How to flip / invert the tilt shift effect from depth of field blur?

[Artturi]

Hello, 
I'm trying to create an image where the center is blurred and edges are sharp, but I don't seem to be able to understand a way to flip the depth of field (elliptical) effect so that I could have the desired effect to my layer.

[RNKLN]

Gaussian blur with a vector shape with soft edges mask?

[Artturi]

1 hour ago, RNKLN said:

Gaussian blur with a vector shape with soft edges mask?

Masked gaussian blur sadly seem to be producing ghosting effect where the not blurred object is partly visible behind the blurred one and it doesn't look professional. 

[RNKLN]

This is what I had in mind … (not sure if it's the most efficient one, it contains a duplicate layer, maybe unnecessary).

Centre Blur.afphoto

[v_kyr]

Another possibility would be to emulate that via some shape (rect, circle ...) with an applied linear or circular gradient, where you setup the amount of gradient points, their colors, transparency & flow etc. the way you had in mind for the center part of your image.

For example ...

 

[Artturi]

Thanks guys for trying to help. Sadly neither of those methods work, because I'm using the effect as a part of some bigger graphical design project, and the ghosting really makes it look bad. I guess only way is to use lots of time to blur it manually with the blur brush tool, or use some other software. 

[NotMyFault]

10 hours ago, Artturi said:

Hello, 
I'm trying to create an image where the center is blurred and edges are sharp, but I don't seem to be able to understand a way to flip the depth of field (elliptical) effect so that I could have the desired effect to my layer.

 

8 hours ago, Artturi said:

Masked gaussian blur sadly seem to be producing ghosting effect where the not blurred object is partly visible behind the blurred one and it doesn't look professional.

I'm sure this can be avoided. Could you share your file? There are some tricks to avoid ghosting, but it depends on the actual situation.

If you can't share the file, you may give us a kind of mock-up with at least 2 layers - the to-be-blurred foreground and the should-stay-sharp background. Document dimensions, color format etc. should match those of your "private" file.

[Artturi]

I was already able to finish the project with some alternative methods, but here is part of the thing I was doing.

This element is the ground plane on which I was placing something else and obviously going to add something to the background also etc. But the problem with this project is that I had to blur the center of this ground plane and in Affinity Photo I was not able to find a good solution to that. 

[NotMyFault]

Thanks for sharing. I still did not get what the problem is. Can you share what you wanted to have blurred, and what parts not to get blurred?

The tricky part is to get the transition between blurred and not blurred visually appealing.

• What kind of blur Gaussian?
• What blur Radius?
• What parts to be fully blurred? what parts to not blur?
• How to you want to manage the transition? hard or soft edge?

You have absolute control over all these parameters.

For masking it is optimal to use vector shapes, with a suitable fill (ellipse, linear etc). You need to adjust the opacity parameter instead of the colors if used as mask.

 

 

[Artturi]

45 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

Thanks for sharing. I still did not get what the problem is. Can you share what you wanted to have blurred, and what parts not to get blurred?

The tricky part is to get the transition between blurred and not blurred visually appealing.

• What kind of blur Gaussian?
• What blur Radius?
• What parts to be fully blurred? what parts to not blur?
• How to you want to manage the transition? hard or soft edge?

You have absolute control over all these parameters.

For masking it is optimal to use vector shapes, with a suitable fill (ellipse, linear etc). You need to adjust the opacity parameter instead of the colors if used as mask.

 

 

I needed the gradual as slowly as possible growing blurriness out of not blurry at all to the very blurry area, that would be in the middle. Kind of like a DOF effect we already have, but reversed. In your example there is that bad looking area between the sharp and blurry areas where you can actually see the sharp object visible behind the blurry one and the blur is not growing gradually. 

[Artturi]

Basically this is an example of what I would like to achieve out from that image using AP:

[NotMyFault]

OK. This is so far away from the source image that don't see a clear path using blur filters to achieve the same result. Maybe a job for liquify or mesh warp.

[Artturi]

9 minutes ago, NotMyFault said:

OK. This is so far away from the source image that don't see a clear path using blur filters to achieve the same result. Maybe a job for liquify or mesh warp.

I think it could be done by duplicating the layer 2 times and adding a vertical tilt shift blur filter to each of the sides and then masking the other half out. It would work in this specific image, but not probably in some other cases. Anyways it just felt so stupid method that I didn't bother testing and ended up creating my own filter in Blender to do the blurring properly with more controls.