Graphic & Photo Design Tips, Tutorials & Techniques

Can you imagine not having control over what’s blurred out in the photographs you take? In my opinion, having aperture control has got to be one of the most critical and popular aspects of photography today. There’s so much creativity involved. It’s sort of like telling someone, “Hey, look at this and not at that.”

I can remember years ago when I used to take early morning walks in the woods with my camera. The area I used to walk to housed tons of fallen trees that were totally coated with the most beautiful moss. I had a nice Canon kit lens (18-135mm) that, when zoomed in all the way, would give me an extremely shallow depth of field. Add a magnifying lens to the scene and that depth of field was chopped in half. I enjoyed getting down on the ground to shoot away from all sorts of different angles. Considering everything I did, I remember the blur to sharp and back to blur again the most.

Adobe Photoshop has really stepped up their game in the creative blur arena. There’s a relatively new filter called Blur Gallery that lets us add some really cool blur effects to photos. So far, there are blurs called Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift, Path Blur and Spin Blur. Each selection offers its own effect and all of them are rather intuitive to use. So intuitive, in fact, that you can simulate various lens aperture settings right inside Photoshop with ease.

In today’s post, I’ll be walking though a few demonstrations using the Blur Gallery, simply to introduce you to the filter. I’ll begin with an original, unblurred photo, turn it into a Smart Object and then apply a filter or two to it. The goal for this post is to not only demonstrate the power of this filter, but to encourage you to experiment with it in your own post-processing.

By the way, here’s the photo I’ll be using for this post:

Creating a Smart Object

I wrote a post a while back that discussed Smart Objects in Photoshop ad nauseam. If you haven’t read that one yet, I think it would be great if you did.

What are Smart Objects in Adobe Photoshop?

I’ve also got a few other posts that expand upon the topic, so if you’d like to read further, you can search “Smart Object” in the search bar up at the top of this blog.

To kick things off, I’ll open the demo image into Photoshop. From there, I’ll right-click on the background layer and choose Convert to Smart Object.

The last thing I want to do is add a creative blur to a layer and then not be able to change it in any way. This is one of the reasons Smart Objects were invented in the first place. To give us flexibility.

Once I convert the layer, I’ll see the small icon in the lower right corner of the layer thumbnail. If I roll over that icon, I’ll see the words Smart Object Thumbnail appear.

Applying Tilt-Shift Blur

Now that I’ve got a Smart Object, I can begin applying some different blur effects. I’ll start off with the Tilt-Shift blur. If I take a look at Adobe’s site, I’ll find a good explanation for what this blur effect is all about. Check this out:

Use the Tilt-Shift effect to simulate an image taken with a tilt-shift lens. This special effect blur defines area of sharpness, and then fades to a blur at the edges. The Tilt-Shift effect can be used to simulate photos of miniature objects.

To apply this filter, I’ll head up to the Filter > Blur Gallery > Tilt-Shift menu item and select it.

Once I click on Tilt-Shift, I’ll notice that an overlay appears on the image. It looks like this:

Also, the right panels inside Photoshop turn into Blur Gallery panels. They look like this:

There are quite a few controls in the Blur Gallery panels. I won’t go over all of them. I’ll limit myself to only what I plan on using. I will tell you, however, that if you want to drag the effect around, all you need to do is to click inside the blur area and drag. To intensify or reduce the blur effect area, you can drag the top or bottom lines of the overlay up and down. To intensify or reduce the blur itself, head over to the right panel where it says Blur and drag the slider to the left or to the right. It’s good to experiment with a feature like this.

For this first example, I’d like to add some blur above and below the model in the photo. I don’t want to go crazy or anything, but I do want to focus as much attention as possible on the face. After all, it’s that which is looking at the camera and as they say, it’s all in the eyes.

To accomplish this, I’ll drag the center of the overlay so it sits right on the model’s face. Then, I’ll click on and drag the bottom dashed line of the overlay down a bit. Doing this will smooth the transition of the blur that’s located between the solid line and the dashed line.

When I’m finished, I’ll click OK in the top options bar and I’ll end up back at the original photo, but with the blur effect applied to it.

Looks pretty cool, right?

As a side note – if you’re adjusting the options in the Blur Gallery and would like to see the photo you’re working on without the overlay lines, all you need to do is press the H key on your keyboard. This will keep your effects, but will hide the lines, which definitely be distracting. Let go of H and the overlay lines come back. It’s that easy.

Applying Iris Blur

I’ll go ahead and back out of the previous blur effect so I’m working with the original photo again. This time, I’d like to experiment with the Iris Blur option. Now, I could have gone into this new blur option if I stayed in the previous and simply clicked on the Iris Blur panel, but since I clicked OK in the section above, I’m no longer in the Blur Gallery area. I’ll need to go back up to the Filter > Blur Gallery > Iris Blur menu item and click. This will bring me back into the gallery area.

As you can see, I’ve now got an oval blur area over part of the photo. I can do many things to this, such as move, shrink, grow, rotate and alter the blur transition. I can also intensify or reduce the blur itself. If you look at the above screenshot closely, you’ll see the circular outline with the handles attached to the outline. Inside the oval, there are four white dots. To alter the blur transition, you have to click and drag one of these dots either to the center or to the outside of the oval. I’ll drag the oval up and to the right so its center is on the model’s face again. Then, I’ll click and drag the white dots so they’re closer to the center.

And if I click OK up in the options bar again, I’ll create a blur effect like this:

Again, this is a fantastic blur effect that required hardly any work. By the way, if you’re wondering what Adobe has to say about this blur effect, read below.

Use the Iris blur to simulate a shallow depth-of-field effect to your picture, irrespective of the camera or lens used. You can also define multiple focus points, an effect almost impossible to achieve using traditional camera techniques.

Applying Path Blur

If you’re into special effects, this last blur might be for you. While I personally wouldn’t use this for a regular photo, I might use it in a Photoshop action or for video. It definitely has a special place in the creative arsenal. This is what Adobe says about this blur effect:

Using the Path Blur effects, you can create motion blurs along paths. You can also control the shape and amount of blurring. Photoshop automatically composites the effects of multiple path blurs applied to an image.

To activate the Path Blur, go back up to the Filter > Blur Gallery > Path Blur menu and click. This will bring you back to the Blur Gallery.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the photo has become soft and there’s a line towards the center. If I click on either end of the line, I can drag it in either direction. Also, if I click on the center handle, I can drag anywhere I wish, resulting in a curve. If I continue clicking on the line, I’ll create more handles that can be dragged. This is what I mean:

Now, if I go into the Path Blur panel over to the right and push the sliders around, I can customize what the blur looks like. And if I select Rear Sync Flash from the drop-down in this same panel, I can create more of a “fantasy” look.

When finished, I’ll click OK and this will be the result:

Again, this one is a little weird. I’m just trying to show you the possibilities. You’ll have to get creative and come up with some cases for these different blur effects.

I hope I’ve wet your whistle for blurring different areas of a photograph. I truly hope you open some of your own to see what you can create. If you’ve got any comments or questions, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks!

Not many people know what dynamic range is when it comes to their cameras. It’s not until they get involved with photography for a number of years that they learn why certain cameras cost thousands of dollars more than others. When they read reviews on Amazon, they consume all sorts of information about features, look and feel, types of lenses they can use and so much more. Very little discussion is given to how exactly the camera they might be interested in actually captures the photo. It’s a shame really. So much money is spent every year on cameras that end up not being what the buyer wanted.

So, what exactly is dynamic range? Let me try to explain it as simply as I can. Dynamic range is the difference between the darkest and lightest areas of a photo. Dynamic range doesn’t only apply to photography. I want you to know that. But for our purposes and for the purposes of this post, this is the only area we’ll cover.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately because I’m in the market for a new camera. My T3i has a dynamic range that’s not so hot, according to today’s standards. And the more I use it, the more I feel like I’m not getting what I want out of it. As I mentioned above, cameras with dynamic ranges on the more narrow side might not be noticed all too readily by newer photographers, but for someone who’s more experienced, details in the shadows and highlights become very important.

To sum it up, dynamic range is one area of photography that’s often overlooked, but is absolutely critical to be aware of. It’s what the high-end photographers pay attention to and it’s what makes or breaks a photograph. Narrow dynamic ranges can kill an otherwise beautiful piece of art. Wide dynamic ranges can take a so-so photo and make it exponentially more interesting.

In today’s post, I’m going to demonstrate how you can adjust the range between shadows and highlights in Adobe Photoshop when using an adjustment layer. The adjustment layer I’ll be focusing on is called Levels. Levels allows for the adjustment of a histogram that expresses a photograph’s luminance. The histogram luminance values range from pure black to pure white on one axis and the relative quantity of light for that luminance on another axis. In simple terms, it’s a more scientific and graphical picture of your picture. Don’t worry, this will all become very clear below.

For my demonstration, I’ll be using a photo of a city street. I’ll apply the Levels adjustment layer to the photo and then adjust, or narrow, the range until it suits my needs. After that, I’ll make a selection and for that selection, I’ll create another adjustment layer of the same type. I’ll change the selection range in an effort to show you that adjustment layers aren’t only meant to apply to entire photos, but pieces, or objects, inside a photo as well.

Original Image

This is the original photo. In my opinion, it’s a bit washed out. Perhaps the camera the photo was taken with had a very wide dynamic range and all of that range was used in the editing.

My goal is to narrow the range between darks and lights using the Levels adjustment layer. This will add contrast. Also, I’d like to bring more focus to the blacktop on the street, so that it stands out from its surroundings. I’ll use another adjustment layer for that.

Applying the Adjustment Layer

The very first task I’ll complete is to apply the Levels adjustment layer. To do this, I can go up to the Layer > New Adjustment Layer menu item and then select Levels from there. Alternatively, I could visit the bottom of the Layers panel and press the Click for New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon and select Levels. Finally, I could do what I actually did, which is to click the Levels icon in the Adjustments panel. To me, that’s the easiest.

If you look at the screenshot above, you’ll see that after I clicked the Levels icon, a few things happened. First, a new adjustment layer was added to the Layers panel. Second, the Levels Properties panel appeared to the left of the Layers panel. It’s inside this Properties panel that I’ll complete most of my work.

A Closer Look at the Histogram

I’d like to stop for a moment to take a closer look at the histogram that’s located in the Properties panel. You can see it by looking at the screenshot above.

In this post, I’m going to focus primarily on the histogram itself, along with the three sliders located directly below the graph. These sliders are, from left to right, the black point slider, the midtone slider and the white point slider. Initially, each of these sliders is located in their default positions. Black has an RGB value of 0, white has an RGB value of 255 and the midtones have an RGB value of 1. You’ll see these default settings each time you create a new Levels adjustment layer.

Why Adjust the Histogram Sliders?

You may be asking why anyone would want to adjust the sliders I just described above. Well, the answer to that question is very simple. Let’s say you’re taking a photo and forget to look at your camera histogram while doing so. Because of this, you don’t notice that the image you’re capturing doesn’t entirely fill the tonal range, which will result in a bland looking, or washed out, photograph that can lack contrast. Once the photo is taken, you can open the image into Photoshop for editing, just as I’m doing now in this post. By pushing the three sliders I referred to above so they’re closer to where the action is in the histogram, we’re essentially adjusting the tonal range. So, instead of accomplishing this via the camera, we’re attempting to accomplish it via post-processing. The goal is to set the sliders right up against the beginning and end of the curve, so the ultimate histogram extends all the way from 0 to 255, as opposed to a smaller range.

Moving the Sliders

I’ve seen images with histograms that have tons of dead space on both the dark and light sides. Adjusting those images is easy. All you need to do is bump the black slider to the right, so it’s up against the beginning of the curve – the point at which it begins to climb and to bump the white slider to the left, so it sits right at the point where the curve hits the bottom and begins to flatten out. For the midtone slider, that’s more of an eyeball thing. You can push it to the left or the right depending on how you want the image to look. Most of the time, if you’re attempting to add contrast, you’ll push the center slider to the right.

The image I’m using isn’t terrible. While I do think it’s a bit washed out, I really don’t need to aggressively push the sliders. All I’m going to do is to move the black slider to the right a hair and then move the midtone slider to the right a hair as well. This will add the contrast I’m after.

Take a look at the photo below. You can definitely tell that I’ve reduced the original bland look. It looks pretty good.

Adjusting the Levels of a Selection

This is where things get interesting. Inside a photograph, there are many objects or areas. These objects and areas all have their own tonal ranges. So, while you may have taken the most perfectly balanced overall photograph with your camera, there may be elements of the picture you’d like to adjust. This is fairly normal and corrections like this happen all the time.

I feel that the road in the photo I’m working on is too light. I’d like it to have some punch and for it to be darker. To accomplish this edit, I’ll use the Polygonal Lasso Tool and outline the road. This will create the marching ants and create a selection.

From here, I’ll go back to the Adjustments panel and click the Levels icon again. This will create a new adjustment layer and will pop out the Properties box that will include a histogram just for the selected area. Let’s take a look at that.

From the above screenshot, you can see two things. First, there’s a new adjustment layer. The mask portion of this layer is shaped like the selection. The white part of the mask is what will be edited and the black part will be invisible. Second, the new histogram has a smaller tonal range. Also, there are vertical lines that travel through the histogram, indicating areas of the range that are lacking data.

Since the darker side of the graph has some flatness, I’ll push the black slider to the right, just until it meets the upward curve. Then, I’ll push the midtone slider to the right until I feel the road has a “just paved” look. That’s what I’m going for. Take a look at the sliders now.

These adjustments give me the final image.

How cool is that?

A Note About the Midtone Slider

As you may have noticed, I pushed the midtone slider to the right quite a bit in the previous section. This was different than what I did the section previous to that. The reason I pushed the slider so far is because I wanted to darken the selection. In its essence, the midtone slider compresses the shadow and highlight tones that are located to the right or left of the slider itself. If I pushed the midtone slider to the left, I’d be opening up the highlights and compressing the shadows. This would result in a lighter area. Since I pushed the midtone slider to the right, I compressed the highlights and opened up the shadows, which resulted in a darker selection. Since this is what I was going after, everything worked out well.

I hope I’ve done a good job introducing you to the Levels adjustment in Adobe Photoshop. If you have any questions or would like to add anything to this post, please let me know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!

Opening video files into Adobe Photoshop isn’t difficult. It’s sort of like opening regular image files, but as similar as these two processes are, there are some differences. With images, things are fairly one dimensional. With video, things are three dimensional. It’s the extra dimensions that need a closer look.

In today’s post, I’m going to demonstrate a few methods for opening video files into Photoshop. While one or two of these methods are very straightforward, the others are used for specific purposes. There are distinct differences among them, so you’ll need to evaluate your video editing goals before taking advantage of any of these. Where your video clip ends up in the Timeline panel is very important.

For this post, I’ll be using a short video file I shot while living in Palm Coast, Florida during part of 2013. The movie only lasts for about 90 seconds, so I don’t think I’ll bump into any file size or memory issues here. If interested, you can take a look at the entire thing below.

Opening the File the Traditional Way

As usual with these types of posts, I show how to go about opening a file the good old fashioned way – through the File menu up top. If you click File > Open in the top menu and then browse to find your video file and double click on it, you’ll be able to open the file right into Photoshop directly. When that happens, the video will appear just as a photo does and the Timeline panel will open. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I suggest you change your workspace to Motion.

Dragging & Dropping From Adobe Bridge

This is really very cool. If you open Adobe Bridge and then browse to the folder where your video files are located…

…you can drag the file down to your taskbar on top of the Photoshop icon, wait for Photoshop to appear, and then drag the file up to your workspace and drop the it into another one that’s already open. When you do this initially, the dropped file appears as an image does when it’s “placed.” I’ll be getting into all this a heck of a lot more in later posts, but for right now, let me just tell you that when you place a video file in a working document, it’s very easy to resize it so you have a smaller video within a video. Here, take a look at a screenshot to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

In the above screenshot, I already resized the new file so it appears in the upper left corner. All I need to do is hit Enter on my keyboard to place the object. In the screenshot below, I applied a drop shadow so you can see everything more clearly.

Now, when I hit Play inside the Timeline panel, both videos play simultaneously.

Opening Multiple Files as Layers

If you’ve got multiple video files, as I’m sure you’ll almost always have, it’s highly beneficial to open the group of them into one file in Photoshop as layers. To do this, you’ll browse Bridge until you’re in the folder where the files are located. Then, select the ones you’d like to open as layers. Finally, head up to the Tools > Photoshop menu and select the Load Files into Photoshop Layers item.

When the files open in Photoshop, each clip will be on its own layer. Please see the screenshot below. I cut the same screenshot in half so you can see the Timeline panel as well as the Layers panel.

This is a very helpful method if you’re working with many assets.

Adding Directly to the Timeline

This last section is going to include two very closely related methods for adding files to a timeline. Both of these methods do basically the same thing. They add video to a timeline in sequential order as opposed to on their own layers.

If I click on the filmstrip icon in the Timeline panel, I’ll see a small menu appear.

To add additional video in sequential order to the timeline, I’ll click on Add Media. From there, I’ll browse my files and select whichever I want to add.

Similarly, I can click the + symbol at the end of the end of the timeline to accomplish the same thing.

If I zoom out of the timeline view, I’ll see both clips in the same timeline – the original and the one I just added.

This is because they have been grouped in the Layers panel. To ungroup them so they’re each independent of one another, simply head over to the Layers panel and right-click on the Group layer and when the menu appears, select Ungroup Layers.

Once that’s done, the timeline will break into two.

Well, there you have it. Five different methods for opening video files into Adobe Photoshop. I hope these helped with understanding how easy it really is to do something like this. If you have any questions or concerns, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks!

I’ve been doing some thinking and have concluded that video is the future. While I absolutely love photography and will never give it up, I think it would only be prudent for me to immerse myself in video as much as possible. I’ve been taking and editing video for almost five years, so I almost know my way around. While not an expert, I have a lot to offer. But, like many of you, I also have a lot to learn.

In today’s post, I’d like to explore the Timeline panel in Adobe Photoshop. I’m not going to dive very deep – what I’d like to do is merely touch upon some of the more important aspects and controls. In the most basic sense, I’d like someone who knows nothing about editing video in Photoshop to walk away from this post saying, “Heck, I think I can do that.” That’s the goal.

The Timeline Magnification Level

When I fist opened one of my old video files from 2013 and after I switched my workspace layout to Motion as I mentioned in this post, the clip duration appeared rather short.

For most people in most cases, this isn’t enough to work with. Especially since the video I took was much longer than it appeared. If I click on the small arrow that’s located at the right side of the clip in the timeline, I can find out some important information.

I now know the duration of this video is 84.65 seconds. If I were including this in a production that was oven an hour long, I’d surely keep it as small looking as possible. Since it’s the only one in my project, I’ll stretch it out so I have more space to think. To do this, I’ll click the Zoom in Timeline button or slide the Control Timeline Magnification slider.

That’s better. Now, if you look at the small timing marks along the length of the timeline, you can see that they consist of 5 second increments as opposed to 30 second increments. This is a matter of preference as much as it is of necessity, so you’ll need to decide which magnification level is best for whatever it is you’re working on.

Real-Time Playback & Frame Rate

I’m going to press the Play button that’s located towards the left side of the Timeline panel. After the clip starts playing, I want to get an idea of how my system handles the video, so I’ll keep a close eye on the Frame Rate.

I circled the Play button in the left screenshot above. Since the video is playing, it’s showing the Stop button. When the video stops, that will switch back to Play.

Below that, I circled two areas. Actually, they are the same area in the Timeline panel and display the Frame Rate. When the video is being played back at the same frame rate the video was recorded with, the frame rate text will show as green. In the above screenshot, the green text states that the current playing frame rate is 29.97 fps (frames per second). That’s close enough to the 30 fps I used to record the video. On the left side, the red text is showing a slower frame rate of 25.34 fps. While playing the video back in the editor, it appears smooth. If the frame rate really dropped down and things become choppy, I’d definitely want to take a closer look at the resources in my computer because it may not be powerful enough to handle video editing. This is a very important factor to consider early on.

Playhead & Current Frame

When editing video, you’ll find yourself dragging the playhead around about once every two seconds. It’s an extremely popular task. I only felt it responsible to show you where the playhead can be found.

If you look at the above screenshot, you’ll see that I circled the playhead inside the timeline. It’s the indicator with the red line that travels down through the clip itself. I can drag that playhead to the left and the right to change which frame I’m currently looking at. Of course, the video above will correspond with where the playhead is located in the timeline.

This brings me to my next point – the current video frame. If I want to know precisely which frame I’m looking at, I can look inside the left-most red circle above. In my screenshot, the current frame is 0;00;17;23. That means I’m around the 17 second mark. So, when you’re working on editing a video with someone else and they ask you to take a look at the 17 second mark because there’s a ghost captured on film, you’ll now know how to get there.

Work Area Bars

Let’s say that I had my camera running during my video for over an hour in an attempt to capture a river creature. The creature is elusive, so I had to hide behind a tree and let the camera do its work. Let’s now say that the creature appeared for only a few seconds of the video and the rest of the time, all I got was the water running downstream. To view and edit only the specific time the creature was on video, I can move something called the Work Area Bars.

If you look at the above screenshot, you’ll see that I circled two areas along the timeline. These are the Work Area Bars. Currently, they are set at the beginning and at the end of the timeline. If I click and drag them, to different areas of the timeline, when I click on the Play button, the playhead will loop inside the Work Area Bars only. This is handy when you’re working on specific areas of video.

Allow Frame Skipping

I’m going to be honest here. In my “newer” computer, I have 8GB of RAM. As I play my video back inside of Photoshop, there’s some lag. The playhead stops intermittently, which makes for a rather horrible editing experience. Before I head out to purchase some additional RAM (which I’m going to do), I can allow frame skipping during playback. All this means is that instead of forcing Photoshop to play back each and every frame, which can slow things down, you’re giving it permission to skip some frames. This will loosen up the playback and make it appear smooth. This isn’t a big deal in a video like mine because the entire minute and a half is just water running. You’ll have to be the judge of whether or not the feature works for you.

To allow frame skipping, click on the menu that’s located at the right side of the Timeline panel and select Allow Frame Skipping. That’s all you need to do.

Muting Audio

When I recorded my video, I used an external microphone on my Canon Rebel T3i. Due to this, I captured some really crisp sound. The thing is, even through the sound is good, I might not want to hear it during my entire editing process. So, I may mute the audio while editing. To do this, I’ll simply click the Mute Audio Playback button in the Timeline panel.

That’s all I’m going to cover for this post. I hope I began to familiarize you with the Timeline panel in Adobe Photoshop. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comment section below. Thanks!