Creating Depth of Field using Adobe Photoshop Elements 9.0

Selecting the background and blurring it can just pop up your subject but does not give a sense of depth of field.

Following is the tutorial for bringing depth of field to your photos. It uses PSE 9 layer masks and gradient tool.

Original Photo



Final edited photo with Depth of field



Here are the steps to add DOF to any photo :

1. Open an image in PSE Editor.

 2. Press Control+J to create the copy of the background layer.

 3. Keeping the copy of the layer selected in the layers palette, go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur to blur the layer such that the image looks blur to an extent of the maximum blurriness you would expect in your final photo.

4.   Now go to Layer>Layer mask>Reveal all. Also make sure that your color swatch in left tool bar has default colors selected as Black and white.

5. Now select the Gradient tool from left tool bar.

6. Stroke the gradient tool in the direction where you want to represent the depth of field. So in the image used in example depth of field goes from the point where the front cub is standing to the direction where second cub is sitting behind. So I moved the Gradient tool across the red path marked below.

7. Here is how my output looks after applying the gradient and my sharp background is blurred in proportion to the distance from the front subject.

How to create flames using PSE 8?

Here is my first attempt in creating flames :

1. Open a blank document with black background.

2. Create a new blank layer and paint the lower bottom area as white with brush tool as shown below

3. Now rotate it right by 90 from Image>Rotate > 90 Right.

5. Filter> Stylize> Wind . Repeat it thrice using Control+F to achieve the following result

Rotate it back by 90 Left from Image>Rotate > 90 Left.

6. Now create another blank layer and use hard  brush to paint the area with red, orange and yellow as shown in the figure below. Select topmost layer and go to Filter>Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to 8. Here is how it looks like after this step.

7.  And now change the blending mode of this layer to Overlay (from Blending modes dropdown in layer palette). The output looks as shown below :

8. Now select the layer below(with wind effect, 2nd layer from bottom) and select Smudge tool from the left toolbar and start smudging it from bottom through up. It looks like this :

9. Now select the gradient tool and click on Edit button on topbar to define three gradient colors as shown in figure. Move the color stops such that left most is yello, middle stop is at Orange and right most at Red.

10. Now select the topmost layer in the layer palette and strike the gradient from bottom to middle.

11. Now Control+click on  the middle layer(Wind layer) and go to Enhance> Adjust Color> Replace Color. Replace the white color with yellow by selecting respective colors from the color swatches in the dialog.

12. Click Ok and here is the final output which I got.

How to create rainbow using PSE?

1. Open an image in PSE Editor. Create a new blank layer by clicking new layer icon in layers palette.

2. Click on the Gradient tool from the tools bar.

3. From top bar select the Gradient picker dropdown.

4. Select Transparent rainbow as the gradient type(second last in the list).

5. Now select the Radial gradient form from next to this dropdown list. (Marked as no: 5 in the screenshot). Now draw a line in the image where you want the rainbow. And using Move tool,  move it towards the edges such that only a semi circular region is shown.

6. Now keeping the same new layer active in the layers palette, reduce the Opacity of the layer to give it a transparent rainbow effect.

Here are my initial and final images:

I hope you find it easy and useful !