Portrait Shots (show us your best)

My good friend Chris Bradley (cbradley) on this forum, practicing his Evil Pirate look

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WOW! Great shots in here.

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From Uganda, guy loading a truck on the Congo border.

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Nancy, Who runs an artists retreat in Morocco.

Merv.
 
I took the the other night while strolling down town, thought it came out pretty well given the low light and short time I had to make it work


Thoughts?

Clark
 
I like it, but it might pop more if you had used a shallower depth of field so the background was blurred out more. You could also do it in Post Processing and make her pop out more
 
I like it, but it might pop more if you had used a shallower depth of field so the background was blurred out more. You could also do it in Post Processing and make her pop out more

How do you do that in post? It was actually taken with an iPhone, so I didn't have exposure control, but you are definitely right about how she would pop more with a shallower DOF.

Clark
 
Open the image in Photoshop, lasso her and select inverse which will switch the part being worked on to everything BUT her.

Then go to the type of blur you'd like to use (There is multiple ones to choose from) and blur it till you think it looks natural

Then just hit Deselect and you're done
 
There's a final step that Pat didn't mention. Often the hard edge between the blurred and non-blurred portion looks very unnatural. You can soften this edge by using the History brush on reduced opacity and paint over the transition areas. It takes some experimentation to get the brush size and opacity just so, but in a minute or two you'll have it.

As for blurs, I think Gausian Blur provides the most Bokeh like blur.
 

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