Motion blur is something that occurs naturally in photography but there are many ways that we can create realistic motion blur in After Effects too. Colin will show you the settings and options to help you control motion blur on animations, graphics and even on videos that don’t contain any movement at all. He will also demonstrate how to add motion blur to the many animation presets that ship with After Effects.

Apply realistic blurs to perfectly shot footage to create elegant attributes of a soft focus image with the Camera Lens Blur effect in After Effects CS5.5.

An oft-overlooked issue in stereoscopic production is how the point of convergence relates to the viewing plane. Chris Meyer demonstrates adding 3D depth of field blur to the equation to create more realistic, easier-to-view scenes.

This new effect gives you the ability to create the optical effect of a real camera lens blur. If you need to add depth to a scene, or obscure something in the frame, Camera Lens Blur will do that and make it look completely realistic. You also have complete control parameters like iris shape, blur maps, super whites, gain and threshold.

The end goal of a good retoucher is to make their work appear invisible while creating some alternative reality. In this case we're going to look at one method I use for adding a tattoo to an image while making it look like it's really a part of the original photo. This method involves placing an Illustrator file (the tattoo source image) as a Smart Object, using the Free Transform/Warp Tool, adding a Gaussian Blur (to adjust the 'Focus') and then finishing it all off with a lighting effect created from a Channel Pull. Ready to begin?

When we think of blurring we usually think of the Gaussian Blur filter. But the blur photographers get from it tends to look fake. The Lens Blur filter provides a much more realistic blur and, with some setup time, can create some very realistic results.