From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

766 Adding a snowflake bokeh “on the lens”

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

766 Adding a snowflake bokeh “on the lens”

- Hey gang, this is Deke McClelland. Welcome to Deke's Techniques. This week, we're going to add this bokeh, or a pleasing blur to the top of the image to simulate the effect of snowflakes landing and melting on the lens. And we're going to be doing so, entirely non-disruptively, without resorting to file bloating smart objects. Here, let me show you exactly how it works. Alright, so here we are, looking at those big, blurry, translucent circles, which are intended to look like snowflakes that have landed on the lens and melted. We're going to start things off in this very snowy composition, which features a layer group, this folder at the top of the layers panel, called, on lens. If I twirl it open, you can see that we have a couple of layers, on lens 1 and on lens 2, and I created each one of these circles, just using the brush tool, by the way. And so, I'll go ahead and select the on lens 1 layer for a moment, and then I'll right click inside the image window. I went ahead and cranked the Hardness value up to 100%, and then I increased the brush size by pressing the Right Bracket key, and again, I just clicked with the brush. Albeit, with the foreground color set to white instead of black. Anyway, I'm going to undo that change. Another thing I want ya to see here is that all of the circles are entirely intact. And so, I'm going to turn off on lens 2, and I'll switch to the Move tool, up here at the top of the Tool Box, which you can get by pressing the V key. And notice, if I drag this guy down, that this circle is entirely intact, and so is this one here. So, in other words, the circles extend beyond the four walls of the canvas. And so, I painted one circle, and then I moved things around, and painted another circle, and so forth. Alright now, despite the fact that I've dragged these circles a total of four times now, I can restore them to their original locations, just by pressing Control + Z or Command + Z on the Mac. Alright now, at this point I want to blur these circles, but I want to do so entirely non-destructively, and without resorting to another smart object, which would further balloon the file size, which is already more than a hundred megabytes on disk. And I'm going to do that, believe it or not, using a drop shadow, so I'll click the Effects icon down here at the bottom of the layers panel, and I'll choose the Drop Shadow command, and we'll end up with your standard, everyday, average black drop shadows, which is not even remotely what I want. And so, I'm going to click on a Color Swatch right there, and I'm going to change the color to white, just by dragging that circle to the top left corner, and then I'll click Okay. I'll also take the Opacity value up to 100%, and I'll change the Blend mode from Multiply, which is the default setting for shadows, to Normal, because after all, nothing gets brighter than white, so we don't need to resort to one of the lightening modes, normal will do just fine. Alright, now the Angle value doesn't matter, and that's because I'm going to change the Distance value to zero. And so, that means that the drop shadows are going to be centered glows, and then, I'll go ahead and increase the size value to 20 pixels. And, you should now be able to see a little bit of glow around each one of our circles. Alright, now I want to get rid of that original circle, that is I want it to disappear, and so, I'll click on Blending Options in this left-hand list, and I'll take this Fill Opacity value down to zero, and notice as I do, I'm turning that circle into a hole. So, we have a glow, but it's turned into a kind of eclipse. If you want to eliminate that effect, then click on Drop Shadow once again, and this is why we went with a drop shadow, as opposed to an outer glow, by the way, is because it includes this check box right here, Layer Knocks Out Drop Shadow. If you turn it off, then the layer no longer knocks out the drop shadow, and we have a big blurry circle. At which point, I'll go ahead and click Okay, in order to accept that change. Alright, now I'll go ahead and press Control + Zero, or Command + Zero on a Mac, in order to zoom out, and I'll switch to the Rectangular Marquee tool, which you can get by pressing the M key. I want to go ahead and make my circles translucent. I've already got a Fill value of 0%, so I can't go any lower with that, but I can reduce the Opacity value, by tapping the 5 key, for example, to take the opacity down to 50%, and that's going to not only effect the layer, if we could see it, but also its drop shadow. So, we've got a lot of flexibility going on here. In the end, I decided to go even more translucent by tapping the 3 key, for an Opacity value of 30%. Alright, now we want to replicate everything that we've done onto the on lens 2 layer, so I'll right click on the FX icon, in order to bring up this pop-up menu, and I'll choose Copy Layer Style, then I'll turn on the on lens 2 layer. I'll Right click on it, and then inside this much larger menu, I'll choose Paste Layer Style, and that will end up pasting everything, including the drop shadow settings, the fill value, and that opacity value, which I want to raise a little bit, so I'll tap the 4 key, in order to take the opacity up to 40%. Alright, now I just want to clean things up a little bit, and so, notice these Up Arrows, next to the FX icons, if you press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, and click on any one of them, then you will collapse all of the layer effects as well as the smart filters. And then, I'll just go ahead and twirl the on lens group closed. And now, I'll press Shift + F, in order to switch to the Full Screen mode, and I'll zoom on in as well. And that's how you create some mighty fine, synthetic snowflake bohke, on the lens, here inside Photoshop. Alright, so what do you think? I kind of like that effect. Now, I know somebody's going to tell me, you know you're mispronouncing bohke. It's supposed to be boh-ke, you know, like you're uncomfortable or something, but it looks nice, that's what counts. Now, if you're looking forward to next week, there is no next week, and that's because LinkedIn is on holiday, all over the world. So, I'll see you again in 2019. Deke's Techniques, each and every week, except next week. Keep watching.

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