Fun with background blur

OnTheWeb1

Contributor Location: Michigan USA Joined: Jan 02, 2009 12:58 Messages: 511 Offline

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Feb 16, 2013 22:01

I underestimated the cool things you can do with background blur. Basically it blurs the whole image, then you 'reveal' what you want to be clear in your image using the 'scrubber'. It changes the whole way the photo looks. Kind of like the 'miniaturization effect' that some cameras now have, but with better image control.

It works good in images where the foreground or background may be distracting... just blur them away.

These aren't perfect images as I did them fast for examples, but you could spend some time and create high quality ones.

Fun to do.


Filename	SnowScene.jpg	Download
Description	Snow Scene
Filesize	343 Kbytes
Downloaded:	236 time(s)


Filename	SlaterBlur1.jpg	Download
Description	Schnauzer
Filesize	421 Kbytes
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PIX

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 21, 2011 00:02 Messages: 2910 Offline

Feb 17, 2013 02:10

Another great pace-setting contribution, OnTheWeb!

To be honest, I hadn't even ventured into that part of the effects module till now. After tinkering for a while, I realised that even if the cleaner brush is set to 100% it takes a few swipes to restore the original colour/clarity.

It's certainly an easy tool to use, unless you try to do the hard edges I tried on the photographer below. It took me a while to work out I'd have been better off using a selection mask. The last picture was done using a selection mask & took only a fraction of the time.

For the right photo, when you don't need a hard edged effect, it's a great tool. The blur effect is much more accurate (I think) than decreasing clarity in the adjustment module.

PIX


Filename	Effects2.jpg	Download
Description
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Filename	Effects1.jpg	Download
Description
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Feb 17. 2013 02:12

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Kmot

Contributor Location: Northridge, CA Joined: Apr 18, 2012 01:45 Messages: 432 Offline

Feb 17, 2013 12:01

Very cool, thanks for sharing! ~Tom~

BarryTheCrab

Senior Contributor Location: USA Joined: Nov 06, 2008 22:18 Messages: 6240 Offline

Feb 17, 2013 12:46

Love the samples, everyone, very cool. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
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