Final image of Emily, a young Taiwanese model.
Nothing takes the viewers attention away from the subject like a messy background. This is particularly noticeable in portrait photography, especially when done outside somewhere. The best way to avoid these distracting backgrounds is to shoot with a shallow depth of field but there are a number of reasons why that may not always be possible. It may be too bright, you may not have the budget for a f2.8 lens, you may be experimenting, you may simply have set the wrong aperture. Fortunately, you can simulate a shallow depth of field in Photoshop fairly easily. It may not be as desirable as doing it in camera, but it works well in a pinch.
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Original image pre-Photoshop.
Start by opening the image you want to try this technique on in Photoshop. For this, I’m use the Quick Selection tool to draw a roughly selection around my model. Simply “paint” over the area you want to select and Photoshop will do all the hard work. You don’t have to use the Quick Selection tool if you have a different preferred method for making selections. I find it easiest to use but you may not.
Detail crop showing roughly done Quick Selection
If you select too much, simply hold down the Option/Alt key and paint over that area to deselect it. If the selection looks a bit uneven, click on the Refine Edge button in the menu bar. In the dialog box that pops up, choose a view mode that allows you to eliminate the background (on white, on black, overlay or black and white work best), make sure the Smart Radius checkbox is ticked and dragh the radius slider to the right the smooth out the selection. When it looks okay to you in the preview, make sure output in set to Selection and click OK. Whenever I make a selection, I like to quickly save it by going to Select > Save Selection. This saves a bit of time if I want to revisit it later and it’s no longer selected. This is particularly useful for tricky, time-consuming selections.
Refine in overlay mode
Now that you have your subject selected, press Command/Ctrl – Shift – I to inverse it, thus making everything but your model selected. Go to Filter > Blur > Lens Blur. The Lens Blur dialog will open which gives you a few options. This filter takes a bit of processing time, so if that’s an issue, choose the Faster option for your preview, otherwise choose More Accurate. The more accurate option is substantially slower but this is only a preview, so it’s not necessary to use it if you don’t want. To add the blur, just drag the radius slider to the right until it looks good to your eye. For this image, I used a radius of 60. Then click OK. Once it processes (which can take a while), and goes back into Photoshop proper, you can delect by pressing Command/Ctrl – D.
Lens Blur sliders
Notice the unnatural blur on the ground around her feet.
Notice in the screenshot immediately above that the ground beneath her feet looks very strange being as blurry as it is. You’re going to want to reduce the blur effect here because it looks very unnatural. To do that, take the History Brush tool (Y), and using a large, soft-edged brush, paint the ground around her feet and just behind her. If you use a large brush, you can paint it out in one stroke, and it’ll appear to fade naturally behind her giving a more realistic effect.
That’s all there is to it. Give it a try next time you are unable to shoot with a sufficiently open aperture yet still want a shallow depth of field.
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