first attempt at false depth of field

ightenhill

Im not sure if I have pulled this off correctly or not and the picture has other issues as well to sort out, I am struggling with the skin tones and don't really know where to start. Anyway went out for a meal with a lot of relatives and snapped this with the now old and still noisy LX2 which always resides in my pocket, decided to see if I could make a more reasonable picture from it by giving it a little DoF blur.. Not too sure if it's succeed or not but I like to have a photoshop project for the week and try to learn a new topic..

Before and after




Danny

StevenV

a good first round there, Danny. i'd probably drop the brightness on the background a little to make it a bit less distracting.

rustic

I agree with Steven about the background brightness, and maybe try to tone down the flash hotspots on her face as well?

As for the blur, I think you did a good job, it's a vast improvement to the original snapshot!

ightenhill

Darkened the background a bit and tried to disguise the edges that started to pop out a little ..

Now if only I knew where to start with those flash hotspots? CS2 tutorials seem to give me more different ways of tackling it than there are days in the year..

kombizz

nice sweet shot
except
you need to use a diffuser for the next time !
as her face bleached by the power of the flash

dlacouture

Hello!

I'd go for a little out-of-focus on her legs, as if only her face was in focus (as it would be the case with a real wide aperture lens).

Mitchell

I prefer your first attempt. The second looks too fake. Like she's been cut and pasted into your blurred background.

The more you blur and darken the background, the more obvious your transition will be.