Feature request: selection by focus

[blumarble]

I see Photoshop now has the ability to select areas of an image according to focus.  As focus stacking must operate by selecting areas of a group of images to merge by focus -- and focus stacking has been around for some time now -- I'd think that Affinity already has this ability, if not the specific tool for doing so.  This would enable users to adjust or otherwise manipulate areas of an image based on focus; e.g. increase/decrease background blur or bokeh, increase/decrease exposure, etc.  For images with distinct foreground and background, it would just make it simpler to select.  For images with complicated foreground/background areas (such as in the attached image) it would make possible what would otherwise be a very difficult -- almost impossible to do well -- task.

Thank you.

 

Edited July 4, 2021 by blumarble
added info, edited photo

[John Rostron]

I had a little play and came up with this process:

1. Duplicate the image and hide the lower layer.
2. Use Frequency Separation with a radius of around 2px. Discard (hide or delete) the low frequency layer.
3. Expand the range of the High Frequency Layer. Use Curves or Levels to set the white point to 100% and the black point to 0%.
4. Use edge detection on the High Frequency layer.
5. Apply a Threshold Adjustment (Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Threshold with a level of around 20%.
6. Merge the visible layers, and Layer > Rasterise to Mask.
7. Unhide the original layer and move the mask into this layer.

This is not a perfect solution, but it might go some way towards what you want.

John

 

 

[carl123]

This is actually a feature request that I would like to see implemented but I don't see that happening for many years, so here's my attempt

File attached - you can switch off the Gaussian Blur layer to see the before/after image or adjust it for the amount of blurring needed

Still some overspill (halo effect) in places but generally the foreground is in focus with an adjustable background blur - may work on it again in the future

 

focus2.afphoto

[BeauRX]

If not our cameras, our phones will likely make depth maps another (easier/better?) approach to selecting by depth in an image. Interesting times.