How To Blur Backgrounds In Photoshop – Shallow Depth of Field Effect
The best way to create a blurry background in your photos is to do it all in camera. But sometimes you may not have the right lens, or you are you are working with older photos you already shot.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to blur backgrounds in Photoshop using the Blur Gallery.
How To Blur Backgrounds in Photoshop With The Tilt-Shift Blur Filter
This first technique is geared for beginners and will be an easy-to-follow method that uses the Tilt-Shift Blur filter to fake the shallow depth of field focus on a flat photograph.
This filter works by dragging a few simple UI controls, and you can create a blurry background in Photoshop in no time!
You Can Find The Old Blurry Backgrounds Photoshop Tutorial Here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to3EXCPfY4w
Download Blurry Background Tutorial Photo Here
Click the link below to download the file:
067 - Lens Blur Filter - Blurry Backgrounds (4808 downloads)
067 - Lens Blur Filter - Blurry Backgrounds (4808 downloads)
Final Image
Drag The Slider To See Before & After
Nice!
I want to know how you selected Cheryl so fast?
Two reasons, fast computer, and sped up the video like 1.4x. To save you, the viewer, some time. So it was fast, but not as fast as the video.
That was awesome, thank you!
Amanda,
You’re welcome!
Thanks for the great tutorial, Jesus. I’m going through your beginning PS tutorials, but I managed to do this. Yeah!
Kerry,
I’m so glad that you were able to complete this one! Great job!
Great tutorial – thanks!
Great tutorial,I worked with CAD and have to do lots of renders and this is the one thing I need to master,thanks
James,
I’m glad this helps you out in your CAD work!
Thanks for sharing this,but when I download this tutorial download only the 286 KB image file
Tissa, the download is only the image so that you can follow along.
Bonjour à Vous,
Merci pour le tuto et pour les backgrounds !
Bien cordialement
You’re welcome!
great tutorial
Thank you!
Hey thanks for the videos you make just got back into photoshop and never knew it’s true power till now .
You’re welcome, Ray!
Muchas gracias por este tutorial!
De nada!
Thank you! I never fail to be amazed at what Photoshop can help me do.
You’re welcome, Fran!
Perfect timing for me to see this! I’ve been working on a photo that needed this exact treatment! Thanks a bunch!
You’re welcome, Lynn!
The Real Photoshop Training Channel.I cannot wait for the next video with different techniques that I had never learned before.
Thanks PTC.
Best Regards.
Thank you, Tommy!
Thank you Jesus, this was very useful, like your other tutorials, too!
You’re welcome, Klara!
Awesome Stuff great tutorial
Thank you!
Hi I followed along with this tutorial on Youtube. It’s awesome BUT for some reason I am getting the total opposite of what I want to happen. After I use the quick selection tool–When I press “q” the objects that I want in focus ends up being out of focus. How can I fix this? Im using Photoshop CC 2017
Laurie,
I think that your settings for the Quick Mask might be reversed. You can double-click on the Quick Mask icon (below the foreground/background color picker in the tools bar) to bring up the options and select “Masked Areas”.
I hope this helps!
Excellent tutorial. Thank you!
You’re welcome, Joy!
Very Nice Tutorial Jesus! Your instructions so methodical and easy to follow. Thanks for this tip.
You’re welcome, Rengesh!
An awesome video tutorial, as usual. I have learned so much from tour style of teaching. Learning the mapping technique is invaluable to me. Thanks for all you do for the photography and photoshop community. One question, did you make the image available for download? If so, where is it located?
cyberray50, the image is an Adobe Stock photo and I cannot share it because of licensing issues. But you can download a free watermarked version to play around with if you like.
https://stock.adobe.com/images/couple-stands-in-fron-of-old-bridge-in-mountains/165852596
https://stock.adobe.com/images/man-pull-woman-to-get-in-time-for-train/195056421
Jesus, love your work and always learn something from your presentations. As a suggestion, since it’s always difficult to see the ‘marching ants’ in a selection you make, could you just turn quick mask on and off to show the affected area?
Great tutorial! Here’s one last thing that I do after the blur. Since there are some subjects that due to their very nature can’t be selected with 100% accuracy no matter how much time you spend on them (think hair, fur, some fabrics, etc.) I put a white mask on top and with a very soft brush (0% hardness) and a very low opacity (10-30%) I paint black around the edges of my subject so a tiny bit more of the original subject blends through and makes it look more seamless, since the edge is not so sharp anymore. This helps even if the original selection has a soft edge, sometimes it’s impossible to select all the details and this helps not to lose them completely. Looking forward to the next tutorial!