Fast lenses, depth of field, and Photoshop CS6

[Daniel Browning]

This begs the question: who needs an expensive, fast lens?

Anyone who is picky enough to use a fast lens for thin DoF will be way too picky to switch to software-based thin DoF. It's like the difference between shooting real infrared and simulating it in Photoshop. Sure, the simulation might be good enough for some people, but certainly not for anyone who went to expense and effort of shooting infrared.

One might say that "it's not the same as what a lens can do." Perhaps? Perhaps, not.

No "perhaps" about it. Physically impossible. But of course, for many purposes it will be good enough. I'm sure there are already many good plugins (or standalone programs) that are superior to this new Photoshop feature for simulating thin DOF [edit: I'm guessing this because Photoshop is not really the best at anything that has a plugin or standalone alternative -- Photoshop is more of a jack of all trades]. But this one will definitely be easier to install, considering that it comes out of the box. And even without any plugins, I've simulated thin DOF with just a masked layer and gaussian blur (though I'm sure this will look more realistic than that).