• Update: Now added these poles to the depth information.
  • Update: Now added this building to the depth information.
  • It's nothing like real light bokeh but I don't know how to fake that in software yet, or if I ever will be able to.
  • Update: Now added a slight variation in depth for the height of the building.
  • When a lens flare/star crosses over between a sharp/blurred transition it will always look wrong using this technique.
  • What would happen in reality (if this were optically possible) would be a bokeh circle behind the sharp object but it would also spill over the true outline of that object slightly too ( How much depends on it's brightness). You would also get purple fringing because of the nature of the optic.
  • Out of focus edges in front of sharp areas are the most tricky things to do here. You will most likely get a hard edge which will look horrible. You either have to blur the edges of the mask (for the front objects) a lot or manually blur the edges after using the 'Blur' tool.
  • Update: Now added this bridge to the depth information.
  • I brightened up this and all the points of light by duplicating the layer and changing the blending mode to 'Screen'. Then I added a layer mask to paint that in only where I needed it, otherwise the blurred lights get really dull.
  • This overhead could be separated from the bridge and more accurately done but since the foreground blur doesn't work all that great anyway I ignored it.

Amsterdam [Mini]

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I have now added a tutorial for this technique here: creativeobscura.blogspot.

If you are interested in the technique I would appreciate any feedback you have to help me make this tutorial more user friendly for everyone, thanks :).

I have been playing around with miniaturising one of Jos' photos (see here) that he took in Amsterdam on a Mamiya C330 recently. The shallow depth of field is faked using a hand painted depth mask & Photoshop's 'Lens Blur' plugin.

Although this looks similar to a tilt-shift effect it's a bit different. I only recently realised that tilt-shift lenses do not reduce depth of field, they only appear to do so based on the simplicity of the scene and angle of the view. What they do is blur the top and bottom of the image, there is nothing more to it than that (they don't increase the out of focus effect based on distance in any way). This image however is using distance (depth) information to add blur in post. There is no way to do this optically, not that I know of).

There are limitations to the technique however, foreground blur when it sits on top of the focus plane is a real pain. Also it is difficult and time consuming work to create the selection masks. All that said it can be rewarding when it works. I will post the depth mask used to create this in the comments to illustrate my point about the comparisons to the tilt-shift effect.

Hopefully my next post will be from my own Mamiya C330! I am sending the films off for developing tomorrow... fingers crossed! I am using Peak-Imaging, they sound good!

● See this image large / On Black here
● Here are some more images I have created using this effect

Bear Clause, RichardTerborg, Joserri, s a m s t a c k, and 80 other people added this photo to their favorites.

View 20 more comments

  1. Edd Noble 37 months ago | reply

    John: Thanks very much! If you would like to try it I did write a tutorial for this a couple of years ago, it should go over all the steps you will need but if you get stuck give me a shout, I should probably write one more suited to the effect than this...

    www.flickr.com/photos/eddnoble/419368834/in/set-721575943...

    Haydee: Yeah I think the night shots work well too, the bokeh sucks but apart from that they do seem to work nicely! Thanks baby =) <3

  2. Billy Q 37 months ago | reply

    Awesome Edd...
    Dig the industrial scene bro. I spent time around the port of Los Angeles this weekend. I think I'll have to go back and shoot some medium format stuff.

  3. Lee Welton 37 months ago | reply

    The works paid off it looks so cool.

  4. grimhund 37 months ago | reply

    I live right near here - on an island just behind the blurred building (the music hall). Never seen it look this interestign before though.

    Very cool shot and technique!

  5. Edd Noble 37 months ago | reply

    Billy: Thanks! Oh cool you should deffintely go back and see if you can shoot something at this kind of angle. Industrial stuff works the best if you want the masks to look impressive, trees are annoying to do properly!

    Lee: Cheers =)

    grimund: Thanks very much! No way, I looked at living here once, lovely part of Amsterdam to live I bet!

  6. RichardTerborg 37 months ago | reply

    Haha sweet man, thats cool how you got the idea from it!

    I have to say its been two years! now that i think about it! Since i last did a real 3d project with the gf. But after we both saw Avatar and alice in wodnerland we put that right back on the list :) I never got used to working in zbrush and i really want to give it another go :) the level of detail is soo high now. We work in Cinema4d. Because of the fast render engine, haha you know those school days rendering on a pentium 2 hahaha leaving it on the whole night and windows shutting down on you in the middle of your 8 hour render hahaha. When im back ill send you some links of some work :)

  7. Edd Noble 37 months ago | reply

    Cool please do! Yeah I do remember all night renders and waking up and checking on them, mostly to be pretty disappointed :P. I have uploaded some of my 3D in the past but I removed it, do you remember seeing any?

  8. * Elisabeth85 * 37 months ago | reply

    Cool!

  9. Edd Noble 37 months ago | reply

    Thanks =)

  10. Alt_Gr *busy* www.nilseisfeld.de 37 months ago | reply

    so cool!
    very well made!

    looks like a good work on it!

  11. Rickard Nilsson 37 months ago | reply

    Now this is an exceptional Tilt Shift shot!!! One of the better minis I've seen actually.

  12. Edd Noble 37 months ago | reply

    Alt_Gr / Rickard: Thanks very much to both of you!! I really want to try this again on one of my own pictures but I just don't have anything suitable at the moment, I will take another look through some old stuff tonight but I may have to go and shoot some new stuff... omg what an annoyance :P

  13. danihernanz 37 months ago | reply

    Incredible work!

  14. h329 37 months ago | reply

    Well done!

  15. AragianMarko 37 months ago | reply

    Great work just great...the effect in this shot is incredible

  16. nontaburi 37 months ago | reply

    Excellent!

  17. Aleksandr Matveev 37 months ago | reply

    Fantastic photostream!

  18. C.Rangefinder 37 months ago | reply

    Very good result indeed. I have tried the same tecnique, but ended with fake looking photos, and decided to spare for a Noctilux :-) Imean, the real look needs even more PP, for curvature of field, vignette, and other optical aberrations summarize for a unique look in each lens. Do you know Alien skin´s "bokeh" plugin ? For your workflow possibly interesting since you can chose diffeent kinds of bokeh, and control highlight effects, for example.

  19. Edd Noble 37 months ago | reply

    Thank you all for the kind comments! =)

    C.Rangefinder: I haven't tried that plugin yet but I do want to give it a go. There are so many things to take in to account for getting this very accurate but it can be fairly forgiving, as long as you get it roughly right and avoid foreground blur and things that need complex masking like trees / hair etc. then it's not too bad.

  20. Constant Creations 37 months ago | reply

    this looks so cool!!
    great photostream my friend

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