Sand Tumblers

[MrGreenBug]

Over the weekend, I was stuck at home due work and on when taking a break I take photos. Outside our home, next door.. there was this pile of sand and some kids where playing there. Here's my favorite shot (edited to blur the background and isolate the kid):


1000D + kit lens @ 55mm, f/5.6, 1/640 secs, ISO 400, Hand-held, No flash





It's really a quick and dirty edit. Here's my complete blog entry: Sand Tumblers and I also showed there the original photo before the edit. []


Thank you for viewing.

[Daniel Browning]

Great timing!

[Sheiky]

Great timing indeed! Those are some agile kids [:|]

Here's my favorite shot

Definitely the best from the selection [Y]

It's really a quick and dirty edit

Then go re-do it when you have more time! [:P] This one is a little ghosty [A] But I must say that I like the idea. The background in the original distracts quite a bit and blurring it seems to me like a good idea.


Have fun,


Jan

[btaylor]

Then go re-do it when you have more time! [img]/emoticons/emotion-4.gif[/img] This one is a little ghosty

I find it hard to stop the ghosting when using a gaussian blur as well. Any tips?


Nice shot Angelo - lets hope he made it the whole way round otherwise he's gonna have a sore head.

[MrGreenBug]

Great timing!

Thanks Daniel!

Great timing indeed! Those are some agile kids [img]../../../../../emoticons/emotion-8.gif[/img]


Then go re-do it when you have more time! [img]../../../../../emoticons/emotion-4.gif[/img] This one is a little ghosty [img]../../../../../emoticons/emotion-13.gif[/img]
But I must say that I like the idea. The background in the original
distracts quite a bit and blurring it seems to me like a good idea.

Yes, Jan they are very agile. I remember try doing it on the bed when
I was a kid but I always fall on my back flat. Wasn't able to try it
again ever since. I will definitely go another chance on the edit when I
get the time.

I find it hard to stop the ghosting when using a gaussian blur as well. Any tips?


Nice shot Angelo - lets hope he made it the whole way round otherwise he's gonna have a sore head.

Hi Ben, thanks! He did made the full turn. The kid was kinda showing off when he saw me that I was about to take his photo. []


Just like Ben, I'm curious how to you minimize the ghosting effect? Got any tips?

[Sheiky]

Well, that's hard to say. I'm not a photoshop genius either, so I'm not sure if making this any better is possible, but I just think it should be. What method did you use?


I could give it a try if you want?

[MrGreenBug]

Hahaha.. I

[Sheiky]

Okidoki! I send you a PM

[MrGreenBug]

Thanks Jan! Can

[Sheiky]

Thanks Jan! Can't wait for your take on this.
<div style="CLEAR: both"]</div>

Well it's still not very good. After finishing I still think I did a sloppy job, but here it is anyway. Oh first of all: I tried it at first with the gaussian blur, but it also didn't work out that well for me[] Too much ghosting and no way to get it nice. I tried multiple approaches, but none seemed to work really good.


Pictures are full size if you click them.


Here is my attempt:





As you can see, it's still not flawless. The thing that annoys me the most is the edges. Best visible around the legs. I think with a lot more layers and work, it could be better, but it's not easy. I also added some blur to the foreground, it seemed more "real" to me. That's how a telelens with a wide aperture would have done it I think. It can easily be removed, since it's layered.


My final process picture:





My steps:


1 - I started making a selection of the sand and I copied it to another layer. Which is called "Sand"


2 - I started selecting the boy. I also copied this one to another layer for later use. The layer is called: "Tumbler"


3 - My selection of the boy was still present and I expanded the selection by 2 pixels. So it doesn't lose any pixels later on in the process. I also copied it to a layer which I named: "Tumbler exp 2p"


4 - I used the selection of layer "Tumbler" and I cut it out of the main layer called: "Back"


5 - "Back" is now the original image, with the boy cut out of it with a tight selection. (Empty area where the boy was)


6 - I applied a blur. To be exact I applied "Lens Blur" . I will post pictures of the settings below.


7 - The background image is now entirely blurred, but the boy-part is still an empty space.


8 - If I wouldputt the "Tumbler" layer on top of it, I'd miss some pixels. That's why I use the "Tumbler exp 2p" to put on top.


9 - Here's where I started the sandblurring. I used the technique I saw inthis youtube video once.


10 - I copied the "Sand" layer and I applied a mask to it. I used gausian blur on this one and then applied a Gradient, which erased the part of the blur that I wanted.


11 - I putt all layers on top of eachother except for the layer "Tumbler" since I only used that one as a selection tool.





I hope this all makes a little bit of sense. The Sandblurring part could have been done easier, but I did it later on, so I used 1 layer more.


Here's the nice part. I had to figure out how the Lens Blur filter worked, so I just started to pull some sliders and push some buttons and see what they did.


Here's the result:





You can see that I'm losing the edges on this one. I think this also happens with the Gausian blur. Luckily there's some other options on the Lens Blur filter:





I just started trying out some things and I noticed that with the option: Depth Map I could make it look a lot different. I made the source: Transparent and I used a blur focal distance of 8.


Again don't ask me why, because I was just playing with sliders and options here when I ran into this [:P] I have no clue what the actual theory behind this is and my Technical English also lacks for this part. Anyway whatever it was doing...it worked for me [:P]


I could post the entire PSD file so you can see my layers and see what they do and enable and disable them to see what's going on. But obviously, Angelo has to give me permission to do that [A] Then you can also see what I mean by losing pixels with a tight selection. Enable the layer: "Tumbler" and disable the layer: "Tumbler exp 2p"


I'm far from an expert concerning Photoshop so I don't know if it would even get better if I had put more time and effort into it, but who knows...


If someone has a better way of doing this I would appreciate to learn how to. I liked doing this, thanks Angelo!


Cheers,


Jan