How Photoshop Can Simulate Depth of Field or Santa Claus Needs a Vacation

How it works: Photoshop 7 tutorial simulates the depth of field effect so Santa looks natural in this beach scene. Depth of field is a visual effect that is peculiar to a single lens reflex cameras where objects closest to a camera lens appear to be in sharp focus while objects at a distance appear blurred. The tools that we will be honing our Photoshop chops on are the layer masks, and layer duplication.

Step 01 - How I accomplished this effect is that first I had an image of a beach scene with some lounge chairs. Next I duplicated this layer by dragging the image to the “create a new layer” icon on the lower right of the layers palette. (this is good practice because it gives you an extra duplicate layer if you want to try a very complicated technique to ensure that you have a copy of the original file.)

Step 02 -I applied a Gaussian blur filter to this duplicated layer. A setting of 5 will usually do the trick. Next I added a layer mask to this particular layer. Layer mask are one my most favorite tools. With layer mask, if you use a brush or a gradient tool, the darker image will allow the image in the layer below to show through while the lighter image will allow the top layer to appear. If you use the gradient tool, the mask will blend in a smooth manner. So the grey area will show both top and bottom layer depending on the darkest. If you apply it onto the blurred layer it will give you the illusion that foreground is sharp and the background will become blurry as you recede further into the vanishing point.

Step 03 -Next I found an image of Santa Claus. I used the lasso tool to roughly select Santa. I copied this image and then pasted it onto the beach scene. I usually press CTRL-T (Command-T for the Mac), which allows me to scale, distort or rotate. After I adjusted the position and the size, I pressed the enter key to commit the change. Again, I use our friend the layer mask. I used the brush tool to brush out the background. This is called non-destructive editing meaning my changes do not destroy the image. You can go back and forth until you have the silhouette exactly the way that you want it. Now, Santa is on his favorite lounge chair on the islands!

Step 04 -The crowning touch is to add the text, which gives it that postcard look. I used Caflisch script. Ordinarily in previous versions of Photoshop, you don’t actually know what the typeface look like. If you're so fortunate to have the most recent, Photoshop CS3 version, you're able to get a sampling of the type on the right hand side of the menu. I chose Caflisch script because it feels like a script that would go nicely with Santa in the islands!

I hope you enjoyed this special tutorial. If you want to play with the source file, you can right click on this: Depth of field source file

Photoshop - Advanced Saturation Without Artifacts

Here's how it works: Have you ever wanted to boost the saturation in your photographs but when you start to adjust the Hue, Saturation and Lightness settings, the image starts to look pixelatted and unnatural? Here's a technique to make your photograph look juicer and richer and still maintain a natural look. If you would like to watch a step-by-step video demonstration, you can click on this link on Advanced Saturation-Avoiding .jpg Artifacts . You can also get the Photoshop .PSD exercise files by right-clicking on this link.

Ah, Venice, a beautiful, romantic city that's full of color and vitality! Unfortunately, this photograph was taken on a grey overcast day which kills all the splendor of this city. We will work on this photo to bring out the true beauty of Venice!

Step 01 - To begin this technique, I duplicated the first layer of the Venice image. You can either right click and press "duplicate" or drag the first layer to the "new layer" icon. This is the second button to the right on the layers panel. (I sometimes even make yet another copy and then put it in a separate layer folder for safe keeping in case anything goes drastically wrong!)

Step 02 - Next, I clicked on the adjustment layer button. This is the 3rd button to the right on the Layers Panel. The, I selected the Hue, Saturation, Lightness panel. We're mostly concentrating on the Saturation option which adjust how much concentration of color is on a an image. If you over saturate an image the colors will look very bright while if you desaturate the colors, the colors will eventually go away until the image is a straight black and white.

**Now here is a little know trick, hold down the alt-key, option key for Mac user and then drag it to the affected layer. It should look like the illustration on the left.This action tells Photoshop to only affect the immediate layer below this adjustment layer. Otherwise it will affect all the layers below it..

Step 03 - I boosted the saturation to +78. It looks a bit garish and exaggerated now but trust me all this will work out! You'll also notice that in certain area it's starting to look a little pixellated. On the affected layer, just the HSL adjustment layer, you should apply a Gaussian blur on the image. Just a little bit, maybe just a 1.5 pixel blur will do. This action will smooth out the boxiness of the image.

Step 04 - Now I clicked on this image layer that's been oversaturated and blurred to select it. Then, I went to to the color blend mode, the window that's on the upper left of the Layers panel and the I selected the color blend. The color blend mode takes the gray information in the base image and blends it with the the hue and saturation information of the layer that you select. of the blend color. This blend mode is very useful for coloring monochrome images and for tinting color images.







Step 05 - And viola, here is the resulting image . . . Venice in all of it's beautiful glory! Notice how the blues of the sky and the water is popping out and you get a better sense of space and perspective!

Again, if you would like to follow a similar tutorial step-by-step, you can check out a video of this technique here.

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I hope you enjoy this lesson in Photoshop 7 tutorials! If you have a question, please drop me a line or write a comment.