Quote Originally Posted by Alan View Post
This begs the question: who needs an expensive, fast lens?

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

For example, rather than buy the 70-200 2.8 II IS, one might be better off with the 70-200 f/4 IS. Half the price, and still high IQ.

Plus, the tool in CS6 will allow the user to decide where to place the depth of field.

However, it's surely a tool that will improve as time goes on, and then buying that expensive (and, heavy) piece of glass might be a thing of the past.
It could replace a fast lens in some occasions, however it can't in a lot of other occasions. The problem with this software is that it doesn't know where the objects on your photo are placed in real life. In the example video that Rich linked to the software does the same work as you might have done sometimes yourself with a few layers, masks and some gausian or lens blur.
This works fine for photos where pretty much everything is flat. However this doesn't work if transitions from for to background are not fluid.
For example: You take a photo from a low perspective. Person 1 stands 5 ft from the camera, person 2 stands 10 ft from the camera. You know this, however Photoshop doesn't and will create the DOF regarding what items there are in your shot. If you want to blur Person 2 say 50% and the background 100% and have that proces go smoothly, you're still assigned on doing some lovely selection-work and using multiple layers and masks to get this done.
Using a fast lens might have done the shot all at once and have been a lot easier.

As for the "flat" shots. This tool seems very easy, however just use the actions from the video below and you don't really have to upgrade to CS6


The other options is to keep following the updates on the Lytro camera. Then you can do all this with just one camera and even incamera It's cheaper than a fast lens or CS6 (still very expensive for a 1MP camera though...)