Now THIS IS some cool shizznit

[E equals MC2]

Who needs talent anymore?

REAL shots vs simulated comparison NICE

Simulates the depth of field of cameras with nice aperture settings. Damn, with this plug-in, I can take any flat point-and-shoot pics and then add a professional zoom later.

Impressive.

 

[loup garou]

depth of field

 

[Jawo]

Post in the Digital and Video Cameras section for more interest!

 

[Dubb]

Some of those look really awful.

 

[Dimmu]

Ooooh, this is a very useful tool. Many thanks for posting it!

 

[E equals MC2]

Originally posted by: Dubb
Some of those look really awful.

Really? If you saw them without the knowledge of them being artificial, you would just think they're images. Some marbles and dice shots are pretty nice.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

of Depth Field

 

[Hyperlite]

cool!

 

[alfa147x]

I still don't think its a replacement for low aperture shots, but it is a use full tool...

 

[BrownTown]

All the edited images look worse than the originals. I guess its nice to draw attention to one area, but you are losing lots of detail. I guess I just don't see the point in imitating graphical distortions from a camera lens to an image that is in better focus. Since when does purposefully making an image look out of focus make it look better?

EDIT: on another note, the function needed to do this type of image manipulation would seem to be pretty trivial, I'm sure I could make a program to do this sort of transformation in less than an hour. Might not be as good at first, but after a few hours of trying different functions to alter the convolution mask I'm pretty sure I could get images of that quality.

 

[E equals MC2]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
All the edited images look worse than the originals. I guess its nice to draw attention to one area, but you are losing lots of detail. I guess I just don't see the point in imitating graphical distortions from a camera lens to an image that is in better focus. Since when does purposefully making an image look out of focus make it look better?

Are you arguing that a DoF is pointless, regardless of they're natural or artificial? You're right. They're MEANT to lose details in order to draw attention to the intended subject, creating a very professional shots.

They're great for taking portrait shots: See perfect example

Now if this images was taken at a higher aperture, the backdrop would be just as sharp as the bride, making the whole composition too busy looking.

 

[BrownTown]

Originally posted by: E equals MC2

Originally posted by: BrownTown
All the edited images look worse than the originals. I guess its nice to draw attention to one area, but you are losing lots of detail. I guess I just don't see the point in imitating graphical distortions from a camera lens to an image that is in better focus. Since when does purposefully making an image look out of focus make it look better?

Are you arguing that a DoF is pointless, regardless of they're natural or artificial?

They're great for taking portrait shots: See perfect example

Now if this images was taken at a higher aperture, the backdrop would be just as sharp as the bride, making the whole composition too busy looking.

No, like I said its good for highlighting one area, like drawing attention to the bride, but most of those shots look worse imo.

 

[Kaido]

Tight, too bad there's not an OS X version

 

[E equals MC2]

Originally posted by: BrownTown

Originally posted by: E equals MC2

Originally posted by: BrownTown
All the edited images look worse than the originals. I guess its nice to draw attention to one area, but you are losing lots of detail. I guess I just don't see the point in imitating graphical distortions from a camera lens to an image that is in better focus. Since when does purposefully making an image look out of focus make it look better?

Are you arguing that a DoF is pointless, regardless of they're natural or artificial?

They're great for taking portrait shots: See perfect example

Now if this images was taken at a higher aperture, the backdrop would be just as sharp as the bride, making the whole composition too busy looking.

No, like I said its good for highlighting one area, like drawing attention to the bride, but most of those shots look worse imo.

I guess some closeup shots are just bad with low aperture. I personally love them even in macro shots.. especially in food photography:

A nice steak with a nice blur in back

come on, you can't tell me these don't look good?, with no DoF, this shot would've been boring and plain.

 

[ThePresence]

You can really do this with a lens blur and layer masks.

 

[Aharami]

this is pretty cool. I've been doing something like this in photoshop using alpha channels and lens blur. But its a rather tedious process drawing the masks. Im gonna give this a try and see how it looks compared to my manually done ones

 

[ThePresence]

Originally posted by: Aharami
this is pretty cool. I've been doing something like this in photoshop using alpha channels and lens blur. But its a rather tedious process drawing the masks. Im gonna give this a try and see how it looks compared to my manually done ones

IMO manually will be better. You have much more control of the masks.

 

[alkemyst]

welcome to post image processing.

 

[NoShangriLa]

Nice, It meant that I don't have to pay through the nose for a large aperture/heavy lens just to get decent DOF.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: BrownTown

Originally posted by: E equals MC2

Originally posted by: BrownTown
All the edited images look worse than the originals. I guess its nice to draw attention to one area, but you are losing lots of detail. I guess I just don't see the point in imitating graphical distortions from a camera lens to an image that is in better focus. Since when does purposefully making an image look out of focus make it look better?

Are you arguing that a DoF is pointless, regardless of they're natural or artificial?

They're great for taking portrait shots: See perfect example

Now if this images was taken at a higher aperture, the backdrop would be just as sharp as the bride, making the whole composition too busy looking.

No, like I said its good for highlighting one area, like drawing attention to the bride, but most of those shots look worse imo.

basically.

 

[BrownTown]

I'm not entirely sure about how ya'll are doing it with the masks and lens blur, but you have to be careful of the edge effects between the area being blurred and those being preserved. IF you do it wrong the near field objects will seems to blur into the far field which is not correct, the convolution masks used on the edges must be made to avoid the near field objects. At least if you want the highest accuracy, it will likely look just fine in most cases just doing a standard mask.

 

[ThePresence]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
I'm not entirely sure about how ya'll are doing it with the masks and lens blur, but you have to be careful of the edge effects between the area being blurred and those being preserved. IF you do it wrong the near field objects will seems to blur into the far field which is not correct, the convolution masks used on the edges must be made to avoid the near field objects. At least if you want the highest accuracy, it will likely look just fine in most cases just doing a standard mask.

Simple.
Make your selection of the foreground area, put it on a new layer.
Knock the edges off of your new selection on the background layer so it doesn't blur into the background when you put on the lens blur.
Apply a lens blur to the background image.
Make a gradient layer mask to gradually blur it.

 

[Aharami]

Originally posted by: BrownTown
All the edited images look worse than the originals. I guess its nice to draw attention to one area, but you are losing lots of detail. I guess I just don't see the point in imitating graphical distortions from a camera lens to an image that is in better focus. Since when does purposefully making an image look out of focus make it look better?

EDIT: on another note, the function needed to do this type of image manipulation would seem to be pretty trivial, I'm sure I could make a program to do this sort of transformation in less than an hour. Might not be as good at first, but after a few hours of trying different functions to alter the convolution mask I'm pretty sure I could get images of that quality.

which pic do you think looks better?
original
edited to create DoF

 

[Aharami]

Originally posted by: ThePresence

Originally posted by: Aharami
this is pretty cool. I've been doing something like this in photoshop using alpha channels and lens blur. But its a rather tedious process drawing the masks. Im gonna give this a try and see how it looks compared to my manually done ones

IMO manually will be better. You have much more control of the masks.

maybe. But it takes me forever to create the masks

 

[BrownTown]

Well the second one looks kinda cut and pasted to me, but yeah in the cases people are brining up the DoF picture often does look better. However the original website still isn't doing it for me, the effects are way overdone imo. However I will be quick to admit that I am not one who likes all the "artsy" type image transformations that alot of people do. Especially when its done so blatantly, if it is very subtle then it can often add to the scene, but I feel that people tend to overuse them often.