Rage It With Artrage: Part1 D.o.f.

[hanzz]

For starters, I give you a picture I took in Bruges (B). The D.O.F. (Depth of Field) is a trick to enhance the feeling of depth to a picture. If over exaggerated it looks like a funny miniature city. Works best with pictures, taken from a little more hight than this.

So the first thing to do is save this image to disk, and open it in ArtRage3 Studio Pro.

[hanzz]

Import the file by clicking file > image file.
Locate the file you just saved to disk, and click OK.

[hanzz]

Duplicate the layer (see first image)
And blur that layer (ctrl+ b) make the blurring around 2.5 à 3px

[hanzz]

As our main tool we will be using the Eraser. Erase in the blurred layer the complete statue, and surrounding groundlevel. The little black fence(front of it)on both sides of the statue, and the frontmost flags.

-forgive me the little typo in the picture where you chose the eraser tool-

[hanzz]

Duplicate the new layer, and blur it again, in the same amount of the previous time. In that layer , erase a bit of the first background: the people on the bench, the scooter, the next row of flags..

[hanzz]

Duplicate the layer another time, and blur again. We are duplicating and blurring smaller parts each time . So the new parts get blurrier every time, while the others stay sharper.
erase this time the umbrellas and the canopies
Take care of the edges of the earlier erased parts, with the blurring it's possible you need to refine that a bit. Nothing much really, depends on how much you blurred.

Now , when looking back at the result, I find the effect could have been stronger. What I did, was from the second layer up (statue must stay sharp!)
selecting each layer again, and blurred them again. It gave me a much stronger result. see next post.

[hanzz]

Notice the difference? It can sometimes pay to look at your work with a critical eye.

[Juz]

Very clever technique Hanzz, really gives an awesome sense of Depth as well as focusing the eye on the sharper parts of the image

[hanzz]

Thanks mate !

[Silentman]

Very Clever Hanzz, i'll be looking forward to more "Rageit's" from you in the future