If you are a member, login and check for the codes under Members Only. They run occasional sales if you are not in a hurry and remember, PSRI members get 15% off. Topaz Lens Effects is available from Topaz Labs, $79.99. As you can see the masking is quite effective and clean. Note that in addition to blurring the background, I sharpened the foreground, darkened the background and reduced its saturation a little, all in Topaz Lens Effects. Here are the test images I used, the last one shows the first two side-by-side for a good comparison.
TOPAZ LENS EFFECTS PLUGIN TRIAL
To get a first hand experience, download their free trial version and see for yourself. Although much of the results can be obtained in Photoshop, Lens Effect makes the process quite simple. It may be an interesting tool in your toolbox. Like all filters, it is easy to get carried away and one has to be careful not to make the image scream “ I AM PHOTOSHOPED!” That was quite easy and the mask you see was created with minimum effort. Instead of experimenting with those, I chose to create a more complex depth map which would put the wing in the foreground slightly out of focus. When one set of adjustments are done to your satisfaction, clicking on the “Apply” button will make them stick while allowing you to move to a different effect and cumulatively adjust the image. Since there is already a selection in place, it may be smart to make some subtle adjustments here.Ī nice feature is to apply some effects cumulatively. It is even possible to apply some sharpening to the focus area and adjust the brightness, contrast and saturation. There are further adjustments that will finesse the effect even more by changing the blade curvature, rotation and others. By moving the “Background Blur Amount” slider all the way to the right, I was able to quickly achieve the effect I wanted. This makes the black area in sharp focus and makes it the “foreground” in this example.
I clicked on the button with that name and clicked on the eye of the bird, any point would have done the same since the area covered with the bird is black. The first thing to do here is to pick the “focal plane”, essentially which shade should be in focus. The next step is to work the Focal Plane Adjustment.
So, I painted on the bird with black and on the background with white and the filter quickly created a very nice selection. For the initial run, I wanted the bird to be as sharp as it is and the background to be as blurry as possible. There is also a gradient brush for quickly creating a more nuanced selection. They call this “Topaz Smart Brush” and it is indeed quite smart.
Topaz incorporated their selection technology to Lens Effects and choosing the right area is a simple matter of “painting” on the image with the right shade of gray from black to white. Creating a depth map is quite straight forward and simple. A graduated map from black to white will create a graduated focus field. The process is based on a depth map where black is near and white is far. On the left is a panel of presets, the middle is used for the image preview, and on the right are the adjustment panels. The interface is quite similar to other topaz filters. After making a new layer to retain the original image, I invoked Topaz Lens Effects. To test the filter, I chose a photograph of an owl in which the background could have been a bit more out of focus. I installed the filter as a plugin to Photoshop CS5 although it will also work with Lightroom (via Fusion Express freely available from Topaz Labs), Photoshop Elements 6-9, PaintShop Pro, Photo Impact and Serif Photo Plus. Of course it can also be used for experimental treatment of some photographs and can even be useful to learn what would have happened had we opened up the diaphragm by seeing the effect in real-time in Lens Effects. In my opinion, like all special effects filters, this one is not a substitute for learning to use the right f-stop, or the correct lens for the job but to save one photograph in which everything else works fine if only we used f/4 instead of f/11. Topaz Labs released a new filter, Lens Effects, for those photographs which could use a little shallower depth of field, or a bit darker background, or many other lens-induced effects including errors introduced by toy cameras.
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