Video Tutorials
Fake Bokeh That Actually Looks Real: A Photoshop Trick You'll Use On Every Portrait
There’s a specific kind of client feedback that haunts me. The photo is sharp, the subject is well-lit, the composition is solid, and then: “Can you make it look more… dreamy?” Dreamy. Great. Super specific. What they almost always mean, even if they don’t know the word, is bokeh. Those soft, glowing orbs of out-of-focus light that make a photo feel expensive and editorial. The problem is you can’t go back and reshoot with a wider aperture, and generating fake depth of field that looks convincing is a whole other ordeal.