Here is the tutorial which was promised by me a long time back. The awesome bokeh effect tutorial!! This tutorial will also teach you how to make your own brush!! Believe me, brushes are one of the most powerful and useful tools in your Photoshopping arsenal. Now, You may ask what is this bokeh thingy?? Here is Wikipedia's definition.
Bokeh (derived from Japanese, a noun boke ぼけ, meaning "blurred or fuzzy") is a photographic term referring to the appearance of out-of-focus areas in an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field. Different lens bokeh produces different aesthetic qualities in out-of-focus backgrounds, which are often used to reduce distractions and emphasize the primary subject.
First, ALL HAIL WIKIPEDIA!! I mean seriously... I don't even remember the time when I was looking for some information and couldn't find it on Wiki first. Mark my words here: Wiki-ing is going to be the latest tech-verb after 'Googling'.
Now to the Bokeh tutorial. :) As usual, here is the finished product first:
Step 1: Making your '+' brush
1. Start with a 400x400px document. With black foreground color, type out a HUGE '+' sign in Times New Roman font. Right-click on the layer name in the layers palette, and select "Rasterize Type". Next, position the '+' in the center of the document.
2. Go to "Edit>Define Brush Preset". Name the brush to anything you want to. I name mine "Plus". How original naa?
Step 2: The Background
1. Open a new document of the preferred size. I have used 2000x1600, I dunno why. :)
2. Select the Gradient Tool. Set the foreground color to #228fce and background to #015f94. Create a radial gradient from the center to the edges of the image.
Step 3: Set up the Brush
1. Select the Brush tool. From the dropdown menu on top, select the Plus brush that you just made. (It will be at the end of the list). Hit F5 or go to Window>Brushes.
2. Set the brush tip size to 400px. Make the following settings:
3. This will give you a nice spread out, random kind-of brush that doesn't seem to work well if you haven't done this before. :) Actually, it is supposed to be just like that. What you have to do next, will give a different result for all. Make a new layer and on it, just make a fast swipe with the brush across the canvas. You should get something similar to this:
4. Set the Blend-mode of the layer to Screen.
5. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Apply a Gaussian blur of 25px.
Step 4: The Repetition
1. Repeat steps 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 around 3 times more. But make sure that each time, you decrease the brush size to about a little more than half of the previous one. For eg. If your first one was 400px (thanks for following the tutorial word by word :)), the next will be around 250px, then 150px, and finally 90px. Similarly, the Gaussian Blur will also go down. See images below for guidance.
Update:(This set of images is in reverse order. Sorry for that)
2. The final layer which has the smallest pluses, doesn't get any blur.
And DONE!! Say Hurray!! Here is the wallpaper for download in different sizes:
Original 2000x1600 size:
Widescreen 1920x1200:
Normal 1280x1024:
Enjoy, and do comment!!
