Sometimes we get a admittedly good capture that would be perfect if the background was out of focus but our lens just could not give us a narrow enough depth of field. What can we do? There is a simple technique in Photoshop that allows us to give that lens blur follow after the fact. Let's take a quick look at it.
[b]Lens[/b]Open the shot in Photoshop and double it. agree the background copy and go to; filter, blur, and agree lens blur. Once in the lens blur window you will notice any controls on the right hand side of the window that at first will seem quite confusing but they are admittedly quite simple. I all the time have preview checked and more spoton selected. After that, I normally only use the Blur Focal distance slider. The Blur Focal distance slider works the opposite of what you might expect as a setting of 0 results in maximum blur and a setting of 255 results in minimum blur which is probably why Adobe located an invert box just below. So if this is constantly confusing you go ahead and check invert. After selecting the estimate of blur you want in the picture, don't worry about the main field being blurred as we will fix this later, and you are satisfied with the results go ahead and click Ok.
After the computer does it thing, you will be brought back to the normal Photoshop screen and you will have a admittedly blurry layer on top of a razor sharp layer. This is where we are going to bring our field back into focus. Place a layer mask on the background copy, agree the brush tool, and set the foreground color to black. Since I generally do this for pictures of citizen where I want the focus on one person, I normally use a soft edge brush. Now paint on the layer mask to delineate your tack sharp field while leaving the rest of the photo blurry and there you have the Bokeh follow you were seeing for.
A consolidate of things to keep in mind; the lens blur filter is incredibly slow so it will take some time to update any changes you make. If you don't have the fortitude to wait use the faster button but comprehend what you see will not be an spoton representation of what you will get after you hit the Ok button. Go ahead and play around with the Iris settings. I have never seen much difference except on specular highlights with any of the Iris settings. I do use the Specular Highlights occasionally when I have some highlights I want to control. On the Noise estimate slider I have never gone above 3 as whatever above that just becomes overwhelming. One of the reasons for this is I all the time have Gaussian prime for distribution. If you agree Uniform for distribution this follow is lessened. I just don't use uniform for noise since noise by definition is random, therefore not uniform.
With this technique you will find that you can swiftly and effectively apply a Bokeh follow to your pictures and bring that artist ability you are seeing for. Happy shooting!
Adding Lens Blur After the Shot
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