How-To’s Day: Photoshop: Lens Blur with Alpha Channels

 

Attention can be drawn to a photograph’s subject in ways too numerous to list. One technique is to adjust the camera’s aperture so that only the foreground (or mid-ground, as the case may be) object is in focus, leaving other areas out of focus and blurry. This technique forces the eye to the subject, delivering subtle or stark focus contrast.

But, if the photo has already been taken, the composite image created from scratch in Photoshop, or for some other reason it is not possible to create the focus contrast in-camera, Photoshop can do it.

In this Planet Photoshop tutorial (via CreativePro), Pete Bauer demonstrates a refined technique for crating focus contrast. Applying Gaussian Blur to a selection, while popular, is heavy-handed. But, by using the new Photoshop CS Lens Blur filter and Alpha Channels, a more professional, controlled blur may be effected.

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TAGS:  design howto quark indesign adobe graphics  

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