Can you blur background in lightroom 4

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Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information. Log in Cart 0 Checkout. Let's get started: Step 1. Choose a Blur Method You can blur a background in Lightroom using any one or more of these 3 tools: Brushes Radial Filters Graduated Filters Depending on the option you choose, first click on the brush, radial filter, or graduated filter icon just below your histogram in Lightroom.

Step 2. Here's my starting image: Step 3. Step 4. Optional Step 5. Adjust Feather Adjust the feathering to your taste. Step 5. Step 6. Adjust Clarity Pull the clarity slider up if needed is a pretty drastic effect that can be mitigated when using brushes because you can control the opacity of the brush. Optional Step 7. Place and Drag Graduated Filter Graduated filters are a simple click and drag from the outside edge of the frame toward the center. Adjust the Effect Transition When you place your graduated filter , you will see three lines.

Add Additional Graduated Filters You can add additional graduated filters as needed or right click on the small circular filter dot to duplicate the filter. If you accidentally painted over the subject when you were making the layer mask, you can easily correct it.

Click on it. Move up on the panel and find the Sharpness slider. Drag it to the left to start blurring. You can now uncheck the Show Selected Mask Overlay box to hide the red and see the blur effect on your photo more clearly. Import your photo into Lightroom or open it if you already have it in the catalog. This method is based on an oval or circular shape, so you need to choose the photo wisely.

For example, if you want to do a soft blur vignette, or when your subject in the foreground is round. Move to the Develop module and choose the Radial Filter from the adjustment tools. Click on the center of your subject and drag the mouse outwards to create the circle or oval around it. Click and drag the on the edges to adjust the selection. You can drag the center pin to fix it. Then, you can slide the Feather slider left or right to increase or decrease the transition area.

To see this more clearly you can have the red mask on. Find the Sharpness slider on the panel and move it towards the left until you reach the desired amount of blur. This is the most natural way to blur a background in Lightroom because the depth of field created on-camera works on planes, so all elements on the same plane will be in focus even if they belong to different subjects. Still not enough? Repeat and duplicate again.

You can make as many duplicates as you like, slowly building up the effect. Softening details with editing is a bit of fakery and cannot begin to truly reproduce the kind of bokeh blur achieved with a lens. So instead of creating something that is immediately obvious and calls attention to itself, be subtle.

Then be sparing in your application of reverse sharpness and clarity. You might even ask someone else to view the image. They should not be able to tell that anything was doctored. In teaching you how to blur the background in Lightroom, I want you to be successful with your editing and make beautiful images. And if you get good results, post some of your before and after images in the comments below! You should always decide on the most important subject in your photo and use techniques to put the most attention on that subject.

Sometimes backgrounds can be distracting, so blurring them while keeping the main subject sharp can be a good idea. It works, but you will be using tools not especially created for this purpose. Adobe Photoshop or a different editing application with selections, layers, and Gaussian blur would be better. Not really. To blur backgrounds in Lightroom, you add reverse sharpness and reverse clarity over selected portions of the image.

The best way is to shoot your photos with a limited depth of field. Wide apertures and longer focal lengths would be the in-camera approach to the blurred background look. Yes, this mode actually takes multiple shots and combines them in-camera to create a blurred background effect. It might be better than what you can do in Lightroom, but it provides limited user control and is not nearly as good as what can be done with a traditional camera. The best way to blur the background in a photo is with a combination of focal length and aperture.