First photo tutorial.

Being at the Oakland Art Murmur last night reminded me of a photo I took last year, of “Bean” and also of an online Photoshop tutorial I recently came across. If you’re like me and you can’t afford a really long or a really fast lens, you can “fake” selective focus or shallow depth of field (aka bokeh) by using a channel mask and blur filter. Be warned that the resulting file size will be HUGE – this one came to a whopping 41 MB! However, I like the results of this technique. I have used a different method that entailed a layer mask and gradient and wasn’t satisfied with the results. Perhaps the blurry background is too pronounced. What do you think? Check it out here if you’re interested in experimenting.