Gaussian Blur

[Neil Hunt]

I'm guessing many won't like these, but since going digital a few months ago, I've been playing about with ways of recreating some of the feel of larger formats, especially less depth of field. To be honest without any real success, but it did lead into playing about with Gaussian Blur layers. Like them now, but probably won't in a couple of months.

 

[Michael_Stones]

Hi Neil. I like both of them, the second more than the first. Have you tried other blur modes with this type of manipulation? Surface and shape (particularly with the grad pattern) may give the more precision to the outer regions of the blurred area. Cheers, Mike

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Neil,

I enjoy the fact that you are attempting to actualize intentions on your work. It is satisfying when you finally do it right just as your brain envisaged it.

Just share with me what are the qualities of LF you are building into the image and how you proceeded. There are so many aspects to LF!

Asher

 

[Neil Hunt]

Asher, the initial intention was to get the appearance of quite a wide field of view with a shallow depth of field and also to be able to control the plane of focus. No doubt the more photoshop gifted could do that quite well. Anyway, though that didn't come off as planned, this is what morphed out of it as playing about with blurring parts of the image is maybe an underused way of placing the point of interest where you want it.

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Asher, the initial intention was to get the appearance of quite a wide field of view with a shallow depth of field and also to be able to control the plane of focus. No doubt the more photoshop gifted could do that quite well. Anyway, though that didn't come off as planned, this is what morphed out of it as playing about with blurring parts of the image is maybe an underused way of placing the point of interest where you want it.

Neil, I'm not sure which version of Photoshop you have, but it could be worthwhile to check out the "Filter>Blur>Lens blur" menu option for this purpose. It allows to do a realistic DOF blur based on a depth map or a mask that you can make yourself.

Bart