Make a screenshot, texture or other flat image look like it was taken by a macro lens
I’ve been using this effect recently on some pattern wallpapers and textures, but it also works well for things like screenshots. The basic steps are:
- Print screen to get the image
- Transform to add perspective
- Gradient to make the focus area
- Quick Mask to make a selection
- Lens Blur to add a realistic blur
When would you use it? Lets say, for example, you have a new website that you’d like to have a screenshot for. A plain old screenshot is fine, but the text would be tiny and it would generally be not as interesting. We can use this technique to jazz it up a bit.
1. Print Screen
First, open the website or image you want the macro effect on. Take a screenshot by pressing the “Print Screen” key. Open up Photoshop and make a new document. The new document dialogue is clever enough to know you’ve just taken a screenshot and will have the document set to your screen size. So press OK and then paste it in (CTRL+V).
2. Transform
What we’re going to do next is transform the screenshot to give it a bit of perspective. This will add to the realism. Make a duplicate of the layer (Alt+L+D), then press Ctrl+T to start the transform. You should see a bunch of little squares around the edges of the document. These are the control points where you can manipulate the image. You can either hold down Ctrl and move the corners independently or go to Edit > Transform > Perspective. We’ll use the perspective method since it looks a bit better.
In the image above, I’ve first taken the top left corner and dragged it left. With Perspective enabled, this makes the right corner move the same distance in the opposite direction, giving a perspective effect. Then I moved the same control point upwards, which made the bottom left point move downwards. When you’re happy with your perspective, press Enter.
The lens effect takes a bit of processing power, and in the transform we’ve just done, Photoshop is still keeping all the edges of the image that aren’t on screen. So the Lens blur will try and blur them too. This could add a bit of time to the operation, so quickly grab the crop tool, select the whole image and crop. This will trim those unneeded edges.
3. Gradient
Grab the Gradient tool. We’re going to use a Reflected Gradient, Foreground to Transparent.
Reset your colours to black and white (Press D for default black foreground, white background). Choose the Foreground to Transparent gradient, then choose Reflected Gradient, as shown above.
Now, if we used this, the amount of screen in focus after the blurring would be very small, so we want to increase the black area of the gradient. Click on the gradient box to open the Gradient Editor and move the black back over to the right.
4. Quick Mask
To quickly make our focus area, we’re going to use the gradient in a quick mask. Press Q to activate the quick mask. You should see this little button at the bottom of the toolbar become activated.
With the Gradient tool selected, draw the gradient across the screen. Where ever you start drawing will be the “in-focus” area of the screenshot. Once you draw the gradient, you’ll see it is red. This is because we are in quick mask mode. The red area is the selection, and will be the in-focus area. If you’re not happy with that area, undo and draw it again.
Press Q again to get out of quick mask mode – this will activate the selection, so you’ll see the marching ants.
Note: If, after grading your gradient, everywhere is red except the in-focus area, then your Quick mask options have been changed to show the Masked Area rather than the Selection Area. It won’t matter to the final effect, but if you want to change it, double click on the Quick Mask button and can change the option.
5. Lens Blur
Final step now, and you get to pull out your digital macro lens. With the marching ants still marching, go to Filters > Blur > Lens Blur. You can see the settings I used in the screenshot to the right, but we’ll go through them to see what they do.
Depth Map:
Source: None
We’ve used a selection, so you can ignore this. You can use Alpha Channels to do the blurring for more complicated tasks, but for our simple macro, a selection is fine.
Blur Focal Distance: 0
Only works with Alpha Channels but it is like the manual focus on a camera, allowing you to move the in-focus area.
Invert: Tick
Depending on whether your Quick Mask mode is set to show “selected areas” as red or “masked areas” as red will decide if you need this ticked or not. Just look at the preview and see if the right parts are blurry. If not, un-tick it.
Iris
Shape: Hexagon
Changes the shape of the blurry areas. More sides leads to a slightly longer rendering time when you press OK. Hexagon (6) is a nice amount.
Radius: 15
The amount of blur to apply. Best the move the slider to see what looks best to you.
Blade Curvature: 31
Also changes the shape of the blur. So instead of the Hexagon having sharp edges in the blur, it will be more rounded. Also adds a bit of time to rendering, I think.
Rotation: 0
Doesn’t make a lot of difference in this case, but again, changes the blurry areas.
Specular Highlights
Brightness: 0
Threshold: 255
Move both sliders to the middle to see what they do. Makes bright areas get blown out like they would in a real camera on a sunny day. Doesn’t look very good most of the time.
Noise
Amount: 1
1 gives a nice subtle amount of noise without being overpowering. Anything more seems too much and less is a bit unrealistic. But try it yourself and see what you like.
Distribution: Gaussian
Changes the noise pattern slightly.
Monochromatic: Tick
Unless you want coloured noise, I’d leave it at monochrome.
Press OK when you’re happy with your settings. The effect might take a few seconds or minutes depending on the size of your image/speed of your computer.
That’s the end of the tutorial – now you can crop/resize the image or start over again and tweak settings to your liking, because you know how it’s done. I’ve also applied a bit of vignetting to darken the edges of the image and perhaps add a bit more realism to it. Anyway, you should now understand how the effect works so go experiment!