Bokeh Effect

Quick reference

• 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.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.