Focal Range

In this tutorial, I'm going to show you some of my own techniques I use in Photoshop to replicate great photography. In photography, you can set f Stops, which basically are you focal range. There is a lot to this, but basically, low f Stop means a WIDE range of focus, so basically the whole picture is in focus. Those nice pro shots you see when just the subject is in view, are shot with high f Stops. Now, I have a nice camera, but a lot of the time I don't have the time to set up f Stops, or mine won't go as high as I'd like. So, I turn to good old Photoshop to replicate it.

Now, in the picture, one part is focused, the other is blurred. So that's pretty simple to reverse and re-create in Photoshop. First, open the picture you are going to use. Here is mine.

Click to enlarge

First thing to do is to duplicate the background layer. Once you've done this, with that layer selected, Go to Filter, then Blue, then Lens Blur (CS 2 only, gaussian blur also works for versions not yet CS 2)

These are my settings. Really, the way to do it is to find the "furthest" point back, distance wise, that is to be blurred, and make that the desire amount of blurring. Don't worry about focusing now, it will all be blurred. The thing really to change is the radius, but play around with it.

Click to enlarge

Ok, so now you have a wonderfully blurred picture. Next, you're going to use one of the most beautiful features of Photoshop: layer masks. Go to Layer, then Layer Mask, and then hit Reveal All. Yea, awesome, nothing happened. Not yet ;)

Now, here is the ultra cool thing. Grab a paint brush, I chose like pixel size 20. Just use a soft round, or whatever. Make sure your foreground color is solid black. Now, whatever you paint black on, will become in focus, or rather, will show the focused layer beneath. This is so cool. You can paint what you want to be focused. So, I painted my guy, so he is in focus. This is what I got:

Click to enlarge

The other cool thing is that if you mess up, you can change the foreground to white, and paint over and they become re-blurred, or rather they no longer show the layer beneath.

This is a really cool technique I use a lot, but it doesn't stop there. Instead of painting, solids, try using gradients, to achieve gradual focus effects, like this one.

The possibilities are only limited by your imagination. Good luck, that's it for now, I hope you've learned a lot, and will have fun with this technique!