5 November 2008
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended Depth of Field Tutorial/Demo - TWIP
Posted by
Scott under:
Screencast
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended Depth of Field Tutorial/Demo from Scott Bourne on Vimeo.
11 Comments so far...
Mike Smith Says:
5 November 2008 at 8:13 am.
Great demo Scott. This is the one feature of CS4 that really grabbed my attention. It’s like HDR for DOF. 
I have created a few images like this using the trial version of Helicon Focus. I was very pleased with the results, but could never justify the cost of the software. For me, this switch to CS4 would be worth it for this feature along.
[Reply]
Willie Says:
5 November 2008 at 9:34 am.
I was curious, are each of the separate photos focused on different sections of the subject? I would imagine so, but couldn’t tell in the video. Thanks!
[Reply]
Scott Says:
5 November 2008 at 9:39 am.
@Willie yes the focal point is shifted from front to back in each successive image.
[Reply]
Will Says:
6 November 2008 at 12:40 am.
Ah makes sense! Nice demo, I look forward to playing with CS4
[Reply]
Tom Coyner Says:
6 November 2008 at 7:52 am.
The imagination swoons what this may mean for creativity. The interesting variable, though counter intuitive, would be to possibly have an inconsistent flow of layers in and out of focus. In most cases, of course, this would not “work”, but someone may in time come up with an interesting perspective that would have to be labeled as “totally digital.” But in 99% of other cases where one would want to have a consistent in-focus perspective, this is a major step forward. I concur with Mike Smith, great demo, Scott. Thanks.
[Reply]
Karra Says:
6 November 2008 at 8:19 am.
Great demo Scott! Thank you.
One wish/request that videos such as this would improve its size/quality in the near future!
[Reply]
James Burke Says:
7 November 2008 at 6:08 am.
Excellent step-by-step Scott. The answer to my prayers! I can now shoot a range of DOFs and let the machine do the work back at base.
I recently got CS4 and am plodding through it’s new features. I agree this is the best of them for practical work.
[Reply]
Scott Says:
7 November 2008 at 7:02 am.
@Karra you can see the highest quality version of this directly at Vimeo.com by clicking on the Vimeo logo. To make it any larger than I have it there would require more bandwidth than is available to us. I am looking into making the full DV quality video available for a fee.
[Reply]
Craig Richardson Says:
7 November 2008 at 12:10 pm.
Thank you very much for this tutorial!
I take macro shots of primarily of insects. I have always bracketed the focus by setting my Canon 100mm 2.8 macro wide open and as close to 1:1 as possible given the working room with the subject (wasps are given more working room). Starting a a focal point just before the subject I move the camera forwards while on continuous shooting mode. I sweep past the subject and pick the best looking photo back on the computer, typically the one where the eyes are in focus.
Given the handheld nature of this work, the fact I do not own a macro flash, and the light lost as one approaches 1:1 macro I have been forced to shoot this way. Adobe has just solved this problem of handheld macro without a flash and your tutorial perfectly shows how they did it.
This is yet another argument as to why one should never delete photos, I have spent all morning going though my library of thousands of bracketed focus insect pictures and creating new art never before possible in the process.
Thanks again!
-Craig Richardson from Toronto, Canada
[Reply]
Michael Says:
29 November 2008 at 9:58 am.
Scott,
I was finally able to play around with this new function of CS 4, but it just isn’t working for me. I keep getting an error that says that “Could not Auto-Blend the layers because there is not enough memory (RAM). This message seems pretty clear, but I’m wondering just how much RAM I need to complete this task. Do you know? I have 3gigs of RAM on my machine (Win Vista Home Premium).
I have done some searching and I can’t find anything about this. The only way I’m able to get this function to work is if I reduce my file size to about 1/4 of the original size.
I know your a Mac guy but do you have any advice on how to make this function work on my machine? Perhaps Vista is eating up too much of my RAM…
[Reply]
Great tutorial!
