End of Pro Lenses? NEW “Lens Blur” in Photoshop!

so what is lens plur lens plur is a new feature introduced in Lightroom actually but you can also access it with Lightroom classic and photoshop's Camera raw because all of them use the same engine so here we are in Photoshop and if you just go to filter and then camera raw filter on the right hand side if you scroll down you will see lens blur it says Early Access right here because it's kind of beta and adobi still working on it click on apply to turn it on give it a bit of time and it creates as you can see a shallow depth of field effect if you increase the blur amount the background gets more blurred it is not just that you can control which areas to focus on so if you scroll down you see this icon right there click on that and then if you click on the background now the background is in focus and the subject is blurred if you select that again and click on the subject now the subject is in focus and the background is blurred it does a depth analysis of your image which you can visualize by clicking on visualize depth the brighter and warmer areas are closer to the camera whereas the purple-ish areas and darker areas are further away from the camera now you can control which areas to focus on also using the FOC FAL range right here let's turn it off and as I move the focal range further areas are being focused and as we bring it to the left the objects closer to the camera are being focused now although this looks good it may not be 100% perfect have a look right here it missed out that little spot so how do we fix that there's an option for it and that is refine let's click on it to open it and then you have to decide whether you want to blur an area or bring an area back to focus so in this case we need to blur this little area so we need to choose the blur brush you can choose how much blur you want to apply by choosing the blur amount of course you can change it later as well and then you have parameters like brush size feather and others you need to be a little careful otherwise you'll have a little haloing effect now apart from this it also has other features like Boker type boost which we'll cover later in the video now that we know what it is let us test this feature with a variety of images and see how good or bad it performs right from simple backgrounds to complex backgrounds to objects and all kinds of stuff we'll check if it's actually usable and if not we'll learn how to make the most of it trust me I have a trick up my sleeve that's going to make this feature 10x better and I'm super excited to share that with you so without any further Ado let's get started I don't even know what I want before we begin if you're looking for the easiest way to add animations like this and transitions like this to your videos everything just drag and drop you have to try film impact for Premiere Pro all you do is just drag and drop the effect and it's done adjust the duration or values and you even get to randomize it I've been using it for 3 years now and I still pay for it so all of this animation that you see in the videos it's with film impact I've partnered with them for this video because I absolutely love it and you can check the link in description to try it for free absolutely for 30 days you don't require any cards there's no limitations for 30 days just try it it's amazing don't take my word for it try it back to photoshop and with our first example let's try the lens spitter first click on apply to turn it on it did an incredible job let's increase the blur amount but it looks good from this angle as soon as you zoom in you begin to notice that it does leave out a lot of areas this area right here that area right there now of course you can take your time to fix it with refine but again it has its own drawbacks so if you zoom in right here and if you open up a refine let's say I want to blur this area because that's what it's supposed to be I'm going to make the brush a little smaller and then you can take the time to paint now the first drawback here is that it's very slow it's going to lag secondly it creates a haloing effect if you're not careful so as I'm painting close to the edge even if I get just on the line it creates a halo effect around the edge that is not good now the biggest problem with this is noise and that is the ignorance of noise have a look on the subject's face there is noise on the subject's clothes everywhere there is noise but since the background is blurred the noise is blurred too there should have been a provision to add noise back but there isn't and that is why it looks unreal realistic when you zoom in so as you can see there's a lot of green on the subject and even if we get the selection right there is none in the background and the crazy part is Photoshop does have this function with blur Gallery so why not here now let me share with you how to make the lens player feature usable and way better so here in Photoshop let's start from scratch with a background layer selected press control or command J twice so we're going to make two copies the first one is the subject layer this only will have the subject and the second one is the background layer which without subject all right so this is just the background with the subject removed so in the subject layer first of all let's select that select the quick selection tool or any of these three tools and at the top click on select subject now keep in mind this won't be perfect as well but it's way easier to fix it way faster to fix it and you have so many more options later on for right now with the selection active click on the mask button so now the subject laay just has the subject let's turn it off for now background without subject layer should only have the background and not the subject for that we need to fill up that area by making a selection around the subject and leaving a little bit of Gap we don't have to make the selection all over again since we already have a selection so let's hold the controller command click on the mask right here to activate the selection and let's expand it a little bit by going to select modify and expand let us choose about 40 pixels hit okay that's fine you want to make sure everything is covered so right here this area is left out so we might want to select the lasso tool right here hold the shift key this makes it lasso plus and let's just add this entire area also add the shadows as well all right now let's fill it how do we fill it if you don't want to use Genera fill you can also use content ofare fill up to you so with the selection active I'm just going to hit Genera fill and click on generate there we go it did an amazing job you also have to three options to choose from here's the first second third I think I'm going to go with the second one because with the third we have a half cow and now to keep things simple you can merge both of these l so select the first one hold the control or command select the second one and then press control or command e so this is background without subject now you already saw that coming the idea is to apply lens PL just on the background separately but before we do what do we need to do we need to convert that layer into a smart object let's go to filter con convert for smart filters wise so that whatever filter we apply we can change the values later let's go to filter camera raw filter and again turn on lens player let's apply now in this case this is where they are standing and that's what we want in Focus so click on the point Focus button right there and click on this area there you go it's done you can increase the blur amount to your liking I'm going to keep it this much you can also boost the Boker and choose the type of Boker you want in the second example it will become more priv ENT hit okay and you're pretty much done all you have to do now is to turn on the subject layer and it's good to go actually not it looks awkward it looks unrealistic and the reason it looks unrealistic is because of the Shadows right here so how do we get that back this area is already in Focus so we can actually bring the original image back in that particular area so select the mask right here take the brush take a soft round brush make it larger and just simply pain that area in white there you go fixed now there's another problem we need to fix this is all looking nice but the background has no noise the subject has noise so how do we add noise to it there are a couple of ways of doing it you can go back to the camera raw filter and inside of effects you can simply add grain let's zoom in to see what it's doing you can add grain just like this if you want more options you can click on this Arrow right here and choose the amount of grain the size of the Grain and the roughness as as well hit okay so that's one way of doing it another way to add green that is one of my favorites because it shows up in layers that is creating a gray layer press control shift n command shift n a new layer dialog box shows up let's name it green and in the blend mode section change it to Overlay and check fill with overlay neutral color hit okay this creates a gray layer with overlay set because overlay is a blend mode that hides everything that is 50% gray you don't see anything right now unless you add something or do something to this lay let's go to filter convert for smart filters hit okay and then cor filter noise and add noise and now you can add noise to your liking you might want to check monochromatic unless you want color noise I'm going to set it to about 14% hit okay now the noise is pretty sharp we need to blur it a little bit let's go to filter blur gaussian blur right here and about 6 maybe 4.32 you can play with these numbers see see what works best for you and then hit okay and at any point since this is a smart object you can change the noise amount you can double click on add noise hit okay and change it to maybe 18 that matches a bit better so that's how you add noise to the background now the problem with adding noise whether like this or in camera is that the noise is added all throughout not just in the Blurred areas it is added here as well and in the Blurred areas of course so you can create a mask of it so click on the mask button right there and then you can choose CH the gradient tool and let us choose a gradient basic gradient from white to black and this is the blood area right so you can create a gradient like this by the way I accidentally chose the radial gradient choose the linear gradient right here and then you can draw the gradient to your liking also if you want it to be a little more realistic you would notice that in the bright areas there is less noise and in the darker areas there is more noise so we can do the same for the background with blend if so double click on the right hand side of the green lay now we want want to take the grain away from the bright areas of the underlying layer or the layers that lie under it so in the blend of section take the slider of the underlying lay from right to left and as we do that it's going away from the bright areas have a look as we move the slider it's taking that away but it's very harsh so hold the alt Q the option key click on the slider to break it apart and take it all apart keep it something like this that way it is way more natural so I'm going to take it all the way to the left hit okay and then you can control the opacity of the green as well so that's how to make it better now you have all the opportunities to correct the mask to your liking so I can go to the mask right here use any of my techniques to correct all of this for example I can even use the quick selection tool make a selection like this and then maybe take a brush with black as the foreground color just paint this area in that's so much easier than working with the refined brushes inside of lens now let me share with you an example with a super busy background and we'll learn a lot about boka here so let's go to filter camera raw filter let's turn on lens play Let's see what it does now of course the background is very busy and it's hard for a machine to tell the difference between the hair and the tree so it misses out on a lot of areas but have a look at the boka that is crazy good let's increase the blur amount and just boost the boka yes we can use the Boost slider to enhance or reduce the enhancement of boka so as we increase the Boost have a look the bokeh is more enhanced as we decrease it it's less enhanced so I'm going to set it all the way up and then you have different types of Boker you can play with different shapes so here's the first one here's the second one with the Border here's the third one five blade here's this one looks like funions and here's this one we have seen this kind a lot anyway I'm going to go with the first one and hit okay now of course this is not something we can use the masking is pretty poor it does miss out on a lot of areas so instead of doing it this way I worked on this image using the same method that we covered in the previous example where we worked on the background separately so let me load that for you as you can see it is much better we get control of the subject mask and it's the same thing we did before so here's the background lay on top of it using generative fill I covered the subject then we applied lens flare on that and then we added some grain using the Pix imperfect composite in panel by the way I'm not marketing it here but if you're interested you can know more about the Pix imperfect compositing plugin right here in this video now let's turn on the subject layer this makes it so much more easier because now I can go ahead and zoom in select the mask and work on the hair as well you can erase a little extra and then you can choose one of the hair brushes so let's scroll down and these are some hair brushes I created you can get access to it in the free version of pix imp perfect compositing panel or if you want to directly download it I'll link that in the description as well but the point is you you can pick white as the foreground color and just paint that hair back in with these brushes it looks so much more realistic that way so you can take your time with the mask something you just cannot do with refined brushes inside of lens blare so much better now it is time for us to move on to a non-human subject like this beautiful flower right here let's turn on lens spur and it seems like it does a good job but then again if you zoom in it does miss out on a lot of areas it did get the stem but it missed out this Leaf right here here's the before here's the after this area should have been in Focus also a lot of the petals are missed out if you try to fix it by opening up a refine right here choosing the blur brush and if you try to paint it let's select the blur brush again see it creates a haloing effect and it's slow too even when the feather is zero if we try to paint around the corners see it's just not right and makes it absolutely unusable for for this example even for this example it seems we have to use the previous method where we work on the background separately finally let's give it a simple image and see how it does so there's Yours Truly let's turn on lens blur and as you can see it feels like it did a pretty good job and I can directly post it on Instagram no issues with that let's increase the blur amount and also boost the boka a little bit but as soon as you just zoom in have a look around the edges it's not perfect now if you look at it from this angle it looks fine nobody would bat an eye they don't bat an ey anyway but let's not go there now let's try the same thing with the background separated now just for comparison I applied lens blur all throughout the image and here it is so this is the result with lens blur as you can see the edges are terrible and this is our method so much better there is no weird thing going on around the edge of course it is not perfect but it's better than this one so knowing the traditional tools methods techniques Basics Concepts never goes to waste it's something you can always rely on the lens blur feature is a great Innovation there is no doubt in it the way you can visualize the depth maps play with the range the way you can work with the Boker settings the way you can select which areas to focus on it is just brilliant but it has tons to improve speaking of cons it has no provision for adding noise or grain for example here's the subject there is noise or Grain on the subject and you blurred the background there was noise and Grain in the background but since you blurred it the noise and grain is also blurred so there should have been an option to add that back there is an option to do that with blur Gallery so why not lens blur secondly it's not very accurate in most cases you have to always go back in and adjust and even if you try to adjust it this brings us to our third and fourth problem and that is it's very very slow sometimes it lags a lot and on my Windows computer right now you might have noticed that I'm recording on a Mac because at least on a Mac it's working kind of okay but on a Windows computer it hanged my screen recording I couldn't even screen record also when you try to correct there's this halo effect we need to be careful about now speaking of the positives the great thing is you can use your traditional fundamental Photoshop techniques to fix all of the shortcomings that come with this feature by just working on the background separately you get the best of both worlds it gives you a great starting point and the blur quality is much Superior so in this case when I just applied lens player in the background have a look at the visualization take a look even it's freezing on a Mac I cannot do anything about it I cannot cancel all right here we go let's turn on visualize depth as you can see it has considered this car on a separate focal plane this scooter and this car as well on a separate focal plane so those nuances you only get with lens split so that's pretty much it for this video I hope you enjoyed it and if you did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss any other future tips tricks or tutorials I would like to take this moment to thank all of these nice and amazing people for supporting pix imperfect on patreon P minute Alexa stop I would like to take this moment to thank all of these nice and amazing people for supporting pix and perfect on patreon and helping keep pix imperfect free for everybody forever thank you so much for watching I'll see you in my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating lucky lucky lucky me lucky lucky lucky me I won got it done lucky lucky lucky me [Music] uh-oh

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 143,082

Keywords: lens blur, background blur, new feature, photoshop 2024, lightroom, camera raw, adobe, photoshop tutorial, how to blur background in photoshop, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: 0aVdqZGWmsc

Length: 17min 40sec (1060 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 25 2023