Bokeh 2 - Plug-In from Alien Skin

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Bokeh 2 (Plug-In)

by

Alien Skin 2

     Alien Skin is one of the more successful and widely known software companies. They've been around for a long time, and that tells you something. Having just finished writing about another "soft-focus" plug-in for Photoshop, I thought I'd jump to Alien Skin and give their Bokeh 2 plug-in a try.

 Alien Skin Logo

 Well, you finally get to see who I am.

That's me with my wonderful wife Heidi on  Haleakala Crater on the Island of Maui.

If you think it's cold up there it is! Mind you, I started to tolerate the cold when I was about 45.

I live in Montreal,Quebec,Canada and up here we have to live with 5 months of cold, and the 3 months of winter.

I selected this photo because I wanted to adjust the background. It's too focussed, 

so I thought I'd try 2 solutions:

1. Darken the background

2. Blur the background

Start with Image Adjust  >>  Select Colour

Fortunately, in this case, it's easy to separate the background due to the large amount of blue.

What you do is you select the eyedropper tool.

Use the + eyedropper, and then simply click the mouse to expand on the blue areas.

Notice that I have some blue on my sweater.

I don't want to darken that because I'll have an unnatural blue cast in that area.

Switching from the + eyedropper to the - eyedropper takes away the the selection on my sweater. 

The Effect of Darkening (Image >>Adjust >>Brightness/Contrast) the Selected Background.

UNfortunatley there were some "side effects" of noise, and a dust spot (small darker circle).

Overall though, this works!

Here's a close-up.

This is how most of us might want to frame (Crop) the photo.

Here's an alternative solution and why not?

The above photo is my "playing around" Bokeh 2 photo without any process or knowing anything.

Here's where you activate the Plug-In.

This is how Bokeh 2 Appears When You Open up the Plug-In

Notice how it sits about you're original Photoshop-opened image.

There are 2 circles that you can adjust.

You can change the diameter of each in order to increase or decrease the area of blur.

THis image and the next few remind me of the diffusion filters that I used when I had my Hasselblad.

Hasselblad had a series of 3 filters (+1, +2, +3) that were made of small tiny elevated "bumps" on the filter. These varied from filter to filter, and what they did is disperse and flare the light beans.

You had to use wider-openings to maximize the effect.

Here is a Bokeh 2 menu of "factory settings.

This would be a good starting point in order to see what the different effects are.

Those 2 concentric circle can be adjusted larger or smaller.

You do this by placing your mouse on the circle, 

hold down the button, and then drag outwards or inwards.

Here's the Overall Result.

It still looks too much light the diffusion filter on my Hasselblad in combination with a "vignetter".

A "vignetter" is an attachment that goes in front of the lens to either blur or darken the edges of a photo.

Less Blur

Undesirable Darkened Oval 

Final Effect

Whenever you manipulate an image, you'll most likely be working with a new layer, and rightly so in Bokeh 2. So when you have the final result, you'll need to merge or flatten the layers.

I'm sure if I had spent more time with Bokeh 2, I would have got a better result, but I didn't.

Soooooo, I decided to see what Photoshop had to offer, 

Photoshop

1. Use the Magnetic Lasso to capture the subjects.

Invert the Selection.

Thjis allows for the background to be manipulated rather than the subjects (myself and Heidi).

If you odn;t know already, My name is Stacey Bindman

Once you have the inverted selection, you can then blur the background.

I decided to use "blur more".

The more-advanced Photoshop Menu

Blur more used 1x

Blur more used 2x

Blur more used 3x

Blur more used 5x and showing the moving ants capture of the background

The Final Result

In this case Photoshop worked better. 

However, with more practise and time, I'm sure Bokeh 2 would have worked just as well.

You have to realize that Bokeh 2 can be purchased as part of a collection of Plug-Ins, so my using it just by itself is not truly representative of how well most of the other filters work.

I'll probably take a look at them in the future.