Course Highlights


Photoshop: Creating an Artificial Depth of Field

Earlier in the course we spoke about the importance of isolation and how to use a shallow depth of field to help ensure you compose a photograph with good isolation. However, if you didn’t use a proper aperture setting when you took the photograph you can always touch up your photograph in post production. What I want to do now is to show you how to isolate the background and create an artificial and exaggerated depth of field digitally.  

Look at the following image for example. Notice how the depth of field is fairly large. Both the foreground and the background are fairly focused.

We can shorten the depth of field in a natural looking manner by highlighting the mountains and sky in the background with the rectangle marquee tool. Then feather it with a value of 50. Now go under 'filter' and click on 'blur' then click on 'Gaussian blur' and select whatever value (usually between 5- 30) that allows you to achieve your desire look.

Here is the final product that I created.

Using this technique you can edit the depth of field in post production and place emphasis on your foreground.

Continue Reading These Articles

Common Photoshop shortcuts
Photoshop: Making circle selections
Rectangle marquee tool
Creating an artificial depth of field
Magnetic lasso tool

Course Navigation

More resources