blurred photo background

[almostnormal]

i took this the other day and whilst i'm quite happy its in focus and stuff i was wondering if there was anyway of blurring the background when its this close? if not nevermind, but it'd be cool if someone could help! sarah

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by almostnormal

i took this the other day and whilst i'm quite happy its in focus and stuff i was wondering if there was anyway of blurring the background when its this close? if not nevermind, but it'd be cool if someone could help! sarah

In PSE 5 you select the butterfly with either the magic wand or selection brush - then go to select - invert selection. to select the background

then feather the selection by about 5 pixels (so as to avoid an artificially hard edge)

then with the selection still active go to filter - blur - gausian blur and apply sufficient blur to fade the back ground , dont apply too much or it will look artificial - i'd apply in steps of about 10% - you can always go back if you dont like the effect , which is one of the joys of photoshop.

when everything looks right go to layers - flatten layer then save - save as and save it as a a different file name so that you still have the original.

Ring or email me if you want me to gothrough it step by step

[Hobjob]

Originally Posted by almostnormal

i took this the other day and whilst i'm quite happy its in focus and stuff i was wondering if there was anyway of blurring the background when its this close? if not nevermind, but it'd be cool if someone could help! sarah

Eeyore has given a good way.

Problem will be with the magnetic lassoo and those
delicate antennae.

Anyone any tips for dong that bit?

[matt_xyz]

although a blurred background can be added to some shots in the way Pete describes, it's not always easy to make it look natural and I think it would be near impossible in the above shot. The problem is that the background is so close to the butterfly so it would never 'naturally' be the case that the butterfly was in focus but the background were not. You could maybe blur the background a bit at the top and bottom, but the antennae would be a problem.

Matt

[nightshade]

I am not a camera buff but do you have a depth of field button on your camera
a quick check may indicate that you could use a wider taking aperature and "naturally"
blur the background at the taking stage

[glsammy]

I've had a quick go at this. I think Matts point is a good one, it can make the subject look like it's almost floating on top of the surface.
Here's my effort.




As for the antennae, the answer is zoom in like crazy and mask very carefully. One point though, you can't afford to feather the selection at all, or you loose the antennae completely!

After applying the blur, I then select the individual blur tool and go over the entire edges of the object, to soften the outline. Without that it really does look like it doesn't belong in the picture.

After all this, in this example, I don't think it improves the image one bit! I think the original was fine in the first place.

[eeyore]

nicely done graham - one point is that masking isnt as feasible with pse as it is with full photoshop (though there are work arrounds) with pse i would do the antenas by selecting contiguous selection then zooming right in and selecting the antenas with the selection brush with the brush size turned down to one or two pixels.

good point about the feathering i hadnt considered that - tho i guess it would be possible to put the antenna on a seperate layer and thus feather round the wings only

I agree with matt that it is very difficult to make this look natural as although you could get a dof which through the background out on a shot like this using a dslr and f2.8 macro lens the chances are good that such a small dof would also mean that not the entire butterfly would be in focus either

[almostnormal]

hello guys. thanks for all the help. i see what you mean about the floating butterfly, it does look a bit surreal doesn't it? next time i shall endeavour to have the buttefly land somewhere a bit less busy!

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by almostnormal

hello guys. thanks for all the help. i see what you mean about the floating butterfly, it does look a bit surreal doesn't it? next time i shall endeavour to have the buttefly land somewhere a bit less busy!

ideally you need the butterfly to be further away from the background than it is from your lens (v. hard to achieve with insects in practice) , and to have the apperture set as wide as possible (probably f5.6 on a compact)

this will help to get the background as blurred as possible in camera , and if you want to increase the bluring in photoshop it will both be easier to select the butterfly and the blur will look more natural

its still a nice photo as is tho

[WhiskyBottle]

Select the butterfly, and feather as suggested - Then hold shift and select the antenne at high magnification. This adds the antenne selection to the butterfly selection, but doesn't feather it. Then you can inverse the selection and blur the background. Something else you could try on the background is to reduce the contrast with curves