The Blur Gallery: Tilt-Shift Blur, Iris, & Field Blur – Photoshop CS6 Tutorial
Adobe introduced the Blur gallery with the launch of the Photoshop CS6 Beta. This Blur gallery contains three new blurring features that behave like filters but give you control before ever committing a change. With a great amount of control over selective blurring using either the Field blur or the hyper-focus of the Iris blur you have the ability to do very cool things with only a couple clicks. There is also a Tilt-shift blur built right in as well!
Blur Gallery: Tilt-Shift Blur
Step 1:
This blur is used to create a cool effect which “miniaturizes” the image it is used on. It essentially is meant to come close to mimicking the effect of a tilt-shift lens. Photoshop CS6 makes creating this effect a snap!
Step 2:
You can access the Tilt-Shift Filter by going Filter>Blur>Tilt-Shift. When you select this you will see a pin dropped in the center of your image. This is our control point.
Step 3:
A quick glance will show you that this blur is keeping the “pinned” area in focus while blurring everything else. These edges of this blur are draggable to expand the area which will remain sharp and you can even drag the dashed lines to “fade” the blur in and out a little bit. I’m going to edit my lines to adjust my blur.
Step 4:
Next, to adjust the angle of this blur we want to select either of the little white dots on the center of the solid lines to rotate this blur and help us introduce a proper perspective to this blur.
Step 5:
You can pick up and move the whole blur by dragging the blur from the center of the pin. By clicking on, or in between, the inner and outer rings you can drag to adjust the amount of blur you are applying in pixels –as if you were using any ole’ blur the Photoshop gives you! Note the white fill “fills up” as you add blur.
Step 6:
Hit “OK” to commit your changes and admire the blur!
Blur Gallery: Field Blur
Step 1:
The Field Blur is a simple blur that allows you to drop pins and control the amount of blur that spills out of that pin. The pins fade seamlessly from one blur to the next as you drop multiple pins into your image to create cool and creative blur effects.
Step 2:
You can access this blur by going Filter>Blur>Field Blur. Photoshop CS6 will drop a pin into the center of your image. You can drag this pin around by selecting that center point and dragging it to wherever you like. I’m going to drag this point up to the top of my image.
Step 3:
We can adjust the blur that this pin is laying down by checking out the Blur Tools panel and using the “Blur” slider.
Step 4:
Click anywhere to add a second pin. I want to ensure that the car parked in front of the van is sharp. Add a second pin and reduce the blur to “0px”.
Step 5:
Add as many pins as you like and change and adjust the level of blurring depending on the effect you’re looking to get. Hit “OK” to commit your changes. TIP: You can even place pins off of the actual document to allow the faded portion of the blur to work its magic.
Step 6:
I’m going to bring in another image to show off a super cool new feature of Photoshop CS6. You can create Bokeh when using these Blur tools! It’s awesome and work pretty well! I’m just throwing the default one pin, 15px blurred Field Blur onto this image.
Step 7:
Now check out the “Blur Effect” panel and crank up the “Light Bokeh” and watch what happens! TIP: Often you need to adjust the “Light Range” and reduce the range being effected. Check out the settings I used to get the bokeh effect I got.
Blur Gallery: Iris Blur
Step 1:
The Iris Blur is sort of the opposite of Field Blur. It blurs everywhere but where you have a pin. Each single pin blur is its own little self-contained editable container. You get a decent amount of control and it can lead to some very cool effects. Go Filter>Blur>Iris Blur to add an Iris Blur to your image.
Step 2:
It’s simple, one pin in the center of your document. There are a whole bunch of neat things you have at your disposal to work with this blur. First and foremost you still control the amount of blur by clicking and dragging your mouse around between the inner and outer rings.
Step 3:
You can control the area the blur fades into by clicking and dragging the small squares at the four points on the surrounding oval. The top and bottom points control top-to-bottom size and the left and right points control left-to-right size. Using these points you can also rotate your oval.
Step 4:
Select the center of the pin to drag the blur around. The large box on the outer oval controls the rounded-ness of the corners and you can convert this to a rounded rectangle by simply dragging this handle.
Step 5:
You can also control the fall-off of the blur by dragging the four inner dots in or out. TIP: Hold your Alt/Opt key to drag only one dot at a time for even more control.
Step 6:
You can add a second area of the image that you would like to be sharp by simply clicking to drop a second pin. Make the adjustments you want and hit “OK” to commit the Iris blur.
Conclusion
As you can see, Photoshop CS6 has some really awesome new blurring tools that give additional control to create effects that once took masking and maybe even additional layers. All of the great blurring tools you’re used to are still there, but these new tools are like a sweet treat on top. Grab Photoshop CS6 and try them out for yourself!
Leave a Reply