Faking it: Who needs a $1900 lens?

[GeneralBenson]

I know you guys are probably going to say it stinks, but I like this edit.

It certainly works better where the background is closer and nearly perfectly vertical vs. having a vanishing point. It doesn't necessarily work with the desaturated look... but I was grabbing different images from my SmugMug to play with.

I think I've mastered the masking... time consuming to say the least.

TBH I thought the one in the OP was ghastly, but this ones really impressive.

This one is much, much better, but it still doesn't look quite right. I think maybeif you feathered the selection slightly. the line between the subject and the background is just way too crisp. And I think something about the pattern, or lack there of, of the bokeh just doesn't seem believable to me. It's really hard to be objectivewhen you already know it's fake. Tharmsen, you have the 85L, right? I think you should go set up a tripod, and take a shot at f/1.2, then take one at f/8 or something, and add the fake bokeh, and then compare them. That would be the real test of how good it is. Like I said, it's really easy to say something doesn't look right when you already know it's fake. But if I just saw the shot above and no one said anything, would I know? Can't say. I say take two identical shot, one real, one fake,and don't tell us which is which.

 

[SpeedTrap]

It might be me, but it looks fake.
If you coud put 2 shots one by the 1.2 lens and a fake side by side you can tell

 

[skieur]

This is always triky to do though - for websize as the sizes posted its rather easy, but for large images and certainly for images with a very detailed dividing boarder between in focus and out of focus its very time consuming to do right.

Of course, the easier approach is to chose depth of field in the edit pull-down menu of Paint Shop Pro X2.

skieur