How to Blur a Background in Photoshop
A blurred background is what separates a snapshot from a portrait. If you shot a photo with a kit lens at f/5.6 and the background looks too sharp, Photoshop can fake the depth of field a fast prime lens would have given you. Done well, the result is indistinguishable from a real f/1.8 shot.
Photoshop ships with a Blur Gallery (Field Blur, Iris Blur, Tilt-Shift) introduced in CS6 that does almost all the work. The legacy "select-and-Gaussian-Blur" method still has a place when the gallery's automatic depth detection picks the wrong edges.
Method 1: Field Blur with subject masking
Step 1: Select the subject and convert to a Smart Object
Open your photo. Run Select > Subject to grab the foreground. With the selection active, right-click the layer in the Layers panel and choose Convert to Smart Object. Smart Objects let you re-edit the blur amount later without redoing the whole pipeline.
Step 2: Run Filter > Blur Gallery > Field Blur
Go to Filter > Blur Gallery > Field Blur. A pin appears in the center of the image. Click and drag pins to add multiple blur points. Drop one pin in the deepest background and crank its blur to 30-50 pixels. Drop another pin near the subject's plane of focus and set its blur to 0. The transition between pins is automatically gradient.
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The Blur Gallery requires Photoshop CC. The result looks far more realistic than the standard Gaussian Blur in older versions.
Coming soonStep 3: Apply the blur as a Smart Filter
Click OK at the top of the Blur Gallery. Because the layer is a Smart Object, Photoshop adds the blur as a Smart Filter with its own white mask. Click the mask thumbnail and paint with a soft black brush over the subject to fully remove the blur from the foreground. Paint with white to restore.
Step 4: Add bokeh highlights for extra realism
Reopen the Blur Gallery filter (double-click "Blur Gallery" in the layer's Smart Filters panel). On the right, the Bokeh section has three sliders. Bump Light Bokeh to about 30% to make highlights in the background bloom. Light Range controls which luminance values get the bokeh effect; the default 200-255 range targets bright highlights only, which is correct.
Method 2: Iris Blur (when you want a sharp subject and smooth falloff)
Iris Blur is identical in principle but draws an elliptical falloff zone instead of two pin points. It is faster when the subject sits roughly in the center of the frame.
Step 5: Use Iris Blur for portrait-shape falloff
Run Filter > Blur Gallery > Iris Blur. An ellipse appears centered on the image. Drag the four edge handles to fit the ellipse around your subject. The center stays sharp; the area outside the ellipse blurs. The four small dots inside the ellipse control how quickly the falloff happens. Pull them inward for a faster transition, outward for a softer one.
Pro tip: blur is not a substitute for shooting at f/1.8
Photoshop blur misses subtle cues that real bokeh has: specular highlights take on the lens aperture's shape (round, octagonal), and fine details near the focus plane fall off gradually rather than getting suddenly soft. For portraits where this matters, a 50mm f/1.8 lens beats any Photoshop trick. Photoshop blur is for fixing photos you have already shot.
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