I've been wanting to try this technique for a while now and I finally went out and did it. I believe it's called "In the round"? Spring seems to be a great time to give this a try.
Me and photoshop seem to never get a long. I could not quite get it to look how I'd like to look but it's close. I'd like there to be less detail in the background. Is this a result of the location or is there a way to get the layers more blurry? Any critique/tips/help would be greatly appreciated.
Definitely going to be giving this a try again!
The only things I can think of to get the background more blurred would be to shoot the photo with a larger DOF or take more photos. How many layers is this?
So I started with 38 layers and as I played with the opacity of each layer it wasn't getting any more blurred. I actually got what I thought was a better look out of 10ish which is what this is. I'm not sure exactly how many it is but it's around 10.
Hi Kyle. As Matthew correctly points out the blurring/'dissolving' of the background is reliant on the number of images taken around the subject - 38 should be adequate to achieve what you are after..
However, of almost equal importance is how layers are blended in Photoshop - if opacity is set too high (especially do on the upper layers) then layers further down the stack may have ZERO impact. That's what it looks like may be happening here.
When doing this type of work I typically select all layers but the bottom/background and adjust opacity (across all selected) to get a starting point. I then may lower to the opacity of upper layers, increase the lower layers to get more of an even distribution (opacity appear to have a greater impact higher up the stack).
I bet if to set the opacity of all to around 5% (keep the 1st/background layer at 100%) you will see a drastic change to the background.
I actually attempted a YouTube video to show the impact of opacity over multiple layers. I'm absolutely horrendous in front of a camera but you may find the demonstration insightful;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xm_QaMUdqs&list=PLIVlp4_szkhH8JEHBcOQNKUs6KOjfOS1D&index=1
You are on the right track, it's just a matter of playing about and getting an understanding of the impact f all the controls.
BTW - you may well find that as you lose the detail in the background you also lose desired detail in the subject (ie the texture of the leaves & flowers). In this case apply a simple mask to a number of layers and 'paint in' the detail you wish to preserve.
Hi Alan, thanks for all of the info. I did what you are talking about with selecting all of the layers and adjusting the opacity BUT I had the background layer at the top of the stack. Are you saying you have base/background layer at the bottom? I bet that's why I was seeing little to no change when affecting the other layers. Like I said me and photoshop don't always get along hahaha.
I clicked on the youtube link but it says the video is unavailable and that the video is private?
The background layer is the first loaded into PS and the bottom layer of the stack (but can be moved/replaced with another layer).
Apologies for the YouTube link - I had set as private as I was not intending to publish. You can try now - it might help explain.
Thanks for the Youtube link, Alan! Just saved it to my watch later and subscribed. Looking forward to more tutorials.
Gave it another go and this is what I came up with. It's a work in progress but I think this one turned out better?
I think it did turn out pretty well. Did you revisit the location? I do think that the background looks much better.
Nope I just used the same photos again, all 38 this time, and just kind of played around with the layers.
That's much improved Kyle and you are certainly on the right track.
Do you know what opacity you used here (generally, across all layers)? I am assuming you are not changing the blend mode at this point.
As an amount of detail remains in the background (and blossoms) I suspect that the opacity was at such a level that the lower layers had no impact on the final image.
This can be tested by switching the lower layers on/off and seeing the result.
This is not a necessity (I often discard layers if they are not improving the result) but it is something to be aware of.
Thanks Alan! I took your advice and put the opacity for most of the layers around 5% and then went from there.
Then with the layers that put more detail in the tree I put some of them in the 70-80% range and some in the 40% range and masked out the background detail that they created.
I did turn off/on some of the layers to gauge what they were doing and yes some of the lower ones weren't really doing much. I got rid of some and just left some.
I worked on this for a couple hours and just got tired of messing with it honestly and this was the best I could get the background. I don't know if shooting at f/8 would have any affect on this? Next time I try though I will more than likely shoot at f/4 and see if that helps.
Thanks again for all of your help/resources with this. Definitely looking forward to trying this again. Like anything it'll get better with practice. At least I hope it will!
Sounds good Kyle - fstop in these should not matter as the ‘blurring’ comes as a result of overlaying many images.
Any layers with high opacity need to be way at the bottom as those below will likely have little impact.
Can’t wait to see your next attempts.
I never heard of this technique, and I've been enjoying reading about it. It's a beautiful subject, Kyle.
I have not tried this technique but the mathematician in me has this approach for setting the opacity... If there were 2 layers, that back layer would have 100% opacity and the top layer has 50% to show each equally. If a 3rd layer is added on top, it would need 1/3 = 33% opacity to have 1/3 impact on the image. You can keep going by giving layer n from the back an opacity of 1/n. Setting up the opacity for all layers like this should end up with each layer having equal impact on the final image. That makes the opacities for 10 layers 100%, 50%, 33%, 25%, 20%, 17%, 14%, 12%, 11% and the top layer is 10%
Thanks for the input Keith. I'm not sure if that fits in with my own findings or not but it likes like it is more on track than any other explanation I have come across.
As am FYI - I did write an article on this on my website noting what appears to correlate with tests in Photoshop. I'll have to test your own theory one day.
https://www.alanbrownphotography.com/understanding-the-cumulative-effect...
Keith - interesting! The mathematician in me has been uncomfortable setting all layers to the same opacity, but not sufficiently motivated to figure out what would be optimum... I shall try out your suggestion next time I'm editing one of these.