Original Image (top)
Focus changed with Bokeh (bottom)
Alien Skin software has been a favorite of mine for quite some time offering professional plug-in packages for Photoshop, such as Eye Candy and Xenofex (see my past post for a review on Eye Candy 6). Once again they come up with a great little utility to help you enhance your digital images with the plug-in Bokeh. It's one of those don't always need it but when you need it, there's nothing else like it helper tools. In the past whenever I wanted to draw emphasis on the foreground subject matter I would mask off the foreground, feather the selection, invert it and add a gaussian blur. The results would work sometimes, but the control over the depth of field look was rather limited. With Bokeh, you get a great interface that comes with a long list of preset blurs to simulate the look of a Canon or Sony lens, or allow you to adjust and save your own settings for other projects. Caution must be used with Bokeh however, as one tends to be given too much control and before you know it, the foreground subject matter you selected seems to 'pop' off that page a bit too much. This plug-in is great for sports images or food product shots in a natural background setting. You can even add some vignette to the image to help give a more realistic blend to your masked selection.
Demo copies of Bokeh can be downloaded from their website. The price for Bokeh, when weighed against trying to reshoot an image, may be worth the money to invest in this great tool for electronic photo manipulation.
