Adobe Photoshop Intermediate (2023): Focus and Background

Name: Adobe Photoshop Intermediate (2023): Focus and Background
Author: Jeff Drylewicz

Bring your subjects into focus with the right tools

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, welcome to Knowledge City's intermediate course on Adobe Photoshop. My name is Jeff Drylowitz and today I'll be teaching you how to use the Focus Area Command and the Lens Blur to blur out our background. So the Focus Area Command allows Photoshop to determine what parts of an image are in focus and make it into a selection. So I'm going to make a duplication of my layer here. So let's hit Command J to make that duplicate layer. And now at the top I have the drop down menu. So in that drop down menu I'm going to go up to Select and I'm going to go down to Focus Area. So with that selected I've got a dialog box and you can see it is spinning because Photoshop is trying to intuitively figure out the focus of the picture and there we go. So it's got the subject selected pretty nicely. Now you've got options for how you want to view this. If you like using the traditional selection or if you want to see it on a black background or white background, you know, within layers or just on white it's your call on that. Personally, I like having an overlay, you know, it helps me have a nice contrast between the background I'm looking for. So now in terms of parameters, the in focus range here, the lower down it goes, the less it's going to select. As you can see, we lost a tail, we lost part of the branch over here. The higher it goes, the more it's going to select. So you need to determine what it is you want with your image. Now what I've also got here are two selection, addition and removal brushes. So I do want to remove the areas behind the bird that got selected. I don't want them there. So I'm going to choose this brush and I'm just going to gently brush through here. A little bit of a brushing should probably get the idea that it's trying to select all of it. There we go. But it's trying to determine that I want all the pixels that match what I'm brushing over right now in that particular area, get over here in this spot. I think I'll use the bracket keys to shrink the brush down and get right here and in this spot as well. All right. So, well, actually it lost a little bit, so I'm going to just try to bring that back. There we go. Now, if I wanted to go further, I could always go into Select and Mask, but I'm happy with my selection. I also want to make sure Soft and Edges is selected, because otherwise you might have a very hard and maybe jagged edge of the selection you're making. So we keep that as it is. We also have Image Noise Level if you want to have that showing up within the background or not, but that's not really something I'm going to worry about in this lesson right here. It's going to kind of leave it alone. And then, Output, we can determine what we want to output our selection into. So if I click on that, we've got a Layer Mask, an entirely new layer, a new layer with a Layer Mask, a new document, or a new document with a Layer Mask. I'm just going to keep it as a selection. That is fine for me in this situation, and I'm going to hit OK. So now we can see I've got the selection around my bird. I did notice it kind of missed a little spot right there, so I can just use my regular Lasso tool, make sure the Add to Selection is selected, and circle around that to add it back in. Alright, so I am happy with the selection here. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go up to Filter now, actually move back to my Move tool. I'm going to go to Filter, I'm going to go to Blur, and I'm going to bring it down to Lens Blur. So once my Lens Blur dialog box opens up, I am going to take a look at a few things here. Now I don't need to use all of these right now, because we're just going to kind of focus on the radius of our Blur and on the Noise. So now what I can do here is with the radius, I can turn it up, or I can turn it down. Now the background is already a bit blurry, but I really want to turn that up a lot more. And as you can see, the background can use to get blurry, which forces the focus on our subject here. I mean, I can bring it all the way up and do a bit of a more dramatic blur, or I can bring it all the way down, which brings it back almost to what we had in the first place. So I want that up, you know, relatively high, because I'm trying to, again, make a pretty blurry background. And I can add a little bit of noise to that background if I wanted to. Now obviously going up too high, it's going to completely distort your image. So I do want to use that in maybe a very small increment, just add a bit of a texture to it. And again, you can have it uniformly dispersed or Gaussian, like in a blur, and monochromatic or have a little bit of color to it, your call on your needs there. I'm going to keep it Gaussian and I'm going to keep it monochromatic. So once I am happy with what I've got here, I'm just going to hit OK. And I'm going to hit Command D to deselect my bird and the branch. Now, once I take a look at my before and afters, we can see how we changed the blur there. So we can see what it was in the original photo. And we can see what we changed it to now, much more prominent blur, which puts a lot more focus on our subject being the bird and the branch that the bird is sitting on. So I hope that was an insightful look at using the focus area command and the lens blur. Come back for the next lesson where we'll learn how to remove a person in an object from an image. Thanks for watching.

Intermediate Provider : Jeff Drylewicz 5 Lessons · 33m in English

Course Description

In this course on Adobe Photoshop, you will learn how to utilize various forms of blurs and sharpening to adjust the focus of your subject. Over these lessons, you’ll learn techniques to make images for business, art, and photography stand out professionally. There are both subtle and obvious combinations for how the commands and tools found in Adobe Photoshop work in conjunction with one another. Having the skills necessary to add subtle blurs to a background, place a vignette around a subject, and remove unwanted objects or people from a photo are crucial to creating attention grabbing and professional imagery.

The Camera Raw filter, adjustment layers, and correction tools are all powerful options to edit photos for whatever project you may be working on. By the end of this course, you will be able to confidently decide which commands or Camera Raw filter options would be best suited for sharpening, blurring, or changing perspective.

What You'll Learn

Apply Blur filters to adjust the focus of a photo's subject
Use the Content-aware Fill tool to remove unwanted people and objects from an image
Use the Clone Stamp tool to retouch and correct images
Add a vignette around a subject to draw attention
Sharpen an image to make it stand out professionally
Fix the perspective of an image

Key Takeaways

Various forms of blurs and sharpening can be used to adjust the focus of a subject in Adobe Photoshop.
Adding subtle blurs to a background, placing a vignette around a subject, and removing unwanted objects or people are key to creating professional imagery.
The Camera Raw filter, adjustment layers, and correction tools are powerful options for editing photos.
Photoshop commands and tools can work in conjunction with one another for both subtle and obvious effects.
By the end of the course, learners can decide which commands or Camera Raw filter options are best suited for sharpening, blurring, or changing perspective.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this intermediate Photoshop course?

You will learn to use blurs and sharpening to adjust focus, apply Blur filters, use the Content-aware Fill tool, and use the Clone Stamp tool, as well as add vignettes, remove unwanted objects or people, and fix image perspective.

Who is this course for?

It is for people creating images for business, art, and photography who want techniques to make their images stand out professionally.

What tools and features does the course cover?

The course covers Blur filters, the Content-aware Fill tool, the Clone Stamp tool, the Camera Raw filter, adjustment layers, and correction tools.

What topics do the lessons cover?

Lessons cover placing focus on the photo subject, removing people and objects from an image, adding a vignette, sharpening an image, and fixing the perspective of an image.

What will I be able to do after completing this course?

You will be able to confidently decide which commands or Camera Raw filter options are best suited for sharpening, blurring, or changing perspective.