How to Blur a Background in Photoshop

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The word blur is generally associated with an upscale camera with a wide opening lens. The effect is famous for portraits and imitated – with some limitations – with “portrait mode” now found in many smartphones. But even without an upscale camera or portrait mode, you can still make a beautiful background in Adobe Photoshop. Here in this article, we will see how to blur a background in photoshop

The ideal key of a perfect image is the sharpness of the image with a blurred background. This effect is achieved optimally by using a lens with a shallow depth. However, if it doesn’t work directly during the photoshoot, we can blur the background in Photoshop.

Draw focus on your subject with a complete step-by-step tutorial on how to blur the background in Photoshop.

How To Blur Backgrounds in Photoshop

1)Click and open the image you want to edit in Photoshop

When choosing photos where we want to obscure the background, it’s always better to select RAW format images. After opening, let’s double the background layer. This is a mandatory step in every photoshop editing workflow because we want to keep our original image untouched. Firstly analyze the photos. We want to make our subject look sharper, and the background focuses on guiding the observer’s eyes, especially on our subject.

2)Make a copy of your original image

Make a copy of the original image to proceed on with the process to blur the background.

3)Use of field blur tool

With open images in Photoshop, click on Filter, then choose Blur Gallery. Afterward, move forward with the option of Field Blur. In the Blur field window, you will select what drawing fields you will remove, while the blur on the right will control the number and type of blur.

How to Blur a Background

4)Set Up Blur Pin

It tells Photoshop where to blur and how much. When you open the Blur field window, Photoshop automatically places the first PIN for you. Drag and drop the PIN to the background or the farthest area of ​​the focal point. On the right, drag the slider blur until you reach the desired blur number. You can always return and enhance the blur from any pin just by clicking on it.

5)Set the blurred pin at Zero on subject

When you first open the Blur field tool, your entire image will be opaque. Set the pin directly above the subject by clicking on it, then drag the slider blur down to zero. You must now have a general background that is generally, and the subject is usually sharp. Continue to place a blur pin on the subject, set each zero until the entire subject is sharp. Use as little as possible PIN, but don’t worry if the background looks sharper when you place a PIN.

6)Refine it to get the perfect image

To fix it and achieve more natural results, add more pins. Customize the blur based on the distance from the original background point – the closer object to the background must have a blur closer to the original point, while objects are closer to a much lower subject.

Continue to place the point and adjust the blur until you are every part of the blurred image based on the subject’s distance. If this starts to disturb the background blur, don’t worry – just put an additional background point to make sure the background keeps running away correctly. In our sample picture, the background on the left of the horse’s face was still rather sharp, so we added another point there, set it up with the same blur value.

7)Adjust it according to your choice

After you are satisfied with the placement and blur level in the image, you may use the blur effect option, depending on your image. We are providing a brief description of all.

Control “Light Bokeh” will brighten the brightest points in the out-of-focus area to Mimic Lens Bokeh. Avoid this control if you don’t have a point light in the background. “Bokeh” will adjust the bright area’s color, while the “light range” will adjust what tone is included in the bokeh effect.

The Noise tab will restore a blurred sound to get a background to match the subject. If you work with editing images on high ISO, you must use this option so the subject does not have more noise than the background, which will look unnatural. Use the slider to change the grain size until most suitable with grains in the subject. If there is no real sound in your original image, you can let this arrangement untouched.

8)Fine-tune the image to give it a final shot

Because we use the Blur pin in the selection process, it is not possible to include all small details such as hair on the edge of the election. Now let’s return the detail to our image so that the entire subject looks the same as the real one.

In the next step, you need to create a new duplicate background layer and place it on top of all the layers. Create a layer mask in this active layer and fill it with black. This will fully cover the layer.

Set this layer to relieve the blending mode. Next, we will paint with a brush in the layer mask and only reveal light parts. In our case, this is a small hair and detail on the edge of our subject. Finally, let’s evaluate the full effect. You can now click the blur gallery and go through the Blur Gallery setting again.

Select the blurred field in the blur gallery and click on the area where this blur must be applied. Now adjust the intensity of the blur according to your choice.

Let’s set the last noise. Set the noise value to around 20 to 30 to reach a realistic blur background with a little noise. We can apply more improvements such as RAW camera filters to increase vibration, contrast, or balance the shadow level. After you are happy with the blur level, the effects of bokeh, and noise, click OK, and Photoshop will make the effect.

How to Blur a Background

Conclusion

Besides that, it only gives you the ability you might not have access to the camera and chooses to add blur in Photoshop to provide you with more control and flexibility where blur is applied and displays it. This program includes several different editing tools for selectively obscure background photos and many options to control blur. I hope you find this helpful, and we will come with some more photography tips. Till then, bookmark our page for more.

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