Cell Phone Image Got Doctored

[Crotale]

Yeah, what the thread title said. I cannot locate the charger for my DSLR, so I thought I might give my Razr camera a shot. There is no comparison between the two, so I knew I would have little to work with. I probably screwed it up really bad.

Anyhow, this is my new car, an Audi A4 Quattro. Yeah, a turbo and all-wheel drive makes it pretty special, not to mention the custom intake, exhaust and others. And this baby is fully loaded with power everything.

Please click to see the real image and not just the preview.

 

[Crotale]

Hmm, this must have been a stupid idea.

 

[cringer8]

The Depth of Field your were trying to achieve by blurring the outer edges is not correct. The way depth of field works, objects closer to the focal point (the grill of the car) will be sharp and anything farther back (or closer to the foreground [doesn't apply in this case]) will gradually fall out of focus. Having said that, none of the buildings should be in focus. In fact, the buildings you left sharp should be MORE blurred than the buildings closer to the camera. The same goes for that ugly white car in the background.

Do not use the Blur tool if you're afraid of getting too close to the car.

Make a duplicate of your original layer; apply a Gaussian blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) at a low strength; repeat that step, but use a a more drastic blur; then create a layer mask on both of those layers; on the mask for the blurrier layer, apply a black to white gradient going from black on the bottom to white on top; then, on the less blurry layer, use a sharp black paintbrush to reveal the in focus car and the pavement at the same depth.

Sweet car, by the way

 

[cringer8]

Much better than before. The car really pops now. You might have gone just a hair overboard on the amount of blur, but still much better What cell phone did you use to take the picture?

 

[Crotale]

Hey man, thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I have had strep this week, so I was not in the best frame of mind when I added the blur. How does this look now?

Sorry that I deleted the last post. I made a slight tweak and the upload would not delete.

 

[Crotale]

Much better than before. The car really pops now. You might have gone just a hair overboard on the amount of blur, but still much better What cell phone did you use to take the picture?

Yeah, I probably went too far with the blur. I used my Droid Razr HD. Not too too bad of a camera, but no comparison to my Alpha DSLR.

 

[Jessicayla]

Looks pretty good, although I don't think the blur on the passenger side mirror looks right. It's not that far back compared to the background so it looks like it should be in focus. Looks a lot better than the original, good job!

 

[Tom Mann]

...Make a duplicate of your original layer; apply a Gaussian blur (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur) at a low strength; repeat that step, but use a a more drastic blur; then create a layer mask on both of those layers; on the mask for the blurrier layer, apply a black to white gradient going from black on the bottom to white on top; then, on the less blurry layer, use a sharp black paintbrush to reveal the in focus car and the pavement at the same depth. ...

You will get a much more realistic DoF simulation if you generate a simple depth map and point the lens blur filter at it:
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/photoshop/articles/phs8pplensblur.html

IMHO, it's no more work than the above method -- maybe less.

Cheers,

T

 

[Crotale]

Tom, thanks for the link. DoF has always been an illusive thing for me. I have gotten it fairly right on occasion, but that is the result of trial and error and not so much the understanding of the tools available.