Depth-of-field,
in traditional photography terms, is
the range of the focus on a lens. And,
technically, in every photo it's always
physically there, but could either be
a narrow or a wide depth-of-field. A
close-up of a flower usually has a narrow
depth-of-field. A huge landscape shot
from far away usually has a wide depth-of-field.
In the 3d world, the term is used to
really only to describe the close-up
effect. While you should always make
some effort to blur out less-important
parts a little, using depth-of-field
effects can really make your main focus
obvious.
Nowadays most 3d Packages come equipped
with a depth-of-field filter or effect
already, but here's one easy way to
fake it.
Here's where we left off:
When
thinking about depth-of-field you need
to think about focus, this is the target
area that I want to remain focused,
everything in red needs to be blurred
at least a little, if not drastically.
To
start off the blurring we need to duplicate
our work copy layer (name the duplicate
"blur copy") and then turn
off every other layer except the "blur
copy" layer and the "work
copy" layers.
Select
the "blur copy" layer and
use Filter>Gaussian Blur on it. I
used a radius of about 6.7.Yes, this
Gaussian Blur does blur everything.
But we're going to use masks to minimize
the effect in our focus areas.
After
clicking OK then apply a mask to the
"blur copy" layer.
By
painting black on the mask, we can hide
the effects of the blur and allow the
crisp "work copy" layer to
show through. This really is a matter
of preference but its important to keep
in mind the distance areas are from
your focal point. I started by using
the airbrush at 40% to reveal my focus
area.
At
this point you need to visualize your
3d scene.Things that are either really
in front or really behind the focal
point will become blurred out, here's
how I visualized the image.
After
I finished painting the mask, here's
how it looked, it's OK if yours doesn't
look exactly the same, just remember,
when working on the mask in this case,
what is white will be completely focused
(from the layer underneath) and what's
black will be completely blurred.
Anything grayish will be a mix somewhere
in-between.
:Use the bracket keys "["
and "]" to change brush
sizes. Use Shift+brackets to change
between harder and softer brushes.
Use the numpad (0-9) to change the
brush opacity.
You
can see that I didn't follow my "visualization"
exactly, but it's pretty close. I
focused or blurred additionally for
design purposes too.
Here's
what the mask would look like in the
actual image. There are plenty of
other ways to blur parts of your image,
but this way maintains a focused version
underneath it all too.
After
unhiding all the other layers, we can
see our picture is starting to get that
"Photoshop't to death" feel.
That's OK, this is the "Dante's
Peak" of examples: something we're
using to shove as many different possibilities
as we can imagine into it at once.We're
now ready to move on to the next step,
Noise!
