Shallow DEPTH OF FIELD

J

janusz

Well-known member
I see I clips people can imitate Shallow focus in post by blurring selected areas of a frame.

How is this done in post (software? plug-in? etc.)?

Thanks Guys
 
To a limited extent you can do it in After effects using a blur mask. However this only works on a flat plane ie front to back. It is not selective. So unless you wanna rotoscope the mask to fit each scene, its not very practical
 
Probaby what you've seen is where somebody will make 2 layers
one is blurry one is not, they will put the not blurry layer on top
and then slowly feather the edges until they have blurred most of everything
but the person talking. I've done it. it doesn't work well to be honest.
If they move much it screw everything up. I say pay $300 for the letus35a
i love it
 
Dof

Dof

Thanks for the help guys.

Letus would be the way to go for sure, but do you know of a way to do it in FCP HD?

Thanks
 
I've done it in final cut using all sorts of masks + feather masks and a blur. You could layer the blurs as well by duplicating and contracting your masks to give a gradient effect, depending on the camera angle that works well. I've also done it in shake 4 by rotoing out a person and blurring be hind him... or luma keying and blurring to give a promist/low contrast filter effect in the high lights, pretty useful when you wanna get rid of that highlight clipping cine gamma look. Doing it threw camera is the best sometimes tho. Depends on the adapter or filter.
 
Obvisouly, in camera is by far the best way to achieve this effect, however, the G buffer effect in Combustion is pretty impressive and can be used if need be. It even allows you to keyframe and pull focus over time. A lot of rendering needed mind you.
 
DOF in FCP

DOF in FCP

Thanks guys.

Just trying a few things. Don't have a 35mm adapter so I just want to screw around with some old footage.

Thanks.
 
The newer verisons of Photoshop have a Lense blur filter, as does AFter Effects 7. Using a simple painted mask in photoshop, you could easily batch process the entire thing. You can have many degrees of blur, and it simulates DOF pretty well. As long as you are not wanting the focus to shift, that's a really easy process.

Other than that, the Compund Blur with the Vector Paint will allow for a decent faked DOF, and since the Vector Paint can be animated, you can change the focal point.
 
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I think After Effects does have a feature like that. I remember seeing a demo on how to do it not to long ago and the demo had a simulated focus pull it in as well. Pretty impressive.
 
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