Click on any phrase to play the video from that point.
[CS6]
Hello. My name is Russell Preston Brown from Adobe Systems,
and this is an overview of a new feature found in Adobe Photoshop CS6
called the Blur Gallery.
I hope this gets you up to speed quickly.
Okay. Let's start going right into Tilt-Shift, the first of these 3 Blur Gallery items.
I hope to go through some details in this so that you really start to understand it.
I'm selecting this image right here.
I'm going to go up to my Filter menu and down here to Blur.
You can see the 3 different Blur Gallery items.
I'm going to start with Tilt-Shift right here.
This is a great feature that gives us that miniature town feel
as it blurs the top and the bottom of the image.
First of all, you can go in to any of these blur items and click right here in the center,
right on this clock wheel, and you can start to spin this to increase your blur.
So that's your tip and technique number 1.
You can do it directly here on the screen,
or you can move over here to your panels and adjust the blur directly here
with your panel adjustment.
You see that the 2 are tied together.
Okay. Next, if you click right on this point above the center,
you can rotate your blur as you see here.
If you move slightly to the right, a new icon appears
and you can adjust the range of the blur right here.
Also, you can control the way the blend or the fade of the blur happens
by clicking on the second dashed line.
Now, here comes your first tip and technique.
From your keyboard, if you select the M key, as I'm doing now,
you can preview the mask and continue to adjust the settings as you see here.
I can go into any of these and adjust them.
I really like the ability to see the mask because I tend to think in masks
when working in Photoshop.
Letting go of the M key, I have the image back again.
Speaking of other keyboard shortcuts, the other key to remember is the H key.
The letter H hides the lines of control
so you can see and pre-visualize.
It looks great.
And finally, 1 more key. That's the P key.
If you select the P key, it turns off the preview.
Selecting it again, it comes back on.
Again, the preview can also be turned on and off here from the options bar. Great.
Okay. Now, what about these additional effects over here?
Bokeh. I'm going to turn on the bokeh.
The bokeh is the way in which the highlights in the image are displayed.
As I increase the bokeh, do you see the highlights start to appear here?
I can also increase the color, the random color quality, that comes into those
by this second slider here.
This is really beautiful.
The bokeh is being driven by the quality setting up here in your options bar.
I'm currently on the medium quality, the standard quality,
but I can increase the quality to high quality.
And this is the one time that I find that I actually can see the difference.
The actual shape and form of these circular highlights
is improved by turning on the high quality.
So I get a very nice crisp, round highlight shape with this on,
and it tends to be a little bit more ragged with it off.
Just something to keep in mind.
While I'm in the options bar, let's also talk about Save Mask to Channels, a great feature.
I'm going to select this.
As you recall, earlier I selected the M key to see my mask.
So I can export this mask that I see here into my channels within Photoshop
when I click OK from this dialog.
Why would you want that?
I'm going to click OK, go to my channels, and here's the mask that we saw, right there.
I could load this mask.
In this case I'm holding down my Command key on the Macintosh
or my Control key on the PC, clicking on that to load it,
go back to my original image.
Now I have a selection of the area that I softened the focus
and added the bokeh effect.
I often find that I like to put some more noise back into that section
even though it has the blurred nature to it to make it a little bit more realistic.
So with this easy selection
I can select the exact same area that I blurred and add the noise.
Ah! Tip and technique.
Okay. That's great to start with the Tilt-Shift.
Let's take a look at Iris Blur next.
I'm going to deselect from this and go over here to a second image.
Let's now go back up to the Filter menu and back down to Blur and over to the Iris Blur.
Iris Blur is automatically bringing up 1 point, an iris here in the middle,
but keep in mind with all of these different blur effects
you can add multiples of the same effect merely by moving your push pin to a new location
and applying a new pin so you can add multiple pins and work with multiples.
In this case let's just work with 1 so we start to understand it.
In this case I'm blurring on the outside, and my center is unblurred.
Let's increase the blur a little bit more so we can see this.
There are some controls here on the inside
similar to the controls we found with the Tilt-Shift that control the center.
Once again, it's always the M key that really helps you understand how this is working
as I move this in and out here like this.
I can also move my outer region here
and again the M key, and I can then move this and adjust this
so I can have a really clear view of what's happening.
Here's a really cool tip and technique.
If you hold down the Option key on the Macintosh
or the Alt key on the PC, check this out.
This is a secret tip and technique.
I can click on this individual point and move it in and out separately
so I can adjust the shape of the ellipse.
Now, that is a super user tip and technique.
See how I can change the balance and change the symmetry of that inner shape of that mask.
Wow. So with all these controls here I can get a really nice look.
Let's throw in a nice bokeh to the lights in the background,
a little bit of color to those, and then adjust the shape.
Check this out. As I click on this control point on the edge, I can change the shape here.
And here's yet another control, this square icon here.
See how this changes the shape from the ellipse
into more of a rectangular shape along this point?
So some really nice controls here
bringing this all together to get the effect I'm looking for.
But wait. I need to show you this one.
In this particular case, my bokeh is coming in on the image
and it changes the shapes there within the image.
But if you go back in, you can actually adjust the way in which the bokeh is adjusted.
Let me move this around like this so we can see this.
And actually, let's delete that. Let's turn that one off right here.
Let's go in and delete it, hit my Delete key to delete that.
Let's go back to the Tilt-Shift right over here.
Let's add this in because I want to show you symmetry.
Going back to my Tilt-Shift.
If you bring in a bokeh like this, let's increase the bokeh, let's increase the blur
so we can start to see the bokeh.
Notice how my bokeh of the highlights is perfectly round in the shapes.
But if you change the distortion--I want to make this really clear--
if I distort this, it starts to behave more like a true lens would behave.
The lower portion has distortion to the bokeh or the highlights.
The upper portion is perfectly round. And watch this.
As I click here in the middle and move this,
the distortion follows it as if it were watching that particular point.
Do you see the distortion happen as I move?
Then finally, if you're really looking for wacky effects,
turn on the symmetrical distortion here with this check box
so now all of the highlights created with the bokeh follow your central focus
as you see here.
And taking it one stage farther, notice that there's a light range search,
that it searches for and determines how much of your highlights are affected by the bokeh.
So this is like your levels controls.
I want just the brightest highlights by moving these 2 sliders closer,
or I want to increase the number of shades that will flare into the bokeh.
And for super users, do some wacky things and reassign your bokeh
to different sections of your image.
Let's bring the bokeh down so you can see this.
You can get some really interesting lighting effects happening here in the water
by doing things you're not supposed to do--
in fact, readjusting the light range to the lower values within your bokeh.
Okay, one last item here to cover and that's Field Blur.
This one is a little tricky, so follow along here.
I have this image, and I'd like to isolate particular areas of the image that I'd like to blur,
again from Filter, Blur, and Field Blur.
Field Blur comes up with a single point.
It's going to be a little bit confusing
because you're going to think this is just something you either make it blurred
or you don't make it blurred.
But in fact, there's a lot more control to this
that has to be achieved by multiple points of blur.
I want this particular image right here to be sharp,
so I move this all the way down here to the 0 point right there.
Now I add in some additional points, one here and one here.
So I can control the blur value for this point, and then clicking on this point I activate it
and I can control that one just like that.
Don't forget the M key to show the mask,
and then you can start to see what's happening.
Check this out as I move this. It's really interesting.
See how the darker region of my first item is protecting that image in that area.
But I can move these points around and get some really complex blurring patterns that form.
And once again, I can adjust these here right on the screen
or over here to the right.
So this is a really good point in that if you want to create some complex blurring structure.
For example, I want it clear over here and I want it clear over here in this corner,
so I have a combination of 4 different field blur points,
2 that control the sharpness on the left and the right
and 2 that control the blur value on the top and the bottom here within the image.
I hope you start to understand that.
Okay. Let's hit my Enter key and resolve that.
Once again, we went over Field Blur, which was multiple points,
Iris Blur, which I like to work with a single point,
and Tilt-Shift for that small, miniature town look, combined with the bokeh effects.
There you have it.
I've covered almost everything I know about the blur tools here.
I hope this helps you get started in Adobe Photoshop CS6.
Give them a try.
[Adobe]
