Add Depth of Field to Perk up Dull Photos in Adobe PhotoShop

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:03:05 +0000

Sometimes there’re too many staffs in a photo, but you just want to perk up some of them, for solving this problem,one important rule to make something prominent is actually "Isolation".

You can focus the readers’ attention just by isolating the subject of an image. While there are a lot of ways to do this, in some cases the best way is through depth of field.

This photo is a view from Prague on the Charles Bridge , the band is playing some music. For example, if you want to highlight someone (that is to say, at the same time make others not attract the gaze of people), say, the man sits on the most left side. The following are the steps which make it possible:

1. Use the Lasso or pen tool to select the subject

Take the pen tool and create an outline around the subject to build a mask. You can do this with the Lasso or the Pen tool, either gives basically the same results.

I like using the Lasso tool, so it works like this:

2. Go Select > Inverse

Now I’ve isolated the subject, then I simply Select > Inverse, after this I can apply some careful blurring.

3. Filter > Blur or Filter > Gaussian Blur and then set the amount of blure you need to make your point.

Be careful with the blurring because you may want the viewer to still understand what the background is. So don’t blow it away. This is probably the most natural looking technique for isolating the subject without calling attention to itself. The reader sees the subject unhindered, and continues with the story rather than wondering what was done to the background.

4. Hide Selection

Then, I almost finish my work. Look! It works rather well!

Variations on this technique would be to darken/lighten the fore or background.

Here’s a swell trick: while the background is selected, slide on up to the Hue/Saturation dialog, and de-saturate the background to grayscale. You may get a even more amazing result.

Just try it out !

DoNotYet.com » Depth

Add Depth of Field to Perk up Dull Photos in Adobe PhotoShop

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