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About this lesson
Create a custom Bokeh Effect brush and then give your photos that artistic touch. Or turn a regular photo into a nice abstract background for a logo or text.
Exercise files
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Quick reference
Topic
Add the Bokeh Effect to photos
When to use
Create a custom Bokeh Effect brush and then give your photos that artistic touch. Or turn a regular photo into a nice abstract background for a logo or text.
Instructions
Create an custom Bokeh brush
- Shortcut key B
- At the top under the window menu activate the brush panel
- Brush Tip Shape Section: size: 125, Hardness: 10%, Spacing: 120.
- Size Jitter: 100%, Roundness Jitter: 10%, Scattering: 1000%
- Transfer: opacity and flow jitter 100%
- At the bottom the brush panel click a new brush icon and give it a name.
Add the Bokeh
- Create a new layer
- Adjust the size of the custom brush and paint on the Bokeh
- With layer selected, choose from Dropdown, Filter: Convert to Smart Filters
- Dropdown Filter Menu, Blur, Gaussian Blur: Radius 5-20 pixels
- Change blending mode to Soft Light or Overlay
- Duplicate process for desired amount.
Blur the background image
- With layer selected, choose from Dropdown, Filter: Convert to Smart Filters
- Dropdown Filter Menu, Blur, Gaussian Blur: Radius 20 pixels
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- 00:04 Hey everyone Howard Pinsky here with a Photoshop tutorial on how to create
- 00:08 Bokeh or bocca. However you want to pronounce it there are many ways a
- 00:13 pronouncing this affect
- 00:14 and I'm gonna show you how this is done in Photoshop.
- 00:18 If you've ever seen a photo with shallow depth-of-field
- 00:21 you may have seen at the background is very out a focus and you often notice
- 00:25 colorful blurry
- 00:26 dots that kinda float around the photo. That is called
- 00:29 Bokeh and many do you want to know how to recreate this effect completely in
- 00:33 Photoshop.
- 00:34 So let me show you how that's done. So this photo here I'll use as the
- 00:38 background of my photo.
- 00:39 Which I'm going to be blurring, adding some Bokeh and then my logo in the
- 00:43 foreground thats in focus.
- 00:45 So the first thing that we're going to do, we're not going to blur the
- 00:47 background just yet, we're actually going to be creating our custom brush
- 00:51 which will allow us to brush on the spots on to our document.
- 00:54 So I'll create a new layer in the Layers panel: just like that.
- 00:57 And I want to access my brush panels to quickly switch to the brush tool
- 01:01 Sortcut key B. And up at the top under the Window menu
- 01:05 I can activate the brush panel. This is where I'll be able to create a custom
- 01:09 brush.
- 01:10 Let me start in the Brush Tip Shape Section. Now for the size I'll
- 01:14 keep it around 125.
- 01:15 That can be very easily change later on. The hardness I'll actually increase
- 01:19 all way up to 100 percent. You're probably asking what isn't bokeh
- 01:23 soft? And you're completely right: it is. But it's a lot easier to start hard
- 01:28 and then use a Gaussian blur to make it soft than it is to start soft
- 01:32 and then make it hard. Stop thinking dirty thoughts.
- 01:36 Now as for the spacing, I'll
- 01:37 increase this until the dots are nicely separated somewhere around 120
- 01:41 130 percent. This can be changed later on, most of the settings can be changed even
- 01:45 after the brush has been created.
- 01:47 So now that that's done its looking very linear: all the dots are the same size,
- 01:51 nothing's moving anywhere.
- 01:53 So I'll so to shape dynamics and then under Size Jitter I'll increase that to a
- 01:57 hundred percent.
- 01:58 That'll give me some big dots and some small dots
- 02:01 And it you want to set a restriction on how small the dots can go, you can set a
- 02:05 minimum diameter as well.
- 02:06 But I keep that at 0. I'm also going to set the roundness jitter somewhere around 10
- 02:10 percent.
- 02:11 That way not all the dots are perfectly round. Someone will be a little bit
- 02:15 squished, but not too much: around 10 percent should do.
- 02:18 And then next I'll head into Scattering. This'll take those dots and shoot them
- 02:23 all over the canvas As I'm brushing and I'm going to take the scatter
- 02:26 increase all the way to 1000 percent. Making sure that both
- 02:30 axis is turned on, and then if you want a lot of dots you can increase the count
- 02:34 but I can keep it at one. I'll just brush a little bit more if I want some more dots.
- 02:38 And finally the last setting we'll add is Transfer:
- 02:41 this will allow us to set an opacity and flow jitter.
- 02:45 Which as you brush, some docs will have a 100 percent opacity,
- 02:48 while some will be a little bit lower. So that's the brush.
- 02:51 Very simple, very easy and you wanna save the brush: right at the bottom the brush panel
- 02:56 you click a new brush icon, give it my name it Bokeh, and then press OK.
- 03:00 So now the brush is completing. I'll close up the brush panel.
- 03:05 And all you have to do now is brush on the canvas. I am using a white brush.
- 03:09 And then simply, brush like this. And you can see as I'm brushing,
- 03:12 I have dots scattering all over the place. Now for this layer, the dots are a
- 03:16 little bit too small, so I'll
- 03:17 undo: command control ,Z and then with my right square bracket key
- 03:22 I press that a few times to make the brush bigger which'll increase the size
- 03:26 are the dots.
- 03:27 And once again I'm gonna brush all over top a canvas until I have some dots
- 03:31 all over the place just like this. So I'll leave it right around there.
- 03:34 now like I mentioned earlier it's very easy to take hard brushes
- 03:38 and make them softer. And that can be done with Gaussian blur.
- 03:42 So under the filter menu we go down to Blur and in Gaussian blur.
- 03:45 But before you do that, you always want to work with a smart object.
- 03:48 That can be quickly done under the filter menu as well,
- 03:53 you can choose Convert to Smart Filters. which will convert that layer into a
- 03:57 smart object.
- 03:58 The advantage of that is that even after the Gaussian Blur is
- 04:01 added you can always go back and change it So, once again Filter,
- 04:05 Blur, Gaussian blur and then for the value I'll decrease it a little bit:
- 04:10 let's say to around five pixels, and then press OK.
- 04:13 And as you can see in the Layers panel
- 04:17 I now have my Gaussian blur filter attach to the smart object
- 04:21 so at any point in the future I can simply double click on the Gaussian blur
- 04:24 and make the changes if necessary. Now it's looking okay but is not really
- 04:29 interacting well with the background.
- 04:31 And that's because of two reasons. Number 1 the backgrounds not blurry, but
- 04:34 we'll deal with that a second.
- 04:35 Number two the dots are fairly white.
- 04:39 So to deal with that you can set the blend mode this layer to either Soft
- 04:42 Light, or Overlay.
- 04:43 For this one I'll choose Overlay: which will blend those dots nicely with
- 04:47 the background.
- 04:48 Now I'll add one more Bokeh layer. I'll press a new layer icon at the bottom,
- 04:52 make sure I have my brush or shortcut key B. I'll make the brush a little
- 04:55 bit bigger this time.
- 04:57 And then simply brush over top my document, just like this.
- 05:00 I'll keep going to make more dots this time to really fill the document
- 05:05 with some Bokeh: just like that. Just like I like it did before
- 05:08 I'll convert this into a smart object I can add a Gaussian Blur
- 05:13 And for this one I wanna make a little less hard than it was before; somewhere around 3.5
- 05:18 pixels, press OK.
- 05:19 And I'm gonna set the blend mode this time to Soft Light
- 05:23 if I turn that off and then back on, you can definitely see
- 05:27 that we now have even more bokeh than before but it's still not looking that
- 05:31 great. And that again is because the background hasn't been blurred yet.
- 05:34 That's really where the magic is going to happen
- 05:37 In order for Bokeh to look really nice you need a blurry background
- 05:41 because that's the way this affect works. So I'll select my background layer
- 05:44 and just like I did before with the Bokeh layers I'll convert it into a smart object
- 05:49 and Filters, Blur, Gaussian blur.
- 05:53 For this I'm gonna crank it up quite a bit: somewhere around
- 05:57 let's say 16 pixel radius.
- 06:00 16.2 sounds good: and press. And you'll notice when that's done, if I
- 06:05 scroll down to my Layers panel,
- 06:06 and it turned of the Gaussian blur and in turn it back on,
- 06:10 all of a sudden the Boca starts popping out. It looks a lot better than it did before.
- 06:14 And if you feel that you don't have enough Bokeh you want different
- 06:17 size Bokeh,
- 06:18 you can just keep adding more. So I'll click on this layer: layer 1
- 06:21 add one more new layer. This time I'll make the brush quite small, so around 200
- 06:26 pixels.
- 06:27 And brush over top the document to make a few little tiny dots.
- 06:31 Once again Filter, convert for Smart Filters
- 06:35 Gaussian blur, and this one I'm gonna make it let's say
- 06:38 somewhere around 20 pixels to make them really blurry.
- 06:43 And set the blend mode to either Overlay or Soft light which ever works.
- 06:47 And If I turn that off, and then back on, you can see I have some additional Bokeh
- 06:50 which just
- 06:51 adds to the effect.
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