- Getting the Most of Your Web Images: Faking Depth of Field
- Falsifying the Depth of Field
- Different Types of Blurs
- One Last Trick with Feathering
Falsifying the Depth of Field
To add selective defocus to this image, first you must set an appropriate level of feathering and draw a freehand oval around the head of the guitar. Then you must invert the selection using the Selections menu. This hand option selects everything that you haven't selected and deselects everything that you have. So now that everything apart from the head of the guitar is selected, you can apply a blur, most likely found in the Filters menu (see Figure 4).
Figure 4 The blur de-emphasizes some parts of the image and makes others more important.
You may apply multiple blurs. But if you do, it's best to deselect the whole image and reselect the portion that you're keeping sharp (repeating the inversing procedure). This level of randomness in the selection of your sharp area will keep the demarcation between sharp and blurry from looking artificial.
For this effect to work, there needs to be believable distance between the object that you're keeping in focus and the objects that you're blurring out. In addition, things on the same plane should have the same level of focus or defocus.