Depth maps in topaz lens effects5/31/2023 ![]() ![]() The first thing to do here is to pick the “focal plane”, essentially which shade should be in focus. The next step is to work the Focal Plane Adjustment. So, I painted on the bird with black and on the background with white and the filter quickly created a very nice selection. For the initial run, I wanted the bird to be as sharp as it is and the background to be as blurry as possible. There is also a gradient brush for quickly creating a more nuanced selection. They call this “Topaz Smart Brush” and it is indeed quite smart. Topaz incorporated their selection technology to Lens Effects and choosing the right area is a simple matter of “painting” on the image with the right shade of gray from black to white. ![]() Creating a depth map is quite straight forward and simple. A graduated map from black to white will create a graduated focus field. The process is based on a depth map where black is near and white is far. On the left is a panel of presets, the middle is used for the image preview, and on the right are the adjustment panels. The interface is quite similar to other topaz filters. After making a new layer to retain the original image, I invoked Topaz Lens Effects. To test the filter, I chose a photograph of an owl in which the background could have been a bit more out of focus. I installed the filter as a plugin to Photoshop CS5 although it will also work with Lightroom (via Fusion Express freely available from Topaz Labs), Photoshop Elements 6-9, PaintShop Pro, Photo Impact and Serif Photo Plus. Of course it can also be used for experimental treatment of some photographs and can even be useful to learn what would have happened had we opened up the diaphragm by seeing the effect in real-time in Lens Effects. In my opinion, like all special effects filters, this one is not a substitute for learning to use the right f-stop, or the correct lens for the job but to save one photograph in which everything else works fine if only we used f/4 instead of f/11. Topaz Labs released a new filter, Lens Effects, for those photographs which could use a little shallower depth of field, or a bit darker background, or many other lens-induced effects including errors introduced by toy cameras.
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