer: New Layer),
set blend mode to Overlay,
check filled with Overlay-neutral color.

2 Filter the layer with noise (Filter: Noise: Add Noise).

3 Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer clipped to the noise layer to reduce the saturation of the effect only.

4 Optionally, add a Layer Mask to the noise layer to localize the effect using either a selection, brush, or gradient.

5 Optionally, use Edit: Free Transform to resize the effect.

You can modify the effect at any time in the future, without compromising the original image information.

Noise can be clipped to a single layer.

Make Noise Layer Specific

You can clip noise effect layers to a single image layer. Simply press the Option/Alt key and click the line separating the two layers in the layers palette. Photoshop will then apply the noise only to the pixels on that layer. When a layer has transparency, like a retouching layer, no masking will be necessary once the noise layer is clipped to it.

Photographers go to great lengths to avoid noise. This is generally a good practice, but it can be overdone. There are many times when a little noise can make your images more convincing.

Read more of this technique here.

Read more about Noise here.

Read more about Blur here.

Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.

The Top 5 Reasons To Blur Your Images

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View more of Arduina Caponigro’s images here.

One of the best things about photography is that it records so much detail; one of the worst things about photography is that it records so much detail. The question becomes, “Is all of the detail in the frame significant?” and “Are the qualities of the information presented appropriate for the statement being made?” Photographers are obsessed with making sharp images and for good reason, if the main subject is out-of-focus it usually frustrates viewers – with a few notable exceptions. Sharp focus is often mistaken for good technique, when in fact it’s just a technique, sometimes better and sometimes worse. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Too much sharp information may become overstimulating. Overly sharp images grate on nerves, especially if digital sharpening artifacts draw attention to themselves and away from more important aspects of an image. So, it’s equally important to understand when to use blur, how much, what kind but most importantly why.

Here are five key reasons to use blur in images.

Focus Attention

You can make focussed areas seem even more focussed and important bey reducing the focus of other areas, a little or a lot. This is a classic move used frequently by portrait and street photographers when trying to emphasize people and reduce or even eliminate distracting background elements.

Accentuate Space

It’s not only focus but also its relationship to blur that gives us clues to depth-of-field or how deep a space we’re looking at. Increase the difference between the two and space within the frame is enhanced.

Enhance Mood

Texture has inherent aesthetic qualities like sharpness and softness that can greatly enhance an image’s mood. Just ask, how do you want an image to feel physically and emotionally?

Show motion

While photographs are by their nature still, life is constantly in motion, and you may want to record that. While the artifacts cameras produce aren’t the same as our bodies visual experience of motion they provide a range of visual codes that can suggest motion and can even be fascinating visual experiences in and of themselves, at times providing us new windows into the world, whether it’s the subject or the camera that moves.

Create Abstractions

By deemphasizing details you can direct more attention to the foundations of images. Go further and you can produce simplifications that are virtually unrecognizable and become new aesthetic experiences.

Detail is an essential element in every image but there’s a wide range of ways to treat it and reasons to do so. If you’re not sure what you prefer, explore many ways before committing to a solution that feels right to you. As you find that you’re called towards certain treatments ask why and how that’s serving the statements you’re making with your images. You may become more conscious of what you’ve found your way to unconsciously and in so doing discover more about how your style reveals your vision and aspects of yourself.

Don’t forget to explore your digital options. There’s a wealth of new exposure combinations and digital post-processing techniques that may serve you well. If you find you prefer analog processes and effects, ask yourself why. Your answer may be significant even revealing to you and your audiences. What you choose not to do can be just as revealing as what you do. Just make it intentional.

How To Combine Focussed & Defocussed Images Using Photoshop

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In & Out-Of-Focus Mixed

Combining in and out-of-focus images with Photoshop is a simple matter of placing tow versions of the same image on separate layers.

If you’re simulating an out-of-focus image using blur filters in Photoshop this takes one step. Use the Layers menu and select Duplicate Layer or in the Layers palette drag the layer to the Create a new layer icon ( + ). The two layers will be perfectly registered. The top layer is ready for blurring.

If you’re combing separate exposures of the same image that are in and out-of-focus add a couple more easy steps.

A Grand Overview Of Photoshop’s Blur Filters

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Photoshop Blur Filters

There are many reasons to explore blur in your images; remove distractions, direct attention, enhance space, modify mood, and add interesting visual artifacts are six among many. Blur can be controlled at the point of capture and in post-processing. Thoroughly understanding your post-processing options will help you make choices about when and how to control blur in your images before, during, and after exposure.

When it comes to post-processing blur, you’ve got options! Photoshop currently offers fourteen filters; Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Average, Blur, Blur More, Box Blur, Gaussian Blur, Lens Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Smart Blur, Surface Blur - in order of appearance in the Filter: Blur drop-down menu.

At first glance, the list is overwhelming. Where do you start? Get started with this quick survey of available options.

How To Create Sophisticated Motion Effects With Photoshop’s Path Blur

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Photoshop CC’s recent addition to its Blur Gallery, Path Blur offers a creative and flexible way to add directional motion to your images in post-production. It’s astonishing! You’ve got to try it to believe it – and to truly understand it.

The Blur Gallery now has five effects (Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Path Blur, and Spin Blur) that can be controlled from a single panel. Once you’ve accessed one, you can quickly access the others at the same time enabling you to create complex blur effects in a single stop. Path Blur alone is capable of delivering lots of complex motion effects with one simple path.

Before applying Path Blur, consider using a Smart Object to make the filter non-destructive, re-editable, and maskable. (I recommend you acquire Raw files as a Smart Objects but in cases where you can’t, such as cases that involve merges or stacks or major retouching, convert your Background layer to a Smart Object – Layer: Smart Objects: Convert To Smart Object.)

To apply the filter follow this path - Filter: Blur Gallery : Path Blur. The Blur Gallery panel will appear, offering you five extraordinary sliders and multiple points of control.

How To Control Blur FX In Photoshop With Amazing Precision

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Photographers use blur (or bokeh) for a variety of reasons: to enhance space through depth of field; to add interesting visual artifacts; to simplify them; to change the quality of their expression. In the past, blur was controlled almost entirely through exposure; now it can also be controlled during post-processing, giving photographers an unprecedented array of options and ways to customize the look and feel of their images. Knowing what you can do, how far you can go, and when you can do it may change the way you shoot, one time, sometimes, or all the time.

There are many blur filters in Photoshop; Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Gaussian Blur, Lens Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Smart Blur, Surface Blur, in order of appearance in the Filter: Blur drop-down menu. (See A Quick Visual Comparison Of Photoshop's Blur Filters here.) The choices are extensive and it pays to familiarize yourself with your options by experimenting with them; you’ll find you have an extraordinary set of options that you can modify and combine creatively. If you only use the filters Gaussian Blur and Lens Blur, you’ll still have game-changing control at your fingertips, once you learn how to extend and modify them.

Photoshop's Lens Blur filter

There are several important non-destructive strategies you can use to gain more control over all filter effects that will enable you to go further in your explorations and generate more sophisticated and compelling results. Try one or all of the moves in this classic progression. Apply a filter to a duplicate layer and then modify its Opacity, Blend Mode, Blend If Sliders, and add a layer mask.

A Quick Visual Comparison Of All Of Photoshop’s Blur Filters

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Before Blur FX

After Blur FX

There are many reasons to explore blur in your images: remove distractions, direct attention, enhance space, modify mood and add interesting visual artifacts are a few among many. Blur can be controlled at the point of capture and in post-processing. Thoroughly understanding your post-processing options will help you make choices about when and how to control blur in your images before, during and after exposure.

When it comes to post-processing blur, you’ve got options! Photoshop currently offers 14 filters: Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Average, Blur, Blur More, Box Blur, Gaussian Blur, Lens Blur, Motion Blur, Radial Blur, Shape Blur, Smart Blur, Surface Blur – in order of appearance in the Filter > Blur drop-down menu. (If you want to extend your software palette even further, explore onOne Software’s FocalPoint.)

At first glance, the list is overwhelming. Where do you start? Get started with this quick visual survey of available options.

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