What is Bokeh?
Bokeh is the blurred background (sometimes foreground) effect you see in photos.
The Blur Effect
Bokeh focuses the attention on a particular area of an image as it blurs out all but the point of focus. There are varying types of bokeh "blur" and different lenses give different bokeh effects as well.
How To Achieve Bokeh
To achieve natural bokeh in your background, it is best to shoot at a wider aperature such as an F-Stop at 3.2 or lower. It will also depend on how far your subject is from the background as well. A lens with the ability to shoot at a wide aperature is ideal for good bokeh. Some good examples would be the 50mm 1.4 or 1.8, the 85mm 1.4 or 1.8 and for smoother, creamier bokeh, the 105mm 1.4, the 135mm, and the 200mm are fantastic.
Manually Creating Bokeh (blurred background in your photos)
You can also create bokeh in photoshop and add effects to your images in post processing. In the video below, not only will I be sharing how to use your free bokeh overlay, I will be showing you how to create bokeh in photoshop as well.
The Overlay can be used in Elements, Creative Cloud, CS versions of Photoshop. Creating the bokeh can only be done in CS5-CS6 and Creative Cloud
Enjoy this bokeh effect on your images to give it a bit of flare. Just drag and drop the bokeh overlay onto your image, set it to Screen Blend Mode, and erase the unwanted bokeh. Available for a limited time only. Please leave a comment below and let us know what you think about this tutorial and download, and let us know what you'd like to see more of!
Free Photoshop Downloads
(Free Bokeh Overlay Download ) DOWNLOAD HERE
19 comments
Very cool! I’ve never used field blur before. I’m excited to try it out to make bokeh overlays!
Jackie, these are son fun. And thanks for the tutorial!! You are a dear!
Thank you so much for this! I can’t wait to use it!
Thank you for the free bokeh overlay.