Blur the Background (1 Viewer)

[Finsandfeathers]

I'm new, and looking forward to contributing to the forum.

Is there an edit app to blur the background behind the bird subject after a pic has been taken? This would be great for me when taking pics w iPhone and when I don't have time to set the F-stop.

Thanks.

 

[njlarsen]

If you talk about doing this while on the phone, it is likely it can be done but I do not know which apps can do that. On a PC/Mac afterwards it is definitely possible including with ACDSee (the one I use) and products from Adobe.

Niels

 

[KC Foggin]

I also use Adobe and Niels is correct. You would need to discuss things while you are doing it. I believe there is a book out there called something like Adobe Photoshop for dummies. Don't be offended. We all had to learn when we started.

 

[jasonguinn505]

Adobe Elements is pretty user friendly and also affordable

 

[Mono]

There are many programs that will blur areas of your image. The problem comes in defining what you mean by background. The image is just a field of pixels, what is foreground, subject and background is in the eye of the beholder. There are some apps and plugins that seek to automatically determine what is "background", but they have patchy success. They will accentuate any existing focus differences in an image, if any of the "background" is in crisp focus then it will miss it. You can get around this with masking but then you are already down the rabbit hole of Photoshoppery!

 

[nikonmike]

In photoshop you can do lots of things but you have to ask yourself is it worth the time, something i did just for fun

 

[THE_FERN]

There are many programs that will blur areas of your image. The problem comes in defining what you mean by background. The image is just a field of pixels, what is foreground, subject and background is in the eye of the beholder. There are some apps and plugins that seek to automatically determine what is "background", but they have patchy success. They will accentuate any existing focus differences in an image, if any of the "background" is in crisp focus then it will miss it. You can get around this with masking but then you are already down the rabbit hole of Photoshoppery!

Yes I agree with this. It's called "image matting" AFAIK. It's usually easier to extract foreground items when they have nice regular outlines like birds. There's been lots of research in this area, including with AI. Lots of progress, but nothing definitive yet I think.

Doing it yourself will involve manually selecting the area of the image by "drawing around it". Once you've selected it you'll be able to do what you like with it/the background.

I came to recent versions of Photoshop with high hopes that it would be significantly better than the free Gimp + Gmic plug in. But it's not... At least in my view

 

[njlarsen]

Doing it yourself will involve manually selecting the area of the image by "drawing around it". Once you've selected it you'll be able to do what you like with it/the background.

I came to recent versions of Photoshop with high hopes that it would be significantly better than the free Gimp + Gmic plug in. But it's not... At least in my view

I actually find it relatively easy to do in ACDSee which is what I use on a PC. However, it’s not something I do very often, most of the time I don’t see a need.
Niels