Here’s a look at how to use each tool and the effect it will have on your project. 14 Different Types of Blur in Photoshop. Products. Each of them is special and can be used to blur the background of a picture like a pro. Adjust the radius value and click the Ok button. The Radial Blur filter will simulate either zooming in or rotating a camera. Not to get too technical, but it works a little differently from the other blur filters in that it uses alpha channels, which are the color masks that define color values in an image. There are 14 different types of blur in Photoshop and each should be used in different instances depending on the look you are trying to achieve. Gaussian Blur A blurred edge is created with this tool by placing a transparent layer over the outlying areas of your image. Quickly blurs a selection by an adjustable amount. Photoshop provides a variety of tools for blurring images for all kinds of purposes: blurring objects or specific parts of images, smoothing backgrounds or creating advanced effects such as tilt-shift or bokeh. Disclaimer: I’m in no way inferring here in this article that to convey motion to a static shot of a car that all you need to do is apply Radial and Motion blur effects. You’re able to implement the Gaussian Blur using either Radius or Threshold. You will notice a little ghosting around the rear of the car. The Field Blur can help you blur part of a portrait while still being able to see the subject’s eyes or even their entire face. Use this filter when working with a high-resolution image to achieve a more hazy look. We'll be discussing the last 11 blurs in the Filter menu in this article. 4)Set Up Blur Pin. The Box Blur looks for edges within an image (two contrasting colors right next to each other) to retain more definition in an image. First, I will select the Gaussian blur. After inverting the selection of the rhino, you can now fill it with Black. When you select this filter, a dialog box will open. First, let’s take a look at few and where you access them in Photoshop. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to blurring. All these techniques can be done in-camera. Every time you select Blur More, it blurs the image three to four times more than it was originally blurred. If you add a layer mask to your layer and use your brush tool with the mask selected, you can get back some of the detail you want. Blurs can be beautiful things. It’s one of the more easily understood blur filters as everything in the image is blurred quite equally and it also offers a greater degree of control than some of the one click blur filters. This means some objects in an image stay in focus while others are blurred. Because of this, it gives you more control than the Blur filter. Once you decide to add a blur, you'll quickly realize that there are a bunch of different kinds blurs in Photoshop. The dotted lines represent the 100% blur line. They are: Blurs can be beautiful. Whether you want to create a motion blur effect or simply blur part of the image to create a shallow-depth-of-field look. For additional details please read our privacy policy. Step 2: In the layers panel, right click on … Choose a brush tip and options for blending and strength. When Photoshop CS6 was released Adobe added three new filters: Field Blur, Iris Blur, and Tilt-Shift. The default setting is 15px Radius. © 2006 - 2021 Digital Photography School, All Rights See how you can create a radial blur that surrounds a specific focal point by applying Iris Blur in Photoshop. Go up to the Menu Bar > Filter and select Blur. Sometimes it’s also used as a way to make an image look as though it was shot up close with a macro lens, rendering the subjects look like mini versions of themselves. They can help in the background to draw attention to what you want your viewer to see. Let’s take for example, the wheels of a car. You can click on the … Rotate the wheel around to choose the direction of the blur, then choose the distance that you’d like the image to be blurred and by what amount. Selecting Sample All Layers, or deselecting this option to blur only the active layer. Step 1: Open the image that you want to edit. Adjust the Blur … It’s not perfect though, and you may find that further editing is required. That’s a big plus. Add a Level Adjustment Layer and click on the middle eyedropper tool. 1. Do you use Blur filters in Photoshop? If we were blurring the text using the Gaussian Blur filter, we … With Field Blur, you can easily add multiple blur points, … Note: If you have version Photoshop CS6 13.1 or Photoshop CC, you can apply these blur filters to Smart Objects. It may take a few tries but you want a nice transition from black to white, similar to the image below. I duplicated the image and converted it to a Smart Object. A Radial Blur could be used here to create the effect of the wheels spinning around. Click the pin at the center of the ring and place it on your focal point. Select Average Blur from the Filter menu. The space between the center of the iris (where the pin would be) to the edge of the four transition points will have no blur. At least not everywhere, so let’s … Turn off the visibility of this layer and you will see the difference, the color cast has been removed. The pen tool saves the selection and I can edit it later if needed. The result is a more precise, focused blur. If you want a very minimal change, choose the lowest setting. Now, a small dialog box will pop up. When you select Radial Blur, a dialog box will appear. You can do this with a few clicks. Change the blending mode of the high pass layer to overlay. Between the solid and dotted lines is where the blur will transition or form a gradient. Add a Levels Adjustment layer. Reserved / Disclaimer, Your email is safe with us. Adjust The Size Of The Shadow. The smaller the area you select, the less blur you’ll get. Change the center of the blur to the place you want and set the amount of grain by using the quality setting controls. When to use Gaussian blur. Normal whites lines on a black background – no blur effect. The Distortion setting makes it possible to add a slight motion blur effect. The Lens Blur filter is probably my favorite of all of them if I had to choose one. Just by using this one tool, you can accomplish a lot since a simple blur can help improve your image by: Drawing attention to what the viewer sees. “It softens everything out.” A type of low-pass filter, Gaussian blur smoothes uneven pixel values in an image by cutting out the extreme outliers. 2. Radial Blur was applied to the wheels. By default, the Distortion will sit at 0. Play. What I found particularly impressive when either of these three blur tools are accessed is the separate panel for creating Bokeh. This is a great way to bring focus to a specific part of an image. In order to create just one alpha channel to load as a depth map for the Lens Blur filter, we need to copy the rhino selection onto the gradient layer. You have a lot of control of this blur in its dialog box. Any changes will only apply to the bottom portion of the image. Many of them require you use Photoshop’s extensive Blur Gallery. As good as it is, the Gaussian Blur can still give the image a hazy look. Could anyone tell me how to exactly center the radial blur option in Photoshop. Here are some blur filters which include my personal favorites: If you take a look at the following images, you can see the subtle, and not so subtle differences, each blur filter has on the same image, which are white lines on a black background. 1 Message • 70 Points. Ideally, you would also cut out the car from the duplicated image and clone the area back in with the surrounding sky, trees, and road. But, a gradual blur can be applied from the transition point to the 100% blur line. Next, you can select different types of brushes, brush sizes, strokes, settings, etc. Go back up to the Menu Bar > Edit > Fill with Black. Control the transition or gradient of the blur in the transition area. But, everyone edits differently in Photoshop, so there are other methods of achieving blur. By holding down on the Cmd/Ctrl key and pressing the letter I, it inverts the mask. Or, you can brush over with black in the areas where you want more detail. Go to Filter>Blur>Lens Blur. So duplicate the gradient channel by right clicking on the layer or dragging the layer to the bottom of the Layers panel to the icon “Create new channel”. Change the Depth Map Source to Layer Mask. Go up to Filter > Blur > Average. This tutorial will show you how to use the Field Blur filter to make photos look more interesting by creating out-of-focus areas, along with masks and selections, plus a cool … Also, your entire image will be blurred, and you’ll see a little circle in the middle. The Box Blur filter uses the average of nearby colors to blur an image. Name *. You have 14 different options available to you. To hide a pin so you can better see your image without distraction, temporarily hide them by holding down the H key. is an independent professional photographer based in Dublin. You’ll find that a blurred edge effect can be achieved through the use of a variety of Photoshop tools including: Gaussian Blur Tool. When you see this message, just click OK to accept it: Any smart filters above the selected … Photoshop. Gaussian refers to the bell-shaped curve that is generated when Photoshop applies a weighted average to the pixels. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. The Quality setting will change the quality of the blur. Here are a few things you need to know about pins: Once you’ve decided where you want to apply a pin, just click to set it in place. Opacity Tool. Change the transition of just one part of the ellipse by holding Option (Mac) or Alt (Windows). You can find a tutorial on Pixlr website on how to blur the background. Follow these steps to do the same: Create a new layer and click on the Gradient Tool. After clicking Ok, as done in the previous step, you’ll see a dialogue box on … This samples a gray point in your image. Well for example, a sports photographer may use a panning technique to shoot a moving sports car so that the background is out of focus to convey a dynamic shot of motion. For ease of deciphering the differences of each type of blur in Photoshop, we’ll use the same photo in all the examples. In Photoshop 21.1 (February 2020 release), the Lens Blur algorithm has been further enhanced to achieve blurrier edges for foreground objects, brighter bokehs, and more realistic specular highlights. Below are several ways on how to blur background in photoshop. Or maybe you are a portrait photographer and you want your subject set against a wonderful bokeh in the background. To access it, I opened up the Channels panel and selected the alpha channel called rhino. The Smart Blur filter smooths out grain and noise patterns between edges. It does this by creating a color that’s the average of all the colors in the neighboring pixels. While Field Blur also does a great job of this, I still prefer the Lens Blur method as you can import a depth map. Step two: Gaussian blur the smart object. The entire image will turn gray. The outer part of the circle on the pin makes it possible to control the amount of blur on your image. If you look closely, you will see some images of cars where the motion effects were applied in post-production. Now that you’ve gone over how to blur an image in Photoshop using the 14 different types of blurs in Photoshop, it’s finally time to take the next step. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to blurring. The Threshold setting determines how different the pixels need to be before they’re blurred. Select Sample All Layers to blur all visible layers, or deselect this option to blur only the active layer. Alternatively, use the crosshair cursor to set the blur’s starting point. The Tilt-Shift filter prevents perspective distortion by controlling the plane of focus. For example, if you want to focus on the foreground and make the background blurry, use one pin for each, and change each amount. You now have two separate channel layers; one with the rhino and the other with the gradient for the foreground. For more information about the cookies we use or to find out how you can disable cookies, click here. Different blurs should be used in different instances. Alternatively, you can drag the slider located in the top left corner of the Blur Gallery. Using a high radius will cause you to lose a lot of detail in your image, but the Threshold will allow Photoshop to look at the pixels in the radius and figure out how they should be blurred. Using Field Blur in Photoshop October 20, 2014 0. We won't share it with anyone, Black and White Still Life Photography: How to Do It (And Why It Matters), 7 Tips - How to Add Depth and Dimension into Your Photos. We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. I’m using Photoshop CS6. This brought the tally up to 14 different types of Blur effects in Photoshop. Even though the Blur gallery looks very similar to the regular Photoshop interface, it’s not quite the same. IRIS Blur. A drop down menu appears and you can select the channel you have just created, in this case “rhino mask”. Website. When using the blur tool, it is advisable to avoid using large brush sizes combined with long brush strokes since the blur action is processor exhaustive, the effect will lag behind the brush stroke. The effect is also more realistic in my opinion. If you want to create a more specific blur, try the Gaussian Blur is just one of several different types of blur filter available in Photoshop. Today I thought I would show you guys the easiest way to create a blurry background in Photoshop. It’s much faster and intuitive to use. For the first method, I used Spin; Quality Best with a 8px blur. Where the different Blur filters are located in Adobe Photoshop. Applying the pins on the image where I want the focus to remain, and others where I want it blurry. Dragging the diamond changes the shape of the ellipse to a rectangle with rounded corners. See more of her work at SarahHipwell.com or at 500px. The Lens Blur filter gives you more control over the location and depth of your blur than other blur tools. Weigh These Pros and Cons Before You Decide, Fujifilm Announces the X-E4, With 26 MP and 20 FPS (for Just $850), Sony Announces the a1, Its Best Mirrorless Camera to Date, How to Create Cool Effects Using Displacement Maps in Affinity Photo, Soft Proofing in Lightroom: The Essential Guide, Vanishing Point in Photoshop: The Essential Guide. 1. For the best possible experience on our website, please accept cookies. Create a blur by choosing one of the vector shapes that is already included in the dialog box (or custom-shape your own). (Photoshop CC users, Lens Blur is not re-editable. Reflections, the wheels of the car, and the background are the usual tell-tale areas. Duplicate the layer, or if you have a new version of Photoshop convert it to a Smart Object. Hide the layer that’s holding the Average Blur (the new gray layer). Apply a gaussian blur to your smart object layer. Indeed, you need to work with layers and masks, but it is a simple process. Picking options for blending and strength. She received her BA in Hons Design from the University of Ulster, Belfast. Select a part of the image to blur. Place another pin or pins on the image where you want to blur the focus. Shallow DOF on the photo to the left. A blurred image. Please share your comments below. Go up to the Menu Bar > Select > Inverse. Set the radius just until you can see the edges. If you enjoyed this article, you might also like... how to create a Bokeh effect in Photoshop. It can also reduce noise in an image. Ideas. A Shape Blur filter was applied to the same image on the left. Field Blur works great when you want to focus on an area of your photo, such as the foreground or background. Pick up any magazine or newspaper where you see photos of cars being advertised. You have to click OK before you can move anything or switch to a different tab. Is the Online Photography Community Toxic? It basically enables you to add depth of field to flat images, and build a gradient of blurs using multiple blur points with different amounts of blur. You can use it for free with some limitations … Now the marching ants are just around the shape of the rhino. Click and drag the ellipse’s borders to resize it, or you can also click and drag the handles to reshape and rotate it. These new blur features were impressive. You will see the marching ants around the rhino and the border. In the example above, I first selected the wheel rim and part of the tire using the pen tool (See Note below). This filter is a great way to smooth out skin. Select one area to keep in focus and control the amount and gradient of the blur. Blur Tool Selection. Is it Time to go Full Frame? The different components of Tilt-Shift are similar to the Iris Blur, except the solid lines create a protected area without a blur (unless the Focus is adjusted). This gives the illusion of movement to a subject in your image. She has many years commercial design experience working as a designer and as a trainer for large multimedia companies. I find only info going back to 2003 / 2008 / 2013 - couple for 2014 - then nothing. This brought the tally up to 14 different types of Blur effects in Photoshop. Whether you want to create a motion blur effect or simply blur part of the image to create a shallow-depth-of-field look. Far from it. It will turn the image to a solid color by producing an average of all colors in the image. Her background is in Design. The circle is called a “pin” which can be moved or duplicated. How to apply the Average Blur in Photoshop. The Blur Filter looks for significant transitions or edges and then blurs them together to create a softer image. What are your favorite ones? Instead, I will concentrate on the few that I use the most but feel free to experiment with the others. This is a filter I don’t use that often but I wanted to demonstrate how to use it to remove color casts on your photos. Inside the field blur window, you will choose what areas of your image to blur, while the blur tools on the right will control the amount and type of blur. You have disabled non-critical cookies and are browsing in private mode. With this tool you can focus on a part of the image and blur the … The depth map has been applied and a shallow depth of field has been created. I fully appreciate that more techniques are involved, along with time, skill, and effort, to pull off a professional retouching job. This amount is based on a weighted average, also called The Gaussian Function. Change the focus in the transition area by adjusting the Focus slider in the Blur Gallery. Email *. Before experimenting with any blur, read these important notes. Open up your Channels panel again and duplicate any of the red, green, or blue channels and name this gradient. To delete a pin, select it and hit Delete (Mac) or Backspace (Windows). For ease of deciphering the differences of each type of blur in Photoshop, we’ll use the same photo in all the examples. Start near the bottom of the image while holding down the Shift key and drag upwards. Select the Marquee Tool from the Tool Bar, or with the keyboard shortcut M. Draw a selection around the area of the image you want to blur. I’m not going to describe all of them. Median Filter . Unless you convert your image to a smart object, you won’t be able to edit the blur once it’s applied. Blurs can be accessed from the Filter menu. The Lens Blur is used to give the image the effect of having a narrower depth of field. In this image of the rhino taken at Dublin Zoo, I was too far away and I didn’t have a telephoto lens with me to get a nice shallow depth of field to blur out the background. Next, I clicked on the RGB layer to go back to the Layers panel. Duplicating the gradient channel to create one alpha channel. This allows you to smooth out one area of color. Type command/control I to invert this mask. Click on the image thumbnail of this new layer to deselect the layer mask. To access the Blur Gallery, go to Filters >> Blur Gallery. Dragging the brush tip over the area of the image that you want to blur. The differences are that with Iris Blur, you: Can change the shape of the ellipse to be more circular or flat by manipulating any of the four points around the ellipse. To see the pins again, release the H key. The Blur Tool The Blur Tool acts like a brush that lets you manually blur parts of the image to the degree you In the Layers panel, click the smart object layer you just created to select it. Access thousands of videos to develop critical skills, Give up to 10 users access to thousands of video courses, Practice and apply skills with interactive courses and projects, See skills, usage, and trend data for your teams, Prepare for certifications with industry-leading practice exams, Measure proficiency across skills and roles, Align learning to your goals with paths and channels. You add a pin over the part of your image. Sunflowers in France – one is smiling while the others are wilting due to the intense heat. Open the image you want to blur in Photoshop. Beginning with Photoshop 21.0 (November 2019 release), Lens Blur leverages your computer's graphics card to produce faster performance while applying the Lens Blur filters. A word of warning—this filter can create a weird distortion, so it’s often only used for special effects. Note: I feel the Spin Blur Filter in Photoshop CC is definitely a much improved version of the Radial Blur. The image would be place on top of the blur and you'd see only a little coming out behind the image. Radial Blur applied twice to the front rim part of the wheel. I hope this article was helpful and your eyes aren’t too blurry from reading it. Some of the filters I’ve never used let alone tried, such as Blur and Blur More. Then reduce the Radius to 0px, which can be done either by using the slider in the top right part of the menu or by dragging the white bar around the pin until blurring disappears. The Shape Blur filter is best to use on a part of your image with a simple shape, like the circle shape at the bottom of a tulip. It would be nice if the blur tool had different blur options such as Gaussian and mosaic etc, i don't like having to go through an entire masking and filtering process just to get it. Read this dPS article if you want to know how to create a Bokeh effect in Photoshop. Easy Blur 1. 1. Add the blur filter to a new layer while still keeping the old layers intact. Blur Tool. Different blur types for the blur tool. If you want to lay text … Selecting the channel rhino mask in the Lens Blur filter. Please note, … You can’t use it as a smart filter.) Note: When Gaussian Blur, Box Blur, Motion Blur, or Shape Blur are applied to a selected image area, they will sometimes produce … But if you just want to blur a background a motion blur might be the wrong way to go. Motion Blur was applied to the side panel, rear side window, and to the background. Gaussian Blur was applied to the image on the left and Radial Blur was applied to the image on the right. Go up to the Gradient Editor and make sure you choose the preset Foreground to Background. To get the same effect on the top as well, check the Symmetric Distortion box. Control the line curve by manipulating the little diamond that’s on the 100% blur line. The Iris Blur filter uses a lot of the same technology and techniques as the Field Blur, but it gives you more control over the blurring of a subject’s eyes. I want to center a color blur behind an image, so I want the blur to fill only a part of the layer. When Photoshop CS6 was released Adobe added three new filters: Field Blur, Iris Blur, and Tilt-Shift. To add more blur, drag the Radius slider. It is my general workhorse for blurring parts of an image and for softening the edges of a layer mask. You have more control and it works on Smart Objects. Apply a high pass filter (found in the Filters menu) to the new top layer. Go to where it says Source and click on None. Once you hit Apply you’ll see the final result. Choose an iris shape and change the curves of the blades of the iris as desired. You apply a pin on the part of the image where you want the focus left as it is. A lower amount equals a lower blur. Duplicate the original layer and move it to the top. Drag over the area of the image that you want to blur. Select the depth map to determine where the pixels are positioned. Open up the Gradient Editor and set the preset to Foreground-Background. Take one or more of the dozens of beginner, intermediate, and advanced Photoshop courses that Pluralsight offers! In Photoshop we have three types of blur effects and they have different applications too depending on our requirement. The Surface Blur filter blurs the entire image except for the edges. If you take a photo in low light and the resulting image has a lot of noise, Gaussian blur can mute that noise. Now we have the rhino mask and the foreground mask on the one channel ready for the Lens Blur filter as a depth map. The Gaussian Blur filter gives a hazy effect by blurring the image or selected area by an adjustable amount. Please note, however, that doesn’t mean a particular blur is the best blur to use for that particular image or goal. Different blur types for th... king_e_n_x. You’ll now have a color-corrected image. You can move the pins around to adjust the blur in different parts of the image. That is an alpha channel which stores the selection as an editable grayscale mask in the Channels panel. I applied the Field Blur to blur out the poor wilting sunflowers so that the focus was on the smiling sunflower. There are different types of blurs in photoshop for you to experiment with: Average, Gaussian, Box, Blur More, Motion, Lens, Smart, Surface and Radial Blur. Since my Gaussian Blur filter is sitting above the Filter Gallery, Photoshop needs to turn off the Gaussian Blur filter so it can show an accurate preview of the Filter Gallery.