Vignetting adventures with the Blur Tool.
Posted: Sat Oct 31, 2020 4:16 pm
Here's the scenario... You've got your eye on a large active region and do your best to get everything perfectly focused, etc. Good on ya.
After some preliminary work, you throw it in Photoshop and the wizardry begins.
Concentrating on the AR, you finally have it lookin' good and you step away for a cup-o-Joe. When you sit back down, the trouble is obvious... The AR looks good, but the surrounding area looks good too, so much so that your eye is "all over the place". It just doesn't pop out because the entire "thing" is too busy.
Well, the "standard" solution is to put a vignette around the AR... Literally force the viewer's eye to what you want them to see. I've tinkered with vignettes seemingly forever. They never work as one intends... You see, active regions just are not always symmetrical and a vignette simply doesn't "fit". If only there were a way to let the viewer's eye see the AR without cramming their brain down a dark hole. Oh hum! Well, there is... It's called the Blur Tool in Photoshop.
Blur it!? Yes. Using the Blur Tool, one can actually 'paint' a blur around the area-of-interest, and the viewer doesn't feel as though they're looking down a stove pipe. Heck, they probably won't even notice... That's what we want them to do.
We are not going to go crazy here. We're going to gently apply a bit of blur anywhere we don't want the viewer's attention to go. In the screenshot below, the third layer up is the layer that I blurred. Using a Soft Round Brush with the Hardness set to zero, Mode to Normal, and the Strength set to 56%, I simply "painted" a blur around everything that might distract the viewer's eye. The result is exactly as intended, and the eye is naturally drawn to the region of interest.
(Side note: The top layer was just to apply a bit of "Burn" to the very right-hand edge. I could have cropped it out, but there goes the rule-of-thirds.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_t ... otographs.
If you got this far, thanks for looking. I'm just sharing.
Clear Skies & Stay Safe
After some preliminary work, you throw it in Photoshop and the wizardry begins. Concentrating on the AR, you finally have it lookin' good and you step away for a cup-o-Joe. When you sit back down, the trouble is obvious... The AR looks good, but the surrounding area looks good too, so much so that your eye is "all over the place". It just doesn't pop out because the entire "thing" is too busy.Well, the "standard" solution is to put a vignette around the AR... Literally force the viewer's eye to what you want them to see. I've tinkered with vignettes seemingly forever.
They never work as one intends... You see, active regions just are not always symmetrical and a vignette simply doesn't "fit". If only there were a way to let the viewer's eye see the AR without cramming their brain down a dark hole. Oh hum! Well, there is... It's called the Blur Tool in Photoshop.Blur it!? Yes. Using the Blur Tool, one can actually 'paint' a blur around the area-of-interest, and the viewer doesn't feel as though they're looking down a stove pipe. Heck, they probably won't even notice... That's what we want them to do.
We are not going to go crazy here. We're going to gently apply a bit of blur anywhere we don't want the viewer's attention to go. In the screenshot below, the third layer up is the layer that I blurred. Using a Soft Round Brush with the Hardness set to zero, Mode to Normal, and the Strength set to 56%, I simply "painted" a blur around everything that might distract the viewer's eye.
The result is exactly as intended, and the eye is naturally drawn to the region of interest.(Side note: The top layer was just to apply a bit of "Burn" to the very right-hand edge. I could have cropped it out, but there goes the rule-of-thirds.
)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_t ... otographs.
If you got this far, thanks for looking. I'm just sharing.
Clear Skies & Stay Safe
:twocents: