Help with background blur for basketball shots

Nappalonia

Hello dgrinners, I need your help with blurring the background on some shots I took at the Bull's game. I read the sticky's on sports shooting and I think I did ok with exposure, but I should have used a longer lens, oh well. :rolleyes

I gave it a try but I can't quite get it right, I attempted to make a selection and use gaussian blur for the background, but my photoshop skills are pretty limited. :scratch

http://nappalonia.smugmug.com/gallery/1150414/1/53654958

Thanks for helping.

rutt

Is this what you are looking for: http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=12484&postcount=38

Be sure to read the beginning of the thread as well.

These days, I'd also consider the techniques here: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=22331

edgework

Lens blur is what you want to use. The same mask you would use to keep the players from being blurred will do the job much more efficiently. Add a gradient and you get a blur that increases with distance.

Here's the mask



and here's the result

Andy

edgework wrote:

and here's the result

The ball, Crawford, the ball!

rutt

How did you make the mask?

(And can we call you Crawford?)

edgework

Andy wrote:

The ball, Crawford, the ball!

OUCH!

edgework

rutt wrote:

How did you make the mask?

(And can we call you Crawford?)

My Wife just calls me HEY YOU. But sure.

The mask: two, actually. First mask out the players (and THE BALL!). Save as channel. Then in a second channel add the gradient. I placed two gray points of equal value in it to create that extended gray band. A continuous gradient caused the Lens Blur to deal with the front row of the audience weirdly, blurring their heads more than their feet. Then I selected the first channel and filled black into the gradient.

It works best with objects that are crisp. Fuzzy edges, and fuzzy masks to capture them, get a little funky. It's sometimes necessary to clone out sharp edges where a few pixels from the background didn't get blurred.

rutt

The gradiant I already figured out a few years ago, if you look at the thread I linked. Maybe not quite as nice or systematic as you did, but I had the idea. It's the first great mask, of the players (without the ball!) that I was asking about. That's a piece of work. Did you just trace it?

edgework wrote:

My Wife just calls me HEY YOU. But sure.

The mask: two, actually. First mask out the players (and THE BALL!). Save as channel. Then in a second channel add the gradient. I placed two gray points of equal value in it to create that extended gray band. A continuous gradient caused the Lens Blur to deal with the front row of the audience weirdly, blurring their heads more than their feet. Then I selected the first channel and filled black into the gradient.

It works best with objects that are crisp. Fuzzy edges, and fuzzy masks to capture them, get a little funky. It's sometimes necessary to clone out sharp edges where a few pixels from the background didn't get blurred.

wxwax

Great links and great explanations.

But it still looks artificial. It's not your work, edge, I just think the shot doesn't lend itself to this kind of post-induced artificial depth of field.

edgework

rutt wrote:

The gradiant I already figured out a few years ago, if you look at the thread I linked. Maybe not quite as nice or systematic as you did, but I had the idea. It's the first great mask, of the players (without the ball!) that I was asking about. That's a piece of work. Did you just trace it?

Yeah, I used the most misnamed tool in the Photoshop arsenal: the Quick Mask (yeah, right.)

Lens Blur isn't used enough, in my opinion. Not sure how it works, but it's not quite the same as using a mask to govern the intensity of the blur, like with a Gaussian blur. It's an entirely different algorithm. But there are virtually no halos. The only setting that means much to me is the radius; perhaps some of you photographers can make sense of the others.

Dee

Lens Blur ala Russel Brown
For those with broadband, here's a link to a movie: http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/HocusPocusFocusSM.mov

Nappalonia

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I'm going to pick the best ones and try the masking technique this was my first try at sports so I know they aren't that good, but I'm going to see if I can make some of them presentable.:):

wxwax

Dee wrote:

For those with broadband, here's a link to a movie: http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/HocusPocusFocusSM.mov

Good one, Dee. Takes a while to sit through the whole thing, but lots of good stuff in it.

Dee

Thanks

wxwax wrote:

Good one, Dee. Takes a while to sit through the whole thing, but lots of good stuff in it.

I've watched the movie twice now... Russell makes it look so easy, doesn't he?

You should watch the movie he has in Tips and Techniques on replacing a background. I still can't figure out the masking technique he's using and I've written down notes. Somewhere I'm missing something.

If anyone here understands that tutorial, it would make a great step by step tutorial on dgrin.

wxwax

Dee wrote:

I've watched the movie twice now... Russell makes it look so easy, doesn't he?

You should watch the movie he has in Tips and Techniques on replacing a background. I still can't figure out the masking technique he's using and I've written down notes. Somewhere I'm missing something.

If anyone here understands that tutorial, it would make a great step by step tutorial on dgrin.

You have a link?

DJ-S1

I have a link to a Russell page here. Lots of good stuff. Scroll all the way down to "advanced masking", I think that may be what you are talking about. I have that one saved to my hard drive for easy reference.