How to Use Depth of Field to Create Portraits with Blown-Out Backgrounds
May 1st in Photo Effects, Tools & Tips by Sara Gray
Photographers can benefit by learning some camera and shooting principles that will improve their results. A strong photograph has a clear subject, and using depth of field to create a blurred background is one of the classic ways to isolate and play up the subject.
An understanding of this will also allow you to adjust your photos to create natural looking depth of field effects in Photoshop when needed. Let's look at seven such principles and techniques that will help you with adjusting depth of field to focus the subject in your photos.
Sara Gray is a wedding and portrait photographer based in Oregon, photographing weddings throughout the Pacific Northwest and around the world. Starting out as a newspaper journalist, she was handed a camera the first day on the job at a small newspaper and began a love affair with capturing beautiful imagery made from moments and interactions. You can see her work at www.saragrayphotography.com.
Step 1 - Understand Depth of Field and Aperture
Depth of field is important to understand before jumping in and using it as a tool to create different images. Depth of field is created in the camera through the differing use of aperture. Aperture is the setting that controls how far open the lens gets when an exposure is taken. If the lens opening is small, the camera is able to bring many things into focus, even if one is significantly further behind another. However, when you shoot with the aperture wide open, the field is reduced and the camera can only bring a narrow depth of field into focus.
The first photograph below was taken with a small aperture opening (although that's represented as a large number in your settings) and the second is taken with a wide-open aperture with a limited depth of field.
Aperture is used throughout photography to establish focus in a photograph. For instance, if you'd like a photograph of a single individual, but the background is full of other people, it will distract from the focus of the photo. A larger depth of field is used when all the details in the photograph are important to the viewer.
Step 2 - Set an Appropriate Distance
One way to ensure that you're using depth of field to differentiate between your subject and the background is to allow ample room between them. That may mean placing your subject further away from a solid background, like a curtain, wall or studio backdrop, or creating more distance between them and any other object behind them.
A commonly-used example of this is to make sure that your subjects don't have trees or other vertical objects coming out of their heads when they're directly behind the subject. You can obscure objects like trees with a shallow depth of field. Also, the more space you put between your subject and the background, the easier it will be to blur everything behind them. Five to ten feet is usually plenty, but if you have a lens that shoots at a very open aperture, like a f/1.2-f/2.0 range, you can be closer and still obscure the background.
Step 3 - Use Selective Focusing
It's often the goal when shooting with a wide-open aperture to obscure the background and not the subject, but you can also use a very open aperture to obscure parts of the subject. For instance, you can focus very closely on an eye and blur out the subject's hair, hands, or feet. In the example below, a sharp focus was attained on the hair, but the rest of the face is in soft focus. Keep in mind that it's often necessary to use manual focus mode with this technique since you're doing precision focusing.
Step 4 - Delineate Background From Foreground
If your goal is to create a crisp, clean portrait with an in-focus subject and an out-of-focus background, you should be shooting wide-open with your lens, but probably not go below f/1.8. Below that aperture, you'll start to lose focus on one side of the face if the head is at all tilted.
Here are examples of how to achieve an ideal depth of field for a crisp portrait. Notice in the first photo there is an even focus across the face, but in the second photo only the front of the face is in crisp, clean focus.
Step 5 - Understand the Difference Between Lenses
The numbers discussed above are all relative depending on what lens you're using to photograph your subject. Depth of field changes based on the lenses you're using and based on how far your camera is from the subject when you take the picture. When using a lens with a longer focal length (for instance, 85mm vs. 50mm) your depth of field will be deeper. This means you'll be able to bring more into focus when shooting. When you shoot closer, with a 50mm lens, your depth of field will become shallower and will grow shallower still as you move toward your subject.
Step 6 - Keep Subjects on the Same Plane
When blurring the background with a wide-open aperture and shooting a group of people, it's important to make sure their faces (and especially eyes, where focus should always be spot-on) are on the same plane. This means they're all the same distance from the camera, or else some faces will be more in focus than others and distract. It's tough to shoot a wide-open portrait with more than about three people because of this factor, and remember that if you're involving more people in a group photo, it's usually wise to adjust your aperture closed a bit so that you can pick up all the faces in a sharp way.
Step 7 - Enhance Background Blur in Photoshop
If you were dealing with a group, a difficult subject or a situation that didn't allow you to blur the background as much as you wanted to, there is a way to enhance that background blur in Photoshop.
Step 8
After opening your photo, use the magnetic lasso tool to select your subject, making sure to match very closely the edges of the subject without grabbing chunks of the background.
Step 9
Select inverse, so you have the entire background selected.
Step 10
Use the Gaussian blur function on the background to adjust the background to a fuzzier state. Don't crank up the blur too hard, however, or you'll get a halo around your subject and the photo won't look natural. For this photo, the Gaussian blur is adjusted to a radius of 5.0.
Step 11
Choose Deselect to see the finished product
Conclusion
Understanding these principles and techniques will improve your results. Have fun shooting and prepping your photographs in Photoshop!
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Grafpedia May 1st
nice tips. Keep up the good work
( )Somniculouse May 1st
Extraction on the last image is quite bad. Other than that, good tut.
( )Robert May 1st
“Don’t crank up the blur too hard, however, or you’ll get a halo around your subject and the photo won’t look natural”
I love the first half of this tutorial; but the author needs to take her own advice here. The Extraction in Photoshop is a big hot mess.
( )s May 1st
I totally agree. The extraction looks like crap. Very edited and unnatural looking.
( )Ian May 1st
Agreed, Photoshop has a nice little lens blur filter if I’m not mistaken.
It works just fine for me, and it’s a lot more customizable than just a gaussian blur tool.
Jaybo21 May 1st
AGREED last one was bad…
( )Gilbert July 8th
I’ve come up with a better way that doesn’t halo and looks better. Make a copy of the background. Make the selection with the pen tool, not the lasso. Copy the the subject(s) to a separate layer. On the middle (background copy layer) erase the subject. blur… and you can crank the blur a little higher if you like. Then merge back together. The halo happens because of the presence of the subject in the photo, remove the subject and no halo… but put the subject back in and there is a little band between the background and the subject. The original background fills that in and the result is much more natural.
( )lufutu May 1st
I think Evanto should have a site for Photographer about photography, technique about canon 40D , nikon, etc…. like PHOTO+ TUTS
) ! That my mind .
( )Tassia Pellegrini May 1st
indeed.
( )bojoy May 1st
Yeah!!!!!!
I second the motion!
That would be really really great for people like me that loves photography!
Please3x.
( )Corey May 1st
Third that.
Ante May 3rd
Yes … Really! Or a StrobTuts for lightning and camera
Steve Forbes May 5th
^^ x5!!
Yup definitely agree, using Photoshop for photography is a totally different skill.
( )seansteezy May 5th
I concur and would love to contribute to a site like that. Photography with photoshop in mind, camera raw, and lightroom. that would make some bank!
Jeff May 8th
I would LOVE to contribute to a site like that. Great idea—the web lacks great, comprehensive photo tutorial sites. Let’s help make one!
( )Gerard May 1st
Wouldn’t it have been an idea to have better feathering around the selection in the last photo?
( )Clint May 1st
i perfectly agree… you definitely need feathering when using the lasso tool. the result is poor in this case.
( )Kayles May 1st
Just about to mention that. Completely agreed.
( )hassan May 1st
listen up people, what matters is the idea don’t get into details the idea is very cool thank you soo much for the tut keep on
( )chad May 1st
what do you mean the details don’t matter? That last selection is horrific!
( )Jonathan May 1st
Agreed. This is just an example. The author wasn’t trying to win a Photoshop selection contest.
( )Robert May 1st
I disagree. If the author cannot show a finished product that utilizes the technique described in the tutorial; why is she being paid for her work developing the tutorial?
( )Marc May 1st
This tutorial is not about extracting… so please stop with the comments on that. What it is about though is the depth of field, and I think you can achieve a much nicer result when you use lens blur instead of gaussian blur.
( )Andrew May 1st
how about just use a wide aperture when taking the original photo!
( )John O May 1st
If you look at the final image, you can actually see where the gaussian blur has blurred the bottom of the image, because the selection was rushed so much – and wasnt accurate. Sorry guys but you’ve let yourselves down with this one.
If you’re gonna make tutorials for a site like this then spend some time and do it right. This looks like it was rushed out in 5 minutes.
( )MisterBremer May 1st
Its good to see another photography related tutorial here.
( )However
“blown out” is the completely wrong term in the way you used it here. “Out of Focus” is what you mean, and thats probably what you should say.
“Blown out” in photography refers to highlights. Example… if you take a picture where the glare off of somebody’s hair, outfit, sunglasses, etc. ends up completely white (there will be a spike on the right side of the histogram, and the detail in that area is irretrievable), then that area is a blown out highlight.
I don’t know if designers use different terminology, but in photography, I wouldn’t ever describe an out of focus background as “blown out”. Other photographers would say “but its not white!”
Jonathan May 1st
Glad you cleared that up. I am not a photographer but I know some terms and I thought that sounded strange. Is it also called defocus?
( )kjelsson May 7th
The right term would be bokeh
( )http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh
Jeff May 8th
No—”depth of field” is the correct term.
“Bokeh” is a very specific term that refers to HOW the depth of field is rendered in a scene. When you say “Nice bokeh, dude!” you’re actually referring to the little hexagonal or octagonal blobs of blur in the out-of-focus portion of the scene. The shape of the bokeh is related to the shape of the aperture leaves. Lens with a greater number of aperture leaves results in bokeh that is more circular in appearance. In general, the more expensive the lens—the better (more circular) the bokeh.
The gaussian blur in this tutorial doesn’t incorporate any bokeh—it’s just a general blur. As such, it doesn’t look like it came out of a camera. So not only is the clipping bad, but the technique doesn’t mimic the reality of a camera lens.
Booyah.
lawrence77 May 1st
steps 7 – 11 i already know this and also seen somewhere….
anyway thank for this article!
( )brian May 1st
Cool concept, but really bad tutorial. Looks like it was done for the sake of having a new tutorial.
( )Split May 1st
Nice tricks…
( )Cinnamon May 1st
I personally think this was very informative. The subject of this post was made clear. Depth of Field. This information will diffenantly come in handy for up and coming photographiers. I also think it was great you included it here on this site. I think it is important for people to understand you can get great images without always having to use PS. There is alot that goes into all those stock images that most of the visiters to this site use.
The “Tuts” are provided to us to teach us new ways of looking at things. To give us new ideas on how to accomplish the vision we see in our minds.They are provided by different artist, all with different pionts of view. They are not meant to be a step by step approach to how you as an individul, in the end, make your own art.
The piont of this post was not Selections. It didn’t matter what tools were used to make the selection. It didn’t matter how perfect the selection was. What mattered here was that Gaussian Blur can be used if needed to give the same effect.
We need to learn to appreciate what others are taking there time to share with us. Stop being so nit picky. After all, most of us are getting this for free. The more you nit pick the more people are not going to want to share what they know with the rest of us.
(I can’t wait to see what people are going to nit pick about this.)
( )TheOm3ga May 1st
I’m afraid that If you want to get the same effect you use “Lens Blur”, not “Gaussian Blur”. Lens Blur in Photoshop is extensive enough to emulate any lens bokeh, you can adjust even the number of blades of the diaphragm.
Using Gaussian Blur here is just not professional.
( )TheArtist May 1st
I can appreciate the Photography tutorial of this, though I’m sure any Photoshop person will agree that we all need to ignore that last image (because it’s completely insane!) on a PS-Tut site haha!!!!!!!!!
But thanks for the Photography-Tut!
( )TheOm3ga May 1st
The selection in the ending is a big funny joke. I bet she doesn’t use that “blur the already blurred background” crap in her wedding photos that, by the way, are pretty good.
At the end of the day, who would like to screw up the bokeh of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 (that’s the lens she’s using, look at the EXIF)? It’s pretty nice straight outta the camera.
( )Saro May 1st
Nice contribution! Fun to see somthing that’s not the typical PSDTuts ^
( )ed May 1st
The Photoshop Blur looks terrible… didnt evene blur the piece of grass on the inside of her hair strands…
( )Milan May 1st
A bit of a stretched out tutorial; not all tutorials need to be full of many pointless and bandwidth consuming pictures; concise and to the point is much more reader-friendly.
As for this tut, it’s a good tip, however, the final image is that of an amateur photoshoper.
( )Chris May 1st
No offense but this is the worst tutorial I’ve seen in a long time. The final result is horrendous. You may as well have used the smudge tool and just “fingerpainted” around the girl.
( )Roberto May 1st
I think instead of Gaussian Blur, you should use Lens Blur, give a more realistic touch to it.
( )loswl May 1st
Excellent article, great for newbies to the camera like me, I agree with everyone on the last PSD image….poorly done, sometimes I use a mask to accomplish that task, much better control to eliminate that halo around the subject, lowering the opacity on the blurred layer can also help with that.
( )Ricardo May 1st
A think that this kind of tutorials, must be part of a “camera RAW” section. Or maybe use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, because this kind of effects could be automatic in Ps Lightroom.
( )michael May 1st
Nice Tutorial, good basics for some Photographers out there.
( )Don’t worry about the last selection, in the previous pictures, we saw, that you are fit in selections
Clint May 1st
I don’t get this…. at the start of the page there are 2 versions of the same image, one of them with depth of field and they both look fine. However at the end of the page ie. the final result looks horrific. Isn’t it supposed to look like the 2nd version at the top of the page?? Couldn’t it even have been the same photo?
( )josh May 2nd
I agree exactly, the last image looks badly cut out, such a shame.
( )Zik May 1st
Pretty decent photographer, but you should stay away from Photoshop in a tut point of view.
Thanks for tutorial tho.
( )Irving May 1st
I’m afraid I think this might just be negative advertising for the author.
( )writersbloc May 1st
Photoshop 101… maybe PSDTUTs needs to start ranking the difficulty or creating subsections within their tuts.
( )JesusFreak983! May 1st
To Sara Gray
Hope that helps!
( )Don’t get discouraged by the bad comments, just think of them as critiques.
And may I suggest that you layer la via copy the girl to a separate layer, and then use the blur tool to smooth out the hard selection line that you get after you use the Gaussian blur tool around her.
That’s what I do.
Zac May 1st
The tut is obviously for beginners. My guess is anyone who doesnt know how to set their aperture also doesnt know or really care how to use their pen tool or any other type of selection tool. All they want to do is blur the background some. You start going into channels and adjustments and working that nutso pen tool and you’ve lost them. Get off your high horses. We all know your the greatest.
Nice tut for absolute beginners. Will take their beginning work much further.
( )keruchan May 1st
the final result look horrible but why is the preview on the very top (I mean second to the top) photo was just great?
anyway those edges needs improvements, what I think I saw in here was you blurred the whole image (including the girl)on the 1st layer then paste in front the photo of that girl which is already mask on the 2nd layer.
not getting rid of thaat girl on the 1st layer create that horrible edges.
( )Midknight May 2nd
Man you people are brutal and many of you are just plain rude. I dont even think half of you read the entire tutorial. The whole purpose of the tutorial was depth of field using the camera. To base your opinion of the tutorial based on the photoshop advise that the author gives is just hypocritical. I use the advise heavely as I didnt take what she was saying about blurring a background as a tutorial at all. Just a way that you could use photoshop to create DOF if you are not good enough to use a camera correctly. maybe you should back off of your comments and take the tutorial for what it is – a photography tutorial, not a photoshop tutorial.
I myself have just started getting into photography and been to many sights to learn about DOF. The problem is most photography sights act like the user already knows something. This tutorial is the best DOF tutorial I have seen on the web.
Most of us come to PSD-Tuts to learn something, Im sure 90% of the people here have never made any money for any of the work that they have done. If those of you who are knocking these tutorials can do something better than by all means make us a tutorial, we’re all here to learn. If you don’t have anything nice to comment why say anything at all, just move along to the next tutorial. It’s no wonder that we only see one tutorial from certain authors, I wouldn’t do another one based on some of the comments from you guys. We all have different tastes on what we like, different styles, use of colors, typography etc. I’m not gonna bag on someone who takes the time to make a tutorial that may be helpful to someone else.
Anyways end of rant.
Thanks to the author for a tutorial that was actually helpful to me, I hope you will think about and/or continue to do some more photograhy tutorials.
( )chad May 2nd
I’m sorry maybe you missed the title of the blog…PSD-Tut’s…still hypocritical?
( )Liza May 2nd
The last, 11 step, is a joke. In the first 2 photo you can see original vs very well and neatly blurred photo, where you can see even the blur behind her hair. Now, what you did in the last step is just terrible, I never thought I’d see such an amateurish result on psdtuts!
( )jester4jc May 2nd
Yeah…I think the only image manipulated with photoshop is the last one…and it looks bad. If that’s all photoshop can do…I’d rather buy a good camera lens.
( )m. gartsman May 2nd
Uh, PSDTUTS needs to step their game up! Slippin on the quality of tutorials, are we?
( )underdog May 2nd
Sara Gray thx. your work is very good .keep up your work..
( )Alex Beltechi May 2nd
It’s great to have new faces on PSDTUTS. It’s refreshing, and it’s nice to have more on Photography. However, it would be most useful to include more info for each of the available photos in the tutorial. I know that the target audience is not that of Photographers here, but for those of us that do practice some sort of photography, exif data, strobist information and photo gear specs etc. are a must have.
I. e. what camera do you use, which lens did you mount for each photo? What focal range at what aperture? ISO settings, exposure compensation, custom white balance? Built-in flash vs strobe? I’m sure you use these on a regular basis, but it’s very important to include if you want this tutorial to be helpful.
So, welcome Sara, familiarize yourself a little more with Photoshop, and don’t be shy on loading out some of that techy stuff on us
Looking forward to reading more from you.
Alex
( )Sirwan May 2nd
Photographers have always been Over-rated..
( )RUGRLN May 2nd
The last photo was done really badly, there were missed areas between her hair and it looked very out of place…you could have atleast used the extract tool or done a better job extracting the subject!! V. disappointing!
( )Nikhil May 2nd
Great tips…
( )Franky May 2nd
Awesome Techniques!
( )Mat May 3rd
As far as a very beginning tutorial is concerned, I think tutorial has dropped the ball and over simplified everything. The biggest disappointment is that the out-of-focus area behind a subject is known as “bokeh”, but was mentioned only TWICE by two comments. Also, while the author is talking about portraiture technique, they’ve completely neglected to mention what types of lenses to buy. For instance, most photographers who take portraits tend to use fairly long focal lengths. Longer focal lengths will exaggerate and magnify a lack of focus. Thus, you’ll find the 70-200mm F/2.8 lenses by the respective manufacturers to be the tools of choice for portraits frequently.
A good tutorial on this subject matter is by Philip Greenspun called “Portrait Photography”.
( )Tom May 3rd
Hey, nice article !
( )But as a lot of people, when i first looked at the last pic, i told myself “omg ! what’s that crappy extraction !?!”
Btw, photo tips are useful.
tika May 3rd
why u don´t make smooth the last photo, that´s croping! i look that…
( )but, the second photo, i like that…
Johan May 3rd
Well I think this tutorial this fit the standard of psd-tuts.com. For me its very bad!!!!
( )Diego SA May 3rd
Well, like everybody here is saying, the photoshop result isn’t good, but the photo result is great!
( )But this tutorial is excelent, camera techniques are useful for photoshop works. A good photo makes a lot of difference in a photoshop work. So, that’s why I should thank you for this tutorial.
As @JesusFreak983! said, understand these bad comments as a way to guide yourself for make future tutorials. Show us excellents Photograph + Photoshop tutorials.
Congratulations!
eli May 4th
Honestly, this was an absolute beginner tutorial. You learn about it in the first week of Photography 101. Not only was it a beginner tutorial, but it wasn’t even done that well. The author could easily have made clear the more technical details of aperture and f stop relationships.
If PSDtuts is going to do more photography tutorials, give me a holler. I wouldn’t mind getting paid to produce some beginner photography tuts.
( )therealpanse May 4th
what kind of tutorial is this?
I mean… come on… extraction (not even a good one) and gaussian blur?
With this quality in mind, it’s a thing of 10 seconds. Of course, you could do a cleaner extraction like this, but even then it wouldn’t take more than a minute.
You should always try to do these things without Photoshop. I can’t say that I’m a professional photographer, but this is something you should have figured out in no time.
The understanding of the focal length and aperture is a basic essential for good results. No Photoshop needed.
It’s like you finish a screendesign and say “you have to watch it through these green glasses” because you accidently deleted a channel.
more preparation, less postprocessing
( )SUMAN May 4th
that 2 pic,1st & 2nd are different, if 1st photo in this Effect like 2nd photo, it seems better & Professional
( )John May 4th
Well I think this tutorial isn’t really professional
( )johnny May 4th
I dont think the results look good at all and to me look obviously photoshop’d. Some good points in places though.
( )James Dolan May 5th
I think we all agree that the last image is poor, looks rushed to me. Some nice tips on this tutorial though, cheers!
James Dolan
( )solwyvern May 6th
Making use of smart objects and masking is a much better, more forgiving approach for applying background/foreground focus in photoshop.
( )yuan May 11th
good job! i really like it!
( )ahmadyounas May 12th
nice gallary and nice work
( )Krzycho_666 May 19th
Geee? The last effect is ugly? I’ve never seen that anyone used Gaussian Blur to such thinks…! Didn’t you hear about Lens Blur?!
( )Learning people stupid techmics is a bad idea…. they will do it to the end of their life…
Nathan May 19th
This was a good article, but it didn’t cover anything that I had expected it to, based on the title: using depth of field to create blown-out backgrounds. None of the backgrounds were blown out, just out of focus – as noted, also called bokeh.
The last picture doesn’t really bug me, because I know it can be done (and better), but the author had already taken a lot of time to create the tutorial.
One thing that I think would have been particularly helpful would be the aperture settings on the different photos – especially the side-by-side ones that were being compared to each other.
( )Murray June 22nd
Sadly, as a photography tutorial there is a trememdous amount of false information here! I’m sorry but the author needs to put down the camera and go pickup a book on ‘basic’ photography.
( )B July 24th
very use ful tips. i like it.
( )B.A. July 28th
I’ve seen lots of comments on this one. I would say, if someone can learn from it (and that’s why psd.tutsplus puts this tut online) it’s great. But: If a picture (and in ‘picture’ I mean a ‘photograph’, not your end picture!) is bad, it’s bad (specially the DOF-thing). You can try the above (but cut out the person, copy, blur the whole image – lens blur – and copy the person/subject to the foreground), but I don’t mess with it and just try to use or make another picture. Very well: keep up the good work, I’ve seen you can take some pictures!
( )Sydney Architectural photographer August 9th
Misleading title as the tut really has nothing to do with creating blown out backgrounds…
( )bguy September 9th
not only is the last image badly done, but there is quite a difference between a ‘blown-out’ background and an out of focus, blurred background.
( )Eyal September 17th
GOOD WORK! I LIKE IT…
( )