Isolating The Subject

One of the challenges of macro-photography is having enough depth of field to keep the subject sharp, but yet isolating it against a pleasingly blurred background. In cases where the subject is on the large side and very three dimensional that can be quite a challenge. Such was the case with a photograph I had taken of a red trillium. Though the photo below looks like the trillium was extracted and placed on a background texture, that is not the case.

Using a method that is very nicely described in the tutorial by Matt Kloskowski, which I link to below, an artistic brush, which you have the ability to obtain at no cost if you have Photoshop CC, was used to turn the ‘messy background’ into a blurred textured-like image that looks like a painted canvas. A bit of simple masking then allowed me to bring the stem and leaves of the plant back just a bit, showing through the blurred background. I did put one subtle texture over everything at the end to give it a unifying tone, but that effect is quite minimal and has nothing to do with the background here,

Red Trillium © Howard Grill

For those who might be interested in what the original looked like, I include it below with nothing but a few Lightroom adjustments to the RAW file.

Red Trillium, Original © Howard Grill

I could explain how I accomplished this effect, but I doubt that I could do as good a job as Matt Kloskowski…..so I am linking his excellent tutorial below for those that might be interested in how this is done.

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