Have you ever taken a picture of something, only to realize that it was just too crisp? Maybe the background behind your subject is distracting, or maybe there are too many details in the image. In either case, you could use some blurring to make things look better.

Blurring is also useful for hiding unwanted objects in photos or creating artistic effects. With this guide on how to blur photos, we’ll show you how easy it can be!

What is Image Blur?

Blur is a word that is used in photography and post-processing. Blur can be used to show motion or create abstract art, as well as help create depth of field.

In the context of photography, blur refers to an out-of-focus area. It can be caused by moving the camera while it’s set on auto-focus or taking a photo too close up with a zoom lens. Blur is also something that can be achieved in post-production when you’re editing your photos using software like Photoshop.

Why Blur Your Photos?

If you have a photo where the background is not in focus and the subject is, this can be an interesting approach.

Blurring can make details stand out and draw attention to them, so if you have a sign or something else that isn’t important to the story of your picture, but that looks cool, blurring it can help it become more noticeable.

On the other hand, if there are parts of your photo that contain information that shouldn’t be visible—like private information about an individual in your photo—blurring those parts of the image will keep them hidden from viewers’ eyes.

Finally, blurring can add mystery to a picture by hiding details from view without actually making them impossible for people to see; this makes viewers want to know more about what’s happening in the scene by making them curious as they try to guess what might have been blurred out.

2 Ways to Achieve Blur Effect Using Colorcinch

The Blur effect can be made in different ways. We’ll show you two ways to do it. One is the classic Blur effect, and the other is a more stylized way to get a similar effect.

1. By Adding a Classic Blur

Step 1: Open Colorcinch and Upload an image.

Step 2: Go to Edit — Details.

Step 3: On the Details panel, adjust the Blur Slider to get the desired intensity.

Here’s the before and after:

2. By Pixelating the Image

One stylized way to blur the image is by manipulating the pixels.

Step 1: Open Colorcinch. Upload your photo.

Step 2: Navigate Filters — Pixelate.

Step 3: Pick a Pixelate Filter and adjust the Slider to change the intensity of the filter.

Step 4: If you wish to have more control over the filter, you may click on Settings and adjust the Sliders depending on your goal.

Step 5: There is also a way to bring back the areas that you want to be in focus. To do this, click on the Erase tab and adjust the Brush settings. After that, brush the area you want to be in focus.

Let’s look at the result:

Summary

Just a recap, we’ve learned what Blur is and its uses. We now know that it can be used to show motion, focus, and depth of field. It can be a stylized way to help better your photography skills.

Plus, we have provided you with 2 ways to achieve the blur effect using Colorcinch. We hope you enjoyed this article. If you did, feel free to leave us a comment!

The post How to Quickly & Easily Blur a Photo appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.

What is Bokeh?

In this discussion, we will learn how to get bokeh effect in photography. The word bokeh comes from the Japanese dictionary.

It signifies the quality of the out-of-focus effect of your photos and not just the out-of-focus effect itself.

The terms background blur and bokeh are used interchangeably. But as we have just learned, there is a subtle difference between the two. For the sake of this discussion, we will only use the term bokeh and not background blur.

What Lens Is the Best for Shooting Bokeh

It is easy to see bokeh in action when looking at portraits, flower photos, macro photos, or even bird photos with a creamy background and a sharp subject in focus.

In more specific terms, we’re talking about blurry circular shapes appearing in the background of a subject while the subject is in focus.

The lenses perfect for shooting excellent quality bokeh usually come with a wide-open aperture. Anything f/4 or faster (or wider) is ideally suited for creamy bokeh.

In other words, bokeh is controlled by the lens’ ability to produce a shallow depth of field. We discussed shallow depth of field in a previous article.

There is a specific advantage when using a lens with more diaphragm blades. A lens with eight or more diagram blades is likely to produce a better, more circular-looking bokeh than one with a lens that has fewer diaphragm blades.

Another thing to note is that the bokeh quality is better if the lens’ diaphragm blades are rounded. So, the likes of the Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM or the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART are great lenses to capture bokeh.

Effects of Aperture and Distance on Bokeh

We have already learned that a wide-open aperture positively impacts bokeh. Wider the aperture, the smoother the bokeh because wide open apertures produce a shallow depth of field.

The second thing that controls the quality of the bokeh is the distance between the camera and the subject as well as the subject and the background. We have discussed these aspects in a previous article on shallow depth of field.

If you leave sufficient space between the subject and the background, you can produce nice bokeh even without a fast aperture.

Also, when using a tele lens you need to leave sufficient space both between the subject and the camera and the subject and the background to produce beautiful bokeh.

How to Get Bokeh Effect – Primary Conditions

To summarize what we have learned thus far, the nicest bokeh happens when all these parameters are fulfilled:

• It would help if you worked with a fast wide-open aperture
• The lens should ideally be a telephoto unit
• The lens has eight or more aperture diaphragm blades
• The aperture diaphragm blades should be rounded
• Do leave sufficient space between the subject and the background

We have already learned which is the best aperture to shoot the nicest bokeh. We also learned that if the aperture diaphragm is composed of 8 or more rounded blades, the bokeh is nicer.

The need for a telephoto lens comes from the fact that you need to leave out space between the subject and the camera. With a telephoto lens, you’re forced to take a few steps back for you to get a decent composition.

You need to leave out space between the subject and the background with it. It won’t matter if you shoot with a telephoto lens and the subject is standing almost the same distance as the background.

Additional Conditions

These conditions are not necessary to be fulfilled for producing bokeh. That said, when they’re fulfilled, they can add to the overall quality.

Textured Background

When you’re trying to get the bokeh effect, make a conscious choice to place the subject against a textured background, such as trees, leaves, twinkling lights, etc.

Avoid placing your subject against a solid textureless background because you won’t get nearly the same bokeh effect you can with a textured background.

Use Color Contrast

Try and incorporate scenes that have contrasting colors appearing naturally in the frame. For example, in this image, there is a lot of contrast in the scene, and the bokeh appears beautiful.

You can also enhance the colors of your image and, in the process, accentuate the bokeh effect using Colorcinch.

There are many tools in Colorcinch that you can use to accentuate your photos. Vibrance, Color, and Exposure are your primary tool tabs.

We don’t recommend the Vibrance slider because it only affects the mid-tones and is therefore unsuitable for our purpose.

We recommend just tweaking the exposure a bit so that the background blur looks better.

The best tool would be the Exposure slider because it allows you to work the Brightness, Contrast, Highlights, and Shadows giving you more creative space to manipulate your photos.

Ok, upload the photo using the Upload option on this page. You don’t have to register for that.

Once the image is ready for edits, navigate to the Exposure tab.

There are four options under the Exposure tab – Brightness, Contrast, Highlights, and Shadows.

We will tweak each of them a bit to fine-tune the image.

The changes are very subtle. Here is a side-by-side comparison of before and after the changes are made.

You perhaps would prefer to use a different approach, and it’s perfectly ok because there is no such thing in photography as the only way to do something.

Concluding Thoughts

As you have just learned, bokeh is about the quality of the background blur you capture with your camera and not just the background blur itself. Some lenses produce horrible background blur, which does not add to the photo. So picking the right equipment is essential.

But it’s not always about picking the right equipment. The answer to how to get bokeh effect in your photography lies more in the technique. So, our final tip is – to get your technique right.

Don’t fret that you don’t have a fast lens or the best camera for low light. Master the basics of exposure to play around with the depth of field, fine-tune your compositions, and only then if you need move on to better equipment.

Till then, keep clicking and keep reviewing your work.

The post A Complete Guide on How to Get Bokeh Effect in Photography appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.

Shallow depth of field is a photography technique that blurs the background and foreground, creating a sense of focus on the subject. When you have a shallow depth of field (DoF), it means that you have a limited range of focus.

Many of you would be familiar with shallow depth of field photography examples like the photo above.

You can achieve this by using a long lens or physically moving closer to your subject and, most importantly, using a wide-open aperture. The latest improvements in smartphone software algorithms allow this effect to be achieved in smartphones as well.

Introduction to Shallow Depth of Field

Shallow depth of field is a photography technique that blurs the background and foreground of a photo to focus on the subject. This technique is often used in portrait and macro photography to create a sense of intimacy and immediacy.

Sometimes, the technique is used to blur out elements in the frame that do not add to the overall composition.

For example, there may be distracting elements directly behind the subject – like telegraph posts or boxes or anything that does not add value to a composition. Shallow DoF is used to ensure that such elements are blurred out and not visible in the final image.

How to Achieve This Effect?

The technique of shallow DoF can be achieved using a combination of a focal length and amount of space in the background and foreground of the subject. Either one of the above combinations will give you a shallow DoF and with it, a good amount of background (and foreground) blur. But the best technique to produce this effect is by using a small f-stop (discussed below).

Let’s discuss a few scenarios –

1. Use a Wide-Angle Lens and Move-in Close

You can create a shallow DoF using a wide-angle lens. With a wide-angle lens, you are required to step in closer and therefore reduce the distance between the subject and the camera. But as long as you remember to leave out sufficient space between the subject and the background you can achieve the shallow DoF effect without any trouble.

I know many of you would be thinking –

Can I just choose the right lens and camera and let the equipment do the rest?

Well, to an extent you can. For example, if you shoot with a full-frame camera and a medium telephoto lens that has a small f-stop it’s easy to capture this effect without much effort.

2. Use a Long Lens and Leave Space Behind the Subject

That brings us to the second scenario. To try this technique, you can place a subject about 20 feet away from the background. Now, use a long lens to shoot. The lens doesn’t need to have a small f-stop/ large working aperture. A lens even with a large f-stop will work.

As you focus on the subject you will notice that everything in the background appears to be out of focus. If there are trees in the background, they will appear blurred and silky smooth.

You will also notice that anything in the background appears larger than usual. It will appear as if the background is being sucked in. The longer the focal length the greater is this effect. The effect is exaggerated when using a telephoto zoom lens.

3. Use a Long Lens With a Small F-Stop (Or Large Aperture)

The most effective way to achieve shallow depth of field, however, is to use a long lens that has a wide-open aperture, or a small f-stop. With a wide-open aperture/ small f-stop such as f/1.4 to f/4, the lens diaphragm opens up wide enough to allow a lot of light in along with giving you that beautiful blurry effect.

Long lenses like the 70-200mm zoom, the 105mm, and the 135mm prime are great lenses to achieve background blur. This is because these lenses usually have a small f-stop. With a small f-stop or wide-open aperture, even if you leave out only a little space behind the subject, you can still achieve the effect. Lenses with a small f-stop naturally produce a shallow depth of field, depending on your composition and where you’re focusing in the frame.

4. Best Shallow Depth of Field Settings

The only setting that you need to tweak is the aperture. Use the largest aperture or the smallest f-stop that your lens can open to. The choice of lens will determine whether you have to move in close or shoot from a distance.

Retouching Your Shallow DoF Photos

Whether or not you’re using a big aperture, it’s useful if you could do some light retouching of the photos. Ideally, a darker background accentuates the effect of a shallow depth of field. That said it’s not always necessary.

Sometimes, even a brighter background can work as long as there are some textures in the frame, and it’s blurred out. Avoid a solid background because that never works with this technique.

Let’s take an example.

Let’s open an image in Colorcinch using the Upload button.

We intend to work primarily on the Exposure tab because that will allow us to slightly exaggerate the effects of shallow DoF.

Next, let’s tweak each of the sliders under the Exposure tab.

Finally, we need to pull down the Brightness just to make the image a bit darker.

Again, Highlights was pushed down a bit under the same logic.

The Contrast was pushed just a little to make the green a bit more vibrant and stand out against the yellow.

Finally, the Shadow was pushed to ensure that the final result is more to our liking.

Note we don’t want the green to disappear into the black. That’s not our intention. We just want to keep the green but take away the details.

All these took me less than 10 seconds.

Uses of Shallow Depth of Field Effect

The best use of this effect is in portrait and macro photography. It can also be used for shooting small products and for creative photography.

Portrait photography is perhaps the one genre where you can see this effect used more often. Portrait photography, especially when it’s shot outdoors often has a distracting background. It becomes necessary to use a shallow DoF to eliminate those from the composition.

But to be honest these days photographers use the effect simply because shallow depth of field photos look cool. And I agree.

When shooting macro photos, the effect is somewhat unintentional. When you shoot a small subject from a very close distance, invariably one of the basic parameters of shallow depth of field is fulfilled – leave out space between the subject and the background.

Concluding Thoughts

Shallow depth of field is a creative technique that’s mostly used in portraitures and macro photography. But that does not sum it up. There are many creative possibilities of this technique and you’re only limited by your imagination.

So, feel free to experiment with this technique. I am sure you will find out more avenues where this technique can be useful.

The post Shallow Depth of Field – A Beginner’s Guide appeared first on Photo to Cartoon – Cartoonize Yourself & Create Avatar Characters for Free.