Bench!

Hi all,

I'm curious what your thoughts are on this one. Thanks!

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i like this.. the DOF is really nice, and it feel lonely to me on this. but i like it

You can easily tell the DOF is fake, because of the rail above the bench; there's nothing in focus on that part. It looks a bit odd on the right side of the image as well; the top of the fence is out of focus, but the bottom is in. That just doesn't make sense. Also, it's blurry in front of the bench where it should be in focus.

I love the desaturated tone of the photo, but I think the composition is just a bit off. I think if the people weren't there it would make it so much better.

JuiceBox wrote in post #6801402
You can easily tell the DOF is fake, because of the rail above the bench; there's nothing in focus on that part. It looks a bit odd on the right side of the image as well; the top of the fence is out of focus, but the bottom is in. That just doesn't make sense. Also, it's blurry in front of the bench where it should be in focus.

I love the desaturated tone of the photo, but I think the composition is just a bit off. I think if the people weren't there it would make it so much better.

I noticed the rail just after posting here. I can fix that! As far as the blur before the bench, I'll respectfully dissent there

shannyD wrote in post #6801392
i like this.. the DOF is really nice, and it feel lonely to me on this. but i like it

Thanks! When I posted this to flickr, one of my contacts asked a few questions about the location of the bench and informed me that she used to eat lunch at this specific bench one a week. I love that part of the story

that is a cool bench.. where is it anyway?

Just to be clear, by in front I mean if you were sitting in the bench. It's also missing in the closest section of the fence on the left, and between you and the bench. Also, there is a person that seems to be growing out of the bench; this doesn't bother me as much as the fact that he/she is in focus. Zoom all the way in and blur it out!

Fake DOF is hard; the only way I've ever gotten it to work was when there is not a smooth transition between foreground and background, like this photo, but where something is separating it.

shannyD wrote in post #6801440
that is a cool bench.. where is it anyway?

It's on the Brooklyn Bridge, before the first support heading toward Manhattan

JuiceBox wrote in post #6801449
Just to be clear, by in front I mean if you were sitting in the bench. It's also missing in the closest section of the fence on the left, and between you and the bench. Also, there is a person that seems to be growing out of the bench; this doesn't bother me as much as the fact that he/she is in focus. Zoom all the way in and blur it out!

Fake DOF is hard; the only way I've ever gotten it to work was when there is not a smooth transition between foreground and background, like this photo, but where something is separating it.

In that case I agree about the blur in "front" of the bench. But even at full size I don't see what you mean about a person in focus growing from the bench. Where are you talking about?

The person is very very tiny, almost at the end of the bridge, it seems.

Okay, I think I see what you are talking about. Interesting-- in the original raw file this is a blurry person, but part of my sharpening turned it into a sharp object. Good observation!

I love the mood and the feel of this shot, but I have to go with JuiceBox here...the alterations on the DOF are noticeable.

Without having seen the original and without knowing what technique you used to do this, it's a little difficult to make suggestions to correct the issue, but as a general suggestion I would suggest using the lens blur tool along with a channel mask to do the DOF (this is assuming that you are using a newer version of Photoshop...no idea how to do this in other programs). What I would do is separate the bench into it's own layer, then make a separate layer of the background. After that, switch your pallet from "Layers" to "Channels" and create a new channel. On the new channel you can use the gradient tool to do a smooth transition. Once you've painted in with the grandient tool, go back to the Layers palette, click on the newly created background layer, then use the "Lens Blur" filter to simulate your DOF. If you do it correctly, this is probably the easiest and best looking way I've found of simulating DOF.

Incidentally...I'd also crop it in a bit too. Maybe loose some of that sky and go with a nice landscape format here.

I know that sounds like a lot of effort, but I think this shot would be worth doing right.

Just my $.02 worth,
Jim

Okay, a little bit of editing behind me on this. I must have saved the PSD after flattening to sRGB so I had to start from scratch. The only bad thing is I couldn't replicate the colors precisely, but I am actually pretty happy with these too. I kept a little more on either side and killed some of the sky, per suggestion above. I used the Extract filter to pull the bench away and used a new channel to create the DOF gradient. It didn't look right with the railing so I used a polygonal lasso to select this and tried to match the gradient as well as possible, then blended the area of intersection using a Gaussian blur. The DOF was accomplished on this layer using lens blur.

What is the major difference between Gaussian and Lens blurs?

I was losing saturation on this, even by converting to sRGB and embedding the color profile, so I tried oversaturating before saving. How is this instead:

[EDIT: losing saturation upon uploading, that is. I'm not sure if it was due to the color profile, shrinking for Photobucket, or what]

I think the DOF does look better now, but the yellowish/green overcast is distracting. Try using the saturation tool and push the yellows into the reds a bit .

Just a suggestion,
Jim