Photography: how to blur a photo?

The blurring or defocusing is one of the favorite features of users of photo editing software. Between contrast, white balance, sharpness or cropping, the blur filter is a must- have processing tool that any photo editor should offer.

Therefore, a stain on a T-shirt or license plate can be discreetly blurred by proper image processing. But how can you achieve that result with an editing tool?

• With an Apple device (iPhone or iPad) , the Skitch application can become our best ally. Just download it to your device and edit the photo in question. Logically, the application icon should appear at the time of configuration. We select the area we want, a little magic wand and that’s it.
• The same is true of Windows, which offers “Evernote”, a support developed on the same principle as Skitch. When selecting an image that we want to blur, a small “@” symbol will appear in the upper left corner of the photo thumbnail. Just click “pixelize image” to make imperfections invisible.

We must also mention the technique of photo editing software, such as Photoshop (paid software) or Gimp (free software, very complete and easy to use), which offer blur services.

This same blur can be called ” Gaussian blur “, and it simply consists of a harmony of the blur throughout the photo, with the pixels of the photo in general.

Of course, having a good camera is also a good basis for blurring a photo . However, try to understand and assimilate how you can get a good blur with just your hardware, without an additional editing tool . Here are some configuration tips:

• Get as close to the subject / object as possible.
• Choose a distant background, at least 2 meters.
• It uses a telephoto lens, with a zoom of 200-500mm.
• To reduce the depth of field, develop a large aperture (minimum f / 1.8 or f / 2).

With Photoshop, you can also blur any element of the image as a background to highlight objects and subjects.

• Make a copy of the layer.
• Select the object or subject with the magic wand tool or the “select a subject” function.
• Improves “select and hide” selection to make trimming easier.
• The “contour enhancement” tool will make the subject and its contours more visible.
• Then click on the background image and then on the “selection”, “modify” and “dilate” tab.
• Then go to the “edit”, “fill” and “fill with content taken into account” tab.
• You can then use the “proofreader” tool if Photoshop’s automatic selection is not perfect.

With all these tips, beyond the iPhone portrait mode , if you can’t get an object or person out of focus well, consider taking photo retouching courses at Superprof, for example. In addition, we offer you Madrid photography courses  so that you can choose the one that best suits what you are looking for. Photography: how to blur a photo?