Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Step Five:
Now, we're going to rotate our in-focus
area (and blur, and the whole shebang),
so we're just focused on the area we want
(which, in my case, is the stairs and bridge
near the bottom-center of the photo, as
shown here). First, click directly on the
center of the round pin thingy and drag
it over to that area (put it right near those
stairs). Now, to rotate your Tilt-Shift blur,
move your cursor over the white center
dot on the solid line above the pin, and
you'll see it turn into a two-headed ro-
tate arrow. Just click-and-hold on that
white dot and rotate by dragging your
cursor left/right. So now, it's pretty close
to being where and how we want it, but
there are some more options you'll want
to know about: The first is over in the
Blur Tools panel, under Tilt-Shift, and it's
the Distortion slider. It lets you change
the shape of the blur (I thought it looked
best over at 100%, as shown here). Once
you add Distortion, if you turn on the
Symmetric Distortion checkbox, it makes
your blur look really bad and distorted.
I personally haven't come up with a
reason why I would ever turn this on,
unless I was angry at my photo. I also
increased my Blur to 50 px.
Step Six:
There is another set of controls in
the Blur Effects panel (shown here; it
appears below the Blur Tools panel): The
top one is kind of useful—it lets you in-
crease the highlights in the blur area,
which can be nice for some outdoor por-
traits, so I dragged it up a bit here (notice
the brighter highlights in the top left?).
However, this is a
very
sensitive slider,
and if you drag too far, it looks like some-
one dropped a highlights grenade into
your image, so use this sparingly. There's
a Bokeh Color slider that adds color to
your blur and depending on the image,
it's either very subtle or a little visible, but
like the Symmetric Distortion checkbox,
I don't use it.
(Continued)
