Nowadays, many photography enthusiasts are using SLR digital cameras. The advantage of using a SLR camera is that you can choose different lenses according to different needs to take the most satisfactory photos. However, since various professional lenses are often expensive, many times we cannot choose lenses based entirely on our own wishes. Most users of entry-level SLR cameras still use "dog heads" (18~55mm lenses).
The image quality of "Dog Head" is very average, but don't forget that the true meaning of playing with digital photos is that a large part of the work lies in post-processing. With the help of Photoshop, we can make "earth-shaking" changes in the photos taken by "Dog Head", making them comparable to various professional lenses.
Next, let’s explore some ways that Photoshop can simulate the photo effects of various professional lenses to make our photos look more professional. Today we will first look at how to turn "dog head" into "hundred microscopic". (Note: "Baiwei" refers to Canon's 100mmF2.8 fixed-focus lens, which is characterized by being suitable for macro photography, high magnification, good background blur, and delicate imaging.)
1. Understand the characteristics of macro photos
Macro photography is a common type of photography activity, which uses special photography equipment such as macro lenses to highlight the details of objects. Macro lenses generally use a larger aperture, and the photos taken have a very shallow depth of field. Figure 1 is a typical macro photography work. Isn’t it beautiful?
2. PS Macro Magic
Now that we understand macro photography, let’s take a look at the two pictures below. Figure 2 is a picture of Tibetan stone carvings taken by the author using the Canon “Dog Head” camera. It can be seen that because the lens is not a macro lens, the depth of field of the photos taken is not shallow enough, the out-of-focus image quality is poor, and the visual impact is too small.
Let’s take a look at Figure 3 again. The content in the picture is exactly the same as that in Figure 2. However, have you noticed that the depth of field in Figure 3 is obviously shallower than that in the first picture, and the out-of-focus image is soft, highlighting the front piece of scripture and blurring it out? The following verses enhance the visual impact.
The author did not change the lens. The two pictures are actually one. The slight difference is that Figure 3 was processed using PS’s lens blur filter, simulating the effect of a “100 micro” lens.
How to play this magic in PS? The detailed method is introduced below.
3. Actual transformation of "dog head" into "hundred micro"
The lens blur filter is a tool developed after PS 7.0. Its main function is to simulate the blur effect of high-quality lens out-of-focus imaging. As long as we use it, we can imitate the realistic lens blur effect, achieve the purpose of reducing the depth of field and simulating macro.
Okay, let's take a look at the effects of this powerful filter right away. In the blur menu of the filter menu, we can easily find the lens blur filter. After turning on the filter, the previous photo changed immediately (Figure 4).
