mountains (II)

[ThinkPink]

the second .... TER-File from http://buzzzzzart.com  'Mt. Stratosphere'  *Thanks for sharing*

2 pictures (top/bottom) with 600x800 px merged in PS. Foreground unsharpened in PS

[rcallicotte]

Nice image.  I don't like the blurriness, but it's not my work of art and you're an incredible artist.  Still...there's something about the blurriiness that gets in my way when I look at the pic.

[old_blaggard]

I feel like the contrast is a bit too high.  I wish that there were maybe a few more subtle variations in color.  I do like the terrain and point of view, though, and the clouds aren't bad either.

[bigben]

I'm guessing the blurred forgeround is to add some depth/scale.  The distance from camera shader would be quite useful for generating a mask to use for applying a blur filter in PS to simulate a narrower depth of field.

[sjefen]

I like the dof to. But it looks a little flat. Like it's not 3d.

[bigben]

Here is a cropped sample of masked blurring.

The mask (shown on the right) was made by overlaying all of the surfaces with a distance shader, moving the sun to the zenith and disabling the atmosphere, shadows and GI in the render.

This resulting image was added as an alpha channel to the rendered image where you can use it to create a selection for blurring the image, or as a distance shader for Photoshop's lens blur (I did the latter)

[rcallicotte]

Thanks for explaining how to do this, Ben.  I've learned so much by just reading your posts and experimenting.  I think you and Volker should make a class.

[old_blaggard]

Very interesting result, Ben.

[ThinkPink]

Thanks for the comments.
Yes, you can do the bluring effect in photoshop (or any other tool) either with a Selection of the foreground and bluring it or, if you have a visible "long distance" foreground with two layers (one sharp, the other blured) and a mask between that goes from white over grey to black.  White shows the content of the upper layer (and covers the content beneath) and black shows the content beneath (and covers the upper layer). Grey shows form both layer a little bit (depending on the scale of grey).
If you make a selection in PS and create a mask, you only get a Black/White - mask with no grey. Use the Filter for Blur (in German it's:  'Gauss'scher Weichzeichner'   ). So you can control the steps of grey between black and white.

[NWsenior07]

I really like it, it reminds me of a lake in Colorado. I'd say a bit of color variation on the rock would help but beyond that I'd saty that the bluring of the foreground was integrated quite nicely.

[bigben]

Thanks for the comments.
Yes, you can do the bluring effect in photoshop (or any other tool) either with a Selection of the foreground and bluring it or, if you have a visible "long distance" foreground with two layers (one sharp, the other blured) and a mask between that goes from white over grey to black.  White shows the content of the upper layer (and covers the content beneath) and black shows the content beneath (and covers the upper layer). Grey shows form both layer a little bit (depending on the scale of grey).
If you make a selection in PS and create a mask, you only get a Black/White - mask with no grey. Use the Filter for Blur (in German it's:  'Gauss'scher Weichzeichner'   ). So you can control the steps of grey between black and white.

The only problem with manually selecting parts of an image to blur in Photoshop is that it can be very difficult to make it look realistic. The method I described creates the mask in TG, and as such is accurate for the terrain. Combined with PS' lens blur and you have a pretty realistic blur effect. The process is very similar to the depth of field plugin for TG0.9.