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Hello everyone,
While I'm procrastinating on my Politics Thesis, I thought I'd show everyone a method that I came up with for quickly and easily making pictures with a deep depth of field (DOF) appear to have a shallow depth of field.
This is useful in two main cases:
1) If there is a picture that you took that you want to emphasize the subject in now, but didn't at the time.
2) If you are using a little digital camera (like my Canon A70) that really can't give you a shallow enough DOF for things like portrait work.
Before I continue, I should note that this method WILL NOT net the same quality that using an SLR or a DSLR with a shallow DOF will. It's really just a work around so that you can get good results with a smaller, cheaper camera. Also, I personally think that they come out pretty good considering the small amount of work you have to put in.
A lot of you probably already know about this method, but I figure that a few of you may not and might benefit from it.
So we begin with a picture. It isn't a great picture, just an impromptu shot of one of my buddies that I took while we were at a party.
As you can see, the background and he are in about the same focus. Let's see what we can do about that!
Step 1: Layering
First we make a copy of the background layer in PS by clicking on the layer and selecting duplicate layer.
Step 2: Bluring
Now apply a gaussian blur to the duplicate layer. I lused one around 3.5. You play around with the blur level until you find one you like. Now the picture looks like this:
Step 3: Masking
Okay, now that we have blurred our buddy out its time to bring him back into focus. We do this by first applying a hide all mask to the duplicate layer. (Layer>Add Layer Mask>Hide All) This will place a mask over the layer.
Step 4: Exposing
Now select the layer mask. (Click on the little white box next to the thumbnail of the layer) And begin to remove the mask from your subject. There are many ways of doing this.
My favorite is to use the magic wand to put a selection bubble around my subject. What you want to do is use your wand to make an innitial selection near the center of your subject and then add other selections to this central one (by holding down ctrl while you do it) until the subject is fully enclosed.
Anyway, on this one I started with a high threshold wand to get his face and progressively step down to pick up details that are more blended into the background. Then I use the lasso tool to touch up a bit.
After I did this, I used the paint-bucket tool to fill the selection area with black. This makes a nice hole in the mask allowing his face to come through.
This left me with this:
Step 5: Touch-Up (optional)
Now time for a bit of clean-up. I find that sometimes this method produces an image in which the subject seems to shimmer a bit at the edges or otherwise seems odd. There are a variety of things you can do to fine tune the image to remove these anomalies.
I generally use a 30-50 pixel brush loaded with medium gray color to touch-up areas around the head. Medium gray will allow about 1/2 of the original image to come through making it good for blending the edges.
After some touch up here is the image i had:
It still has a few problems in it. If I was doing this more seriously, then I'd spend some more time with it... but anyway, you get the picture.
Conclusion:
Well there you are. In 10-15 minutes you've taken a picture with deep DOF and made it into a picture with shallow DOF. A real photographer could find flaws in it, but 2 to 1 your buddies won't and you'll look like a great photographer. Hope that someone out there finds this useful.
Also, if anyone has any advice on how to improve this method... feel free to post.
While I'm procrastinating on my Politics Thesis, I thought I'd show everyone a method that I came up with for quickly and easily making pictures with a deep depth of field (DOF) appear to have a shallow depth of field.
This is useful in two main cases:
1) If there is a picture that you took that you want to emphasize the subject in now, but didn't at the time.
2) If you are using a little digital camera (like my Canon A70) that really can't give you a shallow enough DOF for things like portrait work.
Before I continue, I should note that this method WILL NOT net the same quality that using an SLR or a DSLR with a shallow DOF will. It's really just a work around so that you can get good results with a smaller, cheaper camera. Also, I personally think that they come out pretty good considering the small amount of work you have to put in.
A lot of you probably already know about this method, but I figure that a few of you may not and might benefit from it.
So we begin with a picture. It isn't a great picture, just an impromptu shot of one of my buddies that I took while we were at a party.
As you can see, the background and he are in about the same focus. Let's see what we can do about that!
Step 1: Layering
First we make a copy of the background layer in PS by clicking on the layer and selecting duplicate layer.
Step 2: Bluring
Now apply a gaussian blur to the duplicate layer. I lused one around 3.5. You play around with the blur level until you find one you like. Now the picture looks like this:
Step 3: Masking
Okay, now that we have blurred our buddy out its time to bring him back into focus. We do this by first applying a hide all mask to the duplicate layer. (Layer>Add Layer Mask>Hide All) This will place a mask over the layer.
Step 4: Exposing
Now select the layer mask. (Click on the little white box next to the thumbnail of the layer) And begin to remove the mask from your subject. There are many ways of doing this.
My favorite is to use the magic wand to put a selection bubble around my subject. What you want to do is use your wand to make an innitial selection near the center of your subject and then add other selections to this central one (by holding down ctrl while you do it) until the subject is fully enclosed.
Anyway, on this one I started with a high threshold wand to get his face and progressively step down to pick up details that are more blended into the background. Then I use the lasso tool to touch up a bit.
After I did this, I used the paint-bucket tool to fill the selection area with black. This makes a nice hole in the mask allowing his face to come through.
This left me with this:
Step 5: Touch-Up (optional)
Now time for a bit of clean-up. I find that sometimes this method produces an image in which the subject seems to shimmer a bit at the edges or otherwise seems odd. There are a variety of things you can do to fine tune the image to remove these anomalies.
I generally use a 30-50 pixel brush loaded with medium gray color to touch-up areas around the head. Medium gray will allow about 1/2 of the original image to come through making it good for blending the edges.
After some touch up here is the image i had:
It still has a few problems in it. If I was doing this more seriously, then I'd spend some more time with it... but anyway, you get the picture.
Conclusion:
Well there you are. In 10-15 minutes you've taken a picture with deep DOF and made it into a picture with shallow DOF. A real photographer could find flaws in it, but 2 to 1 your buddies won't and you'll look like a great photographer. Hope that someone out there finds this useful.
Also, if anyone has any advice on how to improve this method... feel free to post.