clipped from www.scrapjazz.com

Creating Borders in Photoshop Computers have quickly become an indispensable tool for scrapbookers. One of the main reasons for this is because of photo editing software such as Photoshop. These programs are so powerful, they're like having a darkroom right on your computer. As many scrapbookers are discovering, programs like Photoshop allow you to creatively edit your photos in ways that can greatly enhance a scrapbook page. One such technique is adding borders to your photos. Like most techniques in Photoshop, there's more than one way to do this, and some are easier than others. Here are a few of the easiest and most useful ways. All of the instructions are based on Photoshop CS, but if you use another version or a different program, the instructions should be somewhat similar. As an example, we'll be using a photo of Jamie's (momtoprincesses's) daughter Jillian. Pick a photo of your own to follow along! Always save your photo with a different name before you make any changes. You don't want to permanently alter your original photo. Using 'Stroke' By far the easiest method to add a simple border is by using the 'stroke' command in Photoshop. To do this, begin by selecting the entire photo (Select>>All), then choosing the stroke command (Edit>>Stroke). You'll be asked to choose how wide you want the border to be in pixels, as well as what color. The more pixels, the wider the border will be. I usually stick to one or two pixels wide. You can leave the rest of the settings alone, but feel free to fool around with them! Using a different blend mode can yield interesting effects. For instance, by using "soft light" here with a navy blue color, I was able to create a border that still showed the photo underneath. Creating a Border Selection For most of the techniques to create a border, you'll start off with the part you want to turn into a border selected. The easiest way to do this, in Photoshop, is to use Select All the way you did before, and then choose Select>>Modify>>Border. Make the border as wide as you'd like. I made it eight pixels. If your program doesn't have the 'Border' option, you can achieve the same thing by selecting the entire photograph, and choosing Select>>Modify>>Contract instead. Contract the selection by the width you'd like the border to be. Then choose Select>>Inverse to leave the border selected. Using Brushes to Create a Border Have you explored all of the things you can do with the brush tool? Playing around with it can be a lot of fun, especially since you can download new brushes online. You can also use this tool to create an easy border. Once you've created the border selection, choose a color you'd like to use and a brush that has a lot of texture. For now, leave the brush's settings at the default values, although changing them around is a great way to experiment. Paint in the border with the brush tool. Don't paint over the same place too many times, so that the texture of the brush shows up. Thanks to the selection, you don't have to worry about "coloring outside the lines." Using Texture to Create a Border Another thing that you can download on the internet are patterns that you can import to Photoshop as textures. My favorites come from the Inspiration Gallery (http://www.theinspirationgallery.com/). Once you have a pattern you'd like to use, create a texture by opening the image in Photoshop and selecting Edit>>Define Pattern. Once you've done this, create the border selection again, the way we did before. Then, select the paint can tool and choose "Fill: Pattern." The pattern you just defined should be available from the list-make sure it's selected. To make things easier, create a new layer to make the border on by selecting Layer>>New>>Layer. Now, all you have to do is use the paint bucket tool to fill the selection in with the pattern. Like most techniques in Photoshop, there are thousands of variations on each one! Start with what I've described, and branch off from there. The more you explore the program, the more comfortable you'll become, which will lead to you discovering your own ways of doing things. If you liked what you learned here, be sure to search for more Photoshop tutorials on the internet-they are everywhere!

What Is Bokeh?

clipped from www.vanwalree.com

Usually, the chief concern of lens designers is the best possible image quality of the plane of sharp focus. The rendering of out-of-focus (OOF) image parts does not enjoy a large weight in the overall design compromise of a normal photographic lens. However, the OOF blur characteristics mattered to certain Japanese photographers who introduced the term "bokeh" to the photographic society to describe the aesthetic quality of the blur. In the absence of a single English word with the same meaning, there seems no reason not to adopt the Japanese term. The internet abounds with lens qualifications like "good bokeh" and "bad bokeh" but strictly speaking this use of the word should be discouraged. Owing to the subjective implications of some unquantifiable aesthetic value, it would be more appropriate to speak of pleasant or unpleasant bokeh, respectively.

Characterization of the blur disk

Since any image is represented by a large number of images of points, we may attempt to understand the whole by considering the blurring of a single point. An unsharply imaged point is associated with a circle of confusion, or a blur disk. This blur disk is characterized by

1. A size.
2. A shape.
3. The light distribution across the disk.

The size of the disk determines the "amount of blur". The shape of the blur patch does not need to be circular, in which case the designations "circle of confusion" or "blur disk" are misnomers. Nonetheless, for convenience the word disk will be freely used to mean a patch of arbitrary shape. Although the size and the shape of the disk are unmistakable blur characteristics, they do not touch the essence of bokeh as the Japanese intended the word. The distribution of light across the disk does [1]. However, the distinction is not always clear and what follows is intended as an overview of a variety of factors that influence the rendering of OOF image parts. Explanations of the underlying mechanisms will be brief and the reader is referred to other pages for elaborateness.

Amount of blur

It is well known that the amount of background or foreground blur is controlled, among other things, by the F-number. Fig. 1 shows a picture taken at a small and at a large aperture. The larger aperture comes with a more blurred background, but the question that needs to be answered to define the bokeh is not to what degree the background is blurred, but whether the blur is a pleasing one. In this case, the Japanese would probably speak of a neutral bokeh.

Figure 1. Gromit captured at f/22 (top) and at f/4 (bottom).

Shape of the blur patch

It is also well known that out-of-focus highlights (OOFH's) assume the shape of the lens aperture. At reduced apertures the shape of the blur disk is the same as that of the diaphragm opening. For instance, a six-sided diaphragm leads to hexagonal blur patches. Generally, the better an aperture approximates a round opening, the more pleasing the blur. However, when a lens is used at a large aperture, obliquely incident light is confronted with a narrower aperture than normally incident light. Consequently, the blur disk narrows from the image center towards the corner. This is known as the cat's eye effect, a result of optical vignetting. When there are many OOFH's scattered across the frame, the cat's eye effect yields the impression of a rotational background motion (Fig. 2).

Figure 2. Optical vignetting creates a sense of rotational motion of the background around the street sign. Photograph by Edo Engel.

There is more to this article that I felt is a lot more complex to understand and therefore out of the remit of this blog. You can access the rest of it by clicking on the link at the beginning of this post.
Sumit

DIY Bokeh

clipped from www.diyphotography.net

Bokeh is an adaptation from a a Japanese word meaning blur. In photography this term is used to describe the quality of the areas in the picture which are not in focus.

When referring to Bokeh, we can distinguish some of it characteristics:

- Is the light/dark gradient smooth or sharp?

- What shape will a small dot of light take what it is in the Bokeh area? (mirror lenses for example, create a bagel like Bokeh)

We can play with those two variant to create a special Bokeh.

You will need :

• One large aperture lens (a Canon 50mm F1.8 is used here)
• One sheet of black paperboard

1. Cut and shape the sheet to make a fake lens hood. The Diameter is made so that it snugly fits on the lens.

2. In the middle of the filter the wanted bokeh shape is cut out - in out example a heart is used. I'm not sure how big a hole the shape can be. But you can check it right away by just looking through the viewfinder. On the 50mm lens @ F1.8 a 15mm heart gives a metering value equal to F3.2, so it can probably be a little bigger.

3. Set your camera to its lowest aperture value (completely open).

Here are two shots to demonstrate this technique - one with a bare lens and the other with the hearted hood: (I leave it as an exercise to tell which is which :)

Here are the parameters for the example shown above:

• Lens - Canon 50mm F1.8
• "Lens hood" Diameter: 70mm (2.75 inch)
• Hole diameter: 15mm (0.6inch)

Here are two more great examples for this technique from RottieLover (note - there only one "real" heart in each picture):

Just remember:

the lights should be out of focus in your photo. You can do this by focusing on something in the foreground so that the lights in the background get blurred nicely with the wide open aperture. You will notice in your viewfinder that the lights take on the shape that you've cut in your DIY hood.