The viewer looks at an object in the foreground. Many people believe that blurry background can only be seen in photographs, but in real life we see equally well everything that comes into our field of vision. However, in reality this is not entirely true.

Let's do a little experiment. Close one eye (the camera has one lens), place any object, for example a finger, in front of your face at a distance of about 20 cm. Focus so that you can see it clearly and notice that objects in the background become blurry.

Now the reverse problem. Without removing your hand, focus on the background objects. You will notice that the finger is no longer visible as clearly. Haven't you noticed this effect before? It is especially good to conduct this experiment in a dimly lit room so that the so-called “depth of field” is smaller.

Thus we have established that images with blurred background we see in real life, so cameras didn’t bring anything fundamentally new here. Another thing is that, if implemented correctly, background blur can be significantly enhanced, which gives photographs some additional charm and an image depth that is otherwise indescribable in photography (if we are not talking about 3D photography).

How to blur the background in a photo

I want to make a reservation right away that here we will not talk about this or that graphic editor. This is a topic for a separate article (read the article about). Here we are dealing with the technology of obtaining a blurred background directly in the photography process.

In order for your photo to have a beautiful blurred background, one or more of the following conditions must be met.

1. The wider the aperture, the more blurred the background

I hope you know what . Now in many even inexpensive amateur digital point-and-shoot cameras It is possible to manually set its value. You know that if the aperture value is large (16, 22, etc.) then the “pupil” of the lens is very narrow and the light is better focused on the matrix. In this case, the depth of field is very large and the background may not be blurred at all.

If the aperture value is small (4, 3.5, 2.8, 1.4...), then the depth of field decreases and the background already falls into the " blurred area", which leads to his blur. The effect of aperture on depth of field and background blur is shown more clearly in this figure.

2. The higher the focal length, the better the background in the photo is blurred.

The same image can be obtained in two ways. You can, for example, come close to your subject and take a photo. You can move further away from it, using the zoom function to bring the object closer and photograph it. On the one hand, it seems that the pictures should turn out the same. However, if you look closely at both images, it becomes clear that in the one shot with a longer focal length background blurred more. Again, it's best to show this in a picture.

Thus, if we want to get blurry background, we will move further away and take a closer look at the object.

3. The further the background is from the foreground, the more it blurs.

Everything is probably clear here. If, for example, you are filming bright flower against the background of dark leaves of trees that grow at a distance of 10 meters from the flower, then these same leaves will be greatly blurred.

On the other hand, if you photograph a flower against the background of other flowers in the same flower bed, then of course there will be some distance between the foreground and background, but it will not be enough to make a beautiful blur of the background. This leads to a simple rule: try to find a shooting point so that the background is as far as possible from the object you are photographing. Of course, this cannot always be realized, but you can at least try.

What camera do you need to get a blurry background?

Many beginners mistakenly believe that in order to take photos with a beautiful blurred background and a clear foreground requires an expensive camera, preferably a SLR, with good expensive optics, etc. In fact it would be perfect option, but you can achieve a blurred background on inexpensive compacts, provided they can take photographs in manual mode.

This photo was taken with a camera Canon Power Shoot G9. You can see for yourself that the background is very blurry. When shooting, I opened the aperture to its maximum value of 2.8. The result is obvious.

Owners of DSLRs, provided they have a telephoto lens, can get an even more expressive effect.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens.
Focal length 400 mm. Aperture 5.6. Shutter speed 1/500. ISO 100

Here only the flower closest to us is in focus (and even then not the whole flower). Those directly behind him have already fallen out of focus. What is even further away has been completely lost and turned into blurry spots. Separately, I would like to show you a fragment of this photograph in full size:

This is 100% scale. Notice how uniform the background is. No digital noise, no dots, no fuss, etc. What I mean is that if there is even the slightest opportunity when choosing a camera to buy a DSLR or DSLR, you should do just that. You'll be surprised at how clean and high-quality photos you can get even from an entry-level DSLR.

If you are wondering how to blur the background so that only the most important background can be highlighted with focus. important element in the photo, then you have come to the right place.

Blurred background and foreground. My photo. F2.0, 50mm, ISO 200, 4000", Helios-81n, Nikon D40

There are two main ways to blur the background in a photograph.

1. Using camera settings
2. Using software
Of course, a more natural and natural blur of the background occurs when shooting directly. In order to blur the background as much as possible using a camera, you need to configure it.

Example photo with blurred background

How to best set up your camera

1. You need to open the aperture as much as possible. The F number is usually responsible for the aperture. It is very convenient to take photographs with a blurred background in aperture priority mode, which is designated as A or Av. To open means to reduce the F number. For example, the aperture value F3.5 is greater than the aperture value F5.6. If, for example, the camera is set to F8.0, then to open the aperture you need to lower it to the minimum allowable, usually F5.6, F3.5, F2.8, or, if you’re lucky, then on fast lenses you can even set F1.8 and F1.4. For example, on a piece of paper I printed “Here is the background” and in order to blur it, I first shot it at aperture 1.4, and to bring it out more, I shot it at aperture 16.0

The effect of aperture on depth of field and background blur

2. You need to turn the zoom up or down as much as possible. The longer the focal length, the easier it will be to blur the background. To do this you should digital camera make the maximum approximation, and on the SLR simply move the lens to the focal length with the maximum number. For example, if you have an 18-55mm kit lens, then it would be best to blur the background at 55mm. On a regular point-and-shoot camera, sometimes you can simply turn on the macro mode, and the lens itself will set to the maximum focal length.

Example photo with blurred background

3. And, finally, get as close to the object as possible. The closer the subject is to the lens, the stronger the blur will be. In this case, the lens will focus closer and closer. Just make sure that the frame is well composed, otherwise you may shoot something completely different from what was planned.

Example photo with blurred background
bokeh

Of course, many have heard about bokeh. Bokeh is the nature of the background blur, including its intensity. If the lens blurs the background well, then the lens is said to have good bokeh. There is a lot of debate about the beauty of bokeh - which lens is better or worse. Bokeh has its own plasticity, distortion, torsion, etc., the feeling of the beauty of bokeh comes with experience and everyone has their own. More details in the BOKE section,

An example of a photo with a blurred background. Soft bokeh
Chasing bokeh

The pursuit of better bokeh means comparisons of a huge number of photographs, various kinds of arguments in favor of one lens or another, which leads to the pursuit of fast and long-focus lenses that cost a lot of money. The strength of blur and the creation of bokeh are actually affected by only 3 main physical parameters:
1. Optical aperture of the lens, also known as aperture
2. Lens focal length
3. Focus distance, the distance between the camera, the subject and the background.

Based on these parameters, you can easily decide which lens is most suitable for a particular shooting.

Which lens blurs the background the most?

Following on from previous thoughts, a lens with a long focal length and high aperture will blur the background the most. For example, fifty-kopeck lenses with a 50mm focal length and a large aperture ratio of F1.4 blur the background well, short telephotos like 135mm F2.0 blur the background even more, 200mm F2.0 telephotos blur the background even more, and so on. But the longer the focal length and the higher the aperture, the more expensive the lens. Therefore, amateur photographers usually stop at half a cent like a 50mm F1.4 or a dark but long-focus telephoto like a 70-300mm F4.0-5.6. Which lens is best for you depends only on your personal considerations.

Example photo with blurred background
More thoughts on blur

If we delve into the intricacies of what influences bokeh more, it is difficult to achieve a consensus, but please note that sometimes the focal length affects more than the lens aperture. Also, background blur is indirectly affected by the size of the sensor for the same lens. So on full-frame cameras they say that blur is stronger with the same lens. The depth of field of the lens does not change - this is physical quantity. So what's the catch? The catch is that the focusing distance of the lens changes to compose the same frame. And of course, the further the background is from the subject, the more blurred it will be. By the way, short-focus lenses with large apertures are still better able to blur the background that is close to the subject.

Photo with blurred background. You have to be careful with blur. Photo by TFCD
Photoshop will also help

If the photo is taken and you want to blur the background, then Photoshop or another program will come to the rescue. There are a lot of blurring methods and I won’t dwell on them.

What exactly is foreground and background blur?
Conclusions:

To achieve maximum blur, shoot at the maximum aperture and maximum focal length. Moreover, the further the distance between the background and the object and the closer the distance between the camera and the object, the more blurred the background will be. If the camera cannot provide normal blur, you can finish it in Photoshop.

To blur the background in the photo many users turn to online services or to photoshop. You need to spend time on this and have some image processing skills. The effort is worth it - blurred edges with high sharpness on the subject look very beautiful. And the Bokeh effect, when the background turns into fabulous special effects, is completely discouraging.

But a blurred background can be made easier and faster on Android devices!

How to make a blurred background in a photograph in principle?

On SLR camera it's very easy to get a good one blurred background effect. This requires sufficient lighting, fully open aperture and enlarged focal length.

Developers have learned to model bokeh effect, previously available exclusively to SLR cameras. The most important thing is to decide on the focus point. You must understand what in the frame will receive high sharpness and clarity, and what will blur and become the background.

Today we'll figure it out simplest method create photos with a blurred background on Android devices.

The effect is amazing. But the software method may not always work. For example, there are problems with mirror surfaces (sometimes they do not blur). It's hard to capture and fast moving targets.

What you will need to blur a photo:

Smartphone with a good camera;

Pre-installed version of Android 4.4 KitKat and higher;

Sufficient performance for image processing (otherwise the process will be very long);

One of the example applications below.

How to blur the background of a photo in Android using Google Camera?

Official application Google cameras very cool. And recently it has become available not only on Nexus- And Pixel-devices. To you required A little practices, but the result will definitely please everyone!

1. Download the app for free Google Camera and install it: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.Android.GoogleCamera

2. After launch, you can refuse or agree to georeference (consumes battery power).

3. From the menu on the left side of the screen, swipe right and select “Blur.”

4. Now you will be shown instructions on how to use the background blur mode on a photo.

5. After activating the camera, focus on the subject, press the shutter button and slowly move the smartphone upward, keeping the subject in the center.

6. Once you've taken the shot, edit the result by blurring the background more or moving the focus center.

Realistic background blur on an existing photo or when shooting on Android

You can achieve a realistic bokeh effect, like the open aperture of a SLR camera, using the application AfterFocus for Android devices. Edit existing photos or take new photo according to the principle specified for Google Cameras.

1. Download free application AfterFocus: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.motionone.afterfocus

2. After opening it, you will see in the interface “ Smart focus ", in which you need to click on the button with the icon of a person in focus and outline the area where blur is not required.

3. Now select the soft focus area by clicking on the in-focus crown icon and marking the areas for soft blur.

4. The icon with nature in focus is responsible for the hard background blur mode - you need to draw the background area for maximum blur.

More apps for blurring the background in photos for Android:

ASUS PixelMaster Camera.

"Focus Effect" by Dumpling Sandwich.

PicsArt Photo Studio & Collage by PicsArt.

"Photo editor" from Aviary.

Photoshop has enormous capabilities that allow you to make almost any changes to an image. Blurred backgrounds are widely used by many photographers. In real life, this effect is achieved thanks to the functions of the camera. But once the photo has already been taken, you can use the Photoshop graphics editor. This will be discussed in this article.

Preparation

Back blur occurs in two stages. It’s worth saying right away that you only need minimal knowledge of this program. And even if this is your first time encountering Photoshop, then a ten-minute tour of all the most necessary tools will allow you to blur the background. You can use any version of the program. For this work, it is best to choose a high-quality image.

Instructions

The main idea of ​​this method is to separate the background from the main part of the image, and only then apply filters to the desired area of ​​the photo.

additional information

You can additionally use the “blur” tool and slightly correct the mistakes made at the selection stage. If you used another method to create the selection, you can skip steps 4, 5, 6. The main thing is to understand that you need to separate the background from the main part of the photo. And how this will happen does not matter. Therefore, if you are better at another instrument and are not good with a pen, then it is better to use a tool that is convenient for you.

Conclusion

IN Photoshop program You can perform a wide variety of operations with the image and change the background at your discretion. Combine meaning and use new possibilities. Fortunately, this program allows us to endlessly experiment and achieve the best results.

How much effort photographers sometimes have to put in and what tricks they resort to in order to extract sharpness from a not entirely successful photo, using the appropriate tools in the Photoshop program. But it turns out that many users, on the contrary, are interested in blurring a photo in Photoshop, although not at all in order to spoil the picture, but for artistic purposes (for example, in a group photo you can highlight yourself, protecting yourself from blurring, and everyone else around "smear")

Of course, the main impact of the editor is focused on increasing the sharpness of photographs, but the arsenal of blurring tools is also solid, and we still need to figure out which tools are more numerous - either blurring or clarifying. But in any case, blurs are one of the most used filters, and the number of blurring agents is growing almost from version to version. For example, in Photoshop CS5 there were 10 blur filters, and in CS6 there are already 14 of them.

All the power of blurring tools in Photoshop is concentrated in the “Blur” submenu, in the “Filter” menu (Blur). It would take a long time to list the goals and reasons for blurring, but in the vast majority of cases main task Such processing is to highlight the main object by defocusing the background space and giving volume to the image as a whole.

"Blur" and "Blur+" filters

The simplest remedy for sharpening is the Blur tool in Photoshop. It has no settings, so no parameters are required. Blur “with a plus” means blurring even more, and if not enough, the Ctrl+F key combination will start reprocessing.

Gaussian blur

This is perhaps the most popular (of blurring tools) tool that uses a Gaussian blur algorithm. Here you can use the "Radius" slider to select the appropriate degree of blur. Also simple, as in the previous case, but much more effective.

Frame Blur

This filter is also adjusted only by the radius engine, but its operating algorithm differs from the previous filter. Here, blurring occurs by averaging the colors of neighboring pixels, and the engine changes this averaged area.

"Intelligent" blur

The smartest thing is called “Smart…”, and this filter really lives up to its name, although in the Russian “Photoshop” the word “smart” is in quotation marks, but in the English version it is not (Smart Blur). Here, in addition to the blur radius, you can set the threshold and processing quality, and also select one of the additional blending modes, in addition to the default one ("Manual", also known as the "Normal" mode).

Radial Blur

Depending on the selected blurring method, the filter allows you to simulate the blurring of the picture caused by turning the camera, when the image remains sharp in the center and is blurred at the periphery (ring method), or to obtain the effect that occurs when the camera moves sharply (Linear/Zoom). The strength of the blur is adjusted with the "Quantity" slider, but you can also select the center of the effect (with the mouse) and the quality of the output image.

Simulate image blur when shooting dynamic objects

Using the Motion Blur filter, Photoshop creates the characteristic blurring effect in a photograph that is obtained when shooting a fast-moving object. Therefore, in addition to the intensity of the effect, which is controlled by the “Displacement/Shift” slider, the direction of movement (angle) is naturally set.

Surface Blur

Despite the fact that the name of the Surface Blur filter is translated as “surface blur,” in some versions of Photoshop it is for some reason called “Surface Blur.”

This discriminating filter blurs the image while preserving lines and edges to the best of its ability and your settings, so it is often used to combat grain and digital noise by manipulating the Radius and Isohelium parameters.

Mysterious average blur

There is one such blur in Photoshop (Average), the activity of which can hardly be called blur, because this filter simply completely fills the entire image or selected area with the average color of this image or fragment.

If you apply this filter to the entire image on a duplicate of it, and then lower the opacity of the copy, you can tone the image, but for such purposes it is not the wisest solution. But if you blur and average some fragment and, lowering the opacity, make an inscription on it, it can turn out interesting.

Lens blur

This is literally translated English name Lens Blur filter, which in Russian versions of the Photoshop program is called “Low blur.” This blur in Photoshop is used in cases where ideal sharpness in the entire photo is not satisfactory for compositional or other reasons, that is, when in focus only a certain area or object should remain. We only need to indicate to the filter what should be closer in the image and what further away, creating a so-called depth map, which can serve as, for example, a linear or circular gradient built in the alpha channel from black to white.

A savvy filter, calculating the blurring algorithm, will immediately understand that the black areas are those closest to the camera. As they move away, they are followed by all shades of gray. Well, the white areas are as far away from the camera as possible, and here you need to perform intensive background blur. The filter will do the rest at its best, obeying the settings that we specify to him.

An alpha channel (empty) is created in the channels palette with the corresponding button and, opening the eye in the RGB line to see the photo itself, fill it with a black and white gradient, drawing a line from the closest point to the farthest one, which should correspond to the desired viewing angle.

Then you need to close the visibility of the alpha channel, return to the RGB channel and turn on the Lens Blur filter. Next, in the “Source” list, select our alpha channel and click on the area of ​​the image that should be in focus (or set the distance to the focal point using the “Focal Length Blur” slider). Well, use the “Radius” slider to select the blur strength (degree of defocus). The remaining settings are very subtle effects that are rarely used for ordinary photographs, so click OK and note with satisfaction how realistic the blur is in Photoshop. It can simulate the depth of field of the depicted space.

Manual blurring "Photoshop tools". How to use your finger to smudge photos

Along with filters (plugins) for blurring, which I do all the “dirty work” for us, Photoshop also provides tools for manual work for the same purposes, which can be used to do almost everything that filters can do, and even a little more, and maybe better (still handmade). It's about about two of the three, deprived of hotkeys and headed by the Blur Tool.

By design, this is a brush whose pressure function is performed by the “Intensity” parameter in the settings. Depending on the size and hardness of the selected brush, the Blur Tool can blur the entire image or details in a certain area at once. Replacing sharp edges with smooth transitions, the tool skillfully softens the contours, and if you hold the mouse button down, it will work like a brush in spray mode, enhancing the effect. This tool is in good hands can do almost everything, in any case, with such a task as making a blurred background, the Blur Tool can handle it easily.

The Finger Tool, also known as the Smudge Tool, really smudges the drawing, as if you were running your finger over a freshly painted painting. The strength of the effect is also regulated by the “Intensity” parameter, but unlike the neighboring tool, there is also a function by selecting which (check the box), we will smear with the first color. Practical use The “finger” is found, for example, in the drawing of the finest details when highlighting such complex objects as hair, wool, fur, and so on, as well as in a kind of imitation of painting.

Blurred edges

With such a powerful arsenal of tools, techniques and blurring methods that can turn an ordinary photo into a marvelous artistic canvas, blurring edges for Photoshop is as easy as pie. To do this, you need to select an area that should not be subject to the effect, and blur the periphery by selecting one of the above filters. But most often “Gaussian Blur” is used for this purpose.

If standard tools are used for selection, then to obtain a smooth border, set a feather for them (at the top or in the “Selection > Modify” menu). And if the “Quick Mask” (Q) is used for this purpose, the smoothness of the transition is controlled by the opacity of the brush.

In all cases, the selection must be inverted (Shift+Ctrl+I), otherwise the image itself will be blurred, not the edges. By the way, it is not necessary to use a selection, since you can blur the edges manually using the Blur Tool.

New filters

In the version of Photoshop CS6, blur filters have arrived to the shelf. In the “Blur” submenu, the newcomers are located separately at the very top, defiantly separated from the old filters by a line. These "upstarts" are called Field Blur, Iris Blur and Tilt-Shift, and they, having a special interface, can create realistic depth of field in photos.

Unlike older “colleagues” of previous versions (including Photoshop CS5), the algorithms of the new filters are designed in such a way as to allow the user to perform selective focusing by working with controls directly on the image.