Christian Photographers Community

Here is a picture I took of my son Jacob the other day. I love his expression and the fact that he's completely in focus for once - an amazing feet for me to capture with out a tripod and him constantly on the go.  

I'm posting it here because I love how he turned out, but not too crazy about the background. Since I'm still new to photography, I was hoping for suggestions. Should I crop it at a certain point, blur the back ground some how or just leave as is? Any other suggestions? Thanks everybody.

Hi Debbie,

Once the photo is taken, it takes some good after-processing know-how to blur a background.  I haven't tried that, but can help you with getting an "blurred" background when shooting.  In camera-speak this is called a "shallow depth of field".

If your camera has a manual setting, choose "A" for aperture priority.  It's AV on Canon cameras.  Then choose a large aperture setting, which is a smaller number.  Hmmm, confusing.  Yeah, it is to me, too.  An opening of F4, for example, gives you more background "blur" than F11 would. 

Anyway, you set the lens opening, the camera sets the speed.  The owner's guide for your camera probably has a similar explanation.

Here's an example from my album.  The subject in focus, the background "blurred".



Hope this helps a bit.

In His Grip,
Kevin

That's a great explanation, Kevin and good photo too of the butterfly.

Deb, try that as Kevin suggests.

You have to have a good post processing software to do it after the picture is taken.  That photo would be a great photo if the background wasn't so "busy".

I hope that some of our better photographers will come and offer their advice as well.

Blurring the background in post processing is not a particularly difficult task, given a little practice and the right software.  I could walk you through this using Photoshop, but I'm not familiar with the other programs.  If you'd like, I can play with this a bit and repost it when done.

A better option is obviously do consider these things before shooting the image... Using a wider aperture, paying attention to the background, etc.  Sometimes, in the thick of things though, we just take the picture.

Thanks everyone. Henry, if you'd like to play with the back ground, I'd be interested to see what you'd come up with. I had photoshop's 30 day demo, but it had an error occur, so I tried to reload it and lost the free trial.  So now I'm using Photo Explosition and Ulead, which my husband had already. Maybe I can get him to feel sorry enough for me that he'll splurge on PhotoShop soon. 

I'll be waiting to see what Carl comes up with.  He's more experienced than me with PhotoShop for sure.

OK, here are a couple of quick ones.  I didn't spend the time getting a very accurate selection, so it's a bit rough at the edges, but you get the idea.

The first one is just a mild bluring of the background.  Again, I didn't spend much time getting the effect to blend well..but here it is



This next one was done by replacing the background rather than blurring the existing one.  The same flaws are seen since I used the same selection without fine tuning it for seamlessness....but for effect




Just fun stuff

Ohhhh, Carl!

Awesome!  I really mean that too.

I know that Deb will be so thrilled.  I know I would be.  I like both.  But I think I'm probably more leaning toward the second one.

My preference would also be for the second one.  Perhaps one day I will have a chance to play with my photos a bit more.

Thanks for the edits! 

I'd actually tried to place a sky behind him using old software (either Ulead or Photo Explosion, but can't remember which). When I was cutting him out though, one of the kids bumped me, so I ended up splicing through his body and only got the half with the hose. lol I got fed up and didn't try it again, I just tried to insert him into the sky picture by placing him on the edge, like he was peeking into the frame.

Yours looks much nicer. 

Great news though. I just bought Photoshop 5.0 LE and Deluxe 3.0 on eBay! The software should be coming by tomorrow! Now I just have to figure out how to do all the layering and editing myself. I've been trying to learn with the demo (I messed up mine, but got the demo on my sons' laptop now). So far, I haven't gotten very far. The only thing I've figured out is how to do the auto adjust stuff. hehe

When you want to change a back ground in Photoshop, is there an easier way than to have to cut with the lasso tool all the way around complicated subjects in the foreground to create a new layer? I figured out how to do that with a picture of a tree branch, but I could only cut around the outer edge, which left lots of holes from the background attached to it.

Would I need to cut the main subject into a layer and then edit that layer, cutting out each of the little back ground holes, one layer at a time or is there an easier way I'm missing? Any help would be appreciated.

Do yourself a favor and go to your local bookstore or Amazon.com and pick up a copy of Scott Kelby's book The Photoshop Elements 5.0 Book for Digital Photographers.  It will give you a strong start, with loads of tutorials and ideas.  From there, you can grow from the basics.

To answer your question, there are many ways in Photoshop to achieve your goal.  Some easier than others, some work better under different circumstances.  I've used various ways to achieve the same thing.  For these, I did quick selections of Jacob using the lasso tool, pen tool, and extract tool then placed him on a separate layer.  Went back to the original layer and blurred the background or changed it.  Other methods that I frequently use involve making what is known as a layer mask, which is nice because you don't actually delete the pixels but rather mask them by painting the layer mask black or white....if you make a mistake, change the color and fix it.  A very effective way to blend layers.

I had seen the options for making masks on the Photoshop demo as well as the other two programs I'm using, but wasn't sure what to do with them. Thanks for clearing that up a little. Looks I like I've got a lot of homework to do...

To help with your homework, go to my homepage at www.never3putt.com and click on the Photohsop tab.  There are some tutorials that I wrote, plus some links to other tutorial sites that I have found helpful.

Great! Thanks for the help!