Blurring the Background

A portrait can be enhanced by an out of focus background and it is a commonly used technique by portrait photographers. Doing this isolates a sharp main subject and gives an image a three dimensional quality. At the time of taking a photo this effect is achieved by using a wide aperture and telephoto lens. Sometimes it isn't that easy to achieve, especially when taking a photo using a standard to wide angle lens.

fig 1 Original Image

In fig 1 the effect of an out of focus background was achieved to a certain extent. The background behind the clowns portrayed in the image is slightly out of focus. Unfortunately there is a lot of distracting detail that is still prominent and takes the viewers eye away from the main subjects.

Had there been a wider aperture and/or longer lens used when the shot was taken, the background may have been blurred sufficiently to reduce the amount of distractions.

In this Photo tips exercise we will increase the out of focus effect by using Paint Shop Pro and the Gaussian blur on the background only.

First the background is isolated so that it can be worked on separately. Using the Freehand Mask the outline of the clowns is traced and the edge of the image around the background is traced as seen in fig 2. Once the mask is completed, only the area within it will be affected by the Gaussian blur filter.

Clicking on Gaussian Blur opens the dialog box shown in fig 3. The effect of the blur is increased by a higher number inserted in the Radius box. Our example shows a Radius of 3.00 and the effect of this is in the preview window on the right. With the Auto Proof box checked, the image on the workspace will show a preview of the effect as well.

Like most effects and filters available in image editing programs, the effect can be taken too far and patterns begin to appear. Close inspection of the effect is necessary to avoid overdoing it.

In the finished image in fig 5, what is known as a short or shallow depth of field is displayed much better in the image.

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