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Home » Photoshop Tutorials » Photoshop Effects » How To Blur Backgrounds In Photoshop – Shallow Depth of Field Effect

How To Blur Backgrounds In Photoshop – Shallow Depth of Field Effect

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Posted In: Photoshop Effects | Watch on YouTube

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 (3167 downloads)

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About Jesus Ramirez

Jesús Ramirez is a digital graphics expert, speaker, and educator specializing in Adobe Photoshop. Jesús is best known as the founder of the Photoshop Training Channel, one of the most popular Photoshop YouTube channels in the world. More.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Wick Beavers says

    January 28, 2016 at 1:18 pm

    Nice!
    I want to know how you selected Cheryl so fast?

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      January 28, 2016 at 1:27 pm

      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.

      Reply
  2. Amanda says

    January 28, 2016 at 4:42 pm

    That was awesome, thank you!

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      January 29, 2016 at 2:48 pm

      Amanda,

      You’re welcome!

      Reply
  3. Kerry Mitchell says

    January 28, 2016 at 5:09 pm

    Thanks for the great tutorial, Jesus. I’m going through your beginning PS tutorials, but I managed to do this. Yeah!

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      January 29, 2016 at 2:48 pm

      Kerry,

      I’m so glad that you were able to complete this one! Great job!

      Reply
  4. Karsten Qvist says

    January 29, 2016 at 2:26 am

    Great tutorial – thanks!

    Reply
  5. james says

    January 29, 2016 at 8:18 am

    Great tutorial,I worked with CAD and have to do lots of renders and this is the one thing I need to master,thanks

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      January 29, 2016 at 2:47 pm

      James,

      I’m glad this helps you out in your CAD work!

      Reply
  6. Tissa says

    January 29, 2016 at 9:04 pm

    Thanks for sharing this,but when I download this tutorial download only the 286 KB image file

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      March 9, 2016 at 8:51 am

      Tissa, the download is only the image so that you can follow along.

      Reply
  7. Christiane DELBECQUE says

    January 31, 2016 at 9:43 am

    Bonjour à Vous,

    Merci pour le tuto et pour les backgrounds !

    Bien cordialement

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      March 9, 2016 at 8:52 am

      You’re welcome!

      Reply
  8. klara says

    April 22, 2016 at 4:15 am

    great tutorial

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      April 25, 2016 at 12:17 am

      Thank you!

      Reply
  9. ray says

    May 31, 2016 at 3:41 pm

    Hey thanks for the videos you make just got back into photoshop and never knew it’s true power till now .

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      June 6, 2016 at 11:29 am

      You’re welcome, Ray!

      Reply
  10. Álvaro Barrossi says

    June 2, 2016 at 7:42 am

    Muchas gracias por este tutorial!

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      June 6, 2016 at 11:28 am

      De nada!

      Reply
  11. Fran Hogan says

    August 26, 2016 at 6:24 pm

    Thank you! I never fail to be amazed at what Photoshop can help me do.

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      August 27, 2016 at 11:03 pm

      You’re welcome, Fran!

      Reply
  12. Lynn says

    December 29, 2016 at 5:37 am

    Perfect timing for me to see this! I’ve been working on a photo that needed this exact treatment! Thanks a bunch!

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      January 1, 2017 at 5:53 pm

      You’re welcome, Lynn!

      Reply
  13. Tommy Bakwan says

    January 26, 2017 at 10:28 am

    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.

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      January 27, 2017 at 3:21 pm

      Thank you, Tommy!

      Reply
  14. Klara says

    April 5, 2017 at 10:06 am

    Thank you Jesus, this was very useful, like your other tutorials, too!

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      April 6, 2017 at 12:21 pm

      You’re welcome, Klara!

      Reply
  15. prince abuh says

    April 8, 2017 at 5:13 am

    Awesome Stuff great tutorial

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      April 23, 2017 at 2:55 pm

      Thank you!

      Reply
  16. Laurie says

    June 10, 2017 at 1:52 pm

    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

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      June 14, 2017 at 1:27 pm

      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!

      Reply
  17. Joy says

    June 13, 2017 at 12:26 pm

    Excellent tutorial. Thank you!

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      June 14, 2017 at 1:28 pm

      You’re welcome, Joy!

      Reply
  18. rengesh says

    October 7, 2017 at 9:36 pm

    Very Nice Tutorial Jesus! Your instructions so methodical and easy to follow. Thanks for this tip.

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      November 16, 2017 at 1:51 am

      You’re welcome, Rengesh!

      Reply
  19. cyberray50 says

    March 18, 2018 at 8:54 pm

    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?

    Reply
    • Photoshop Training Channel says

      March 18, 2018 at 10:54 pm

      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

      Reply
  20. Gabriel says

    April 12, 2018 at 3:52 am

    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!

    Reply

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