Starlight

I took this picture solely for the purpose of trying out some sort of an easy way to do a fake bokeh with Photoshop. It took a lot of trial and error... But I got a result I'm happy about in the end. Once I've tried it out a few times for different types of photos, I'll be sure to do another tutorial of it.


I already got a suggestion from Fantasywoods on Tumblr that I could blur the topmost pentagons a bit. I might try to give them a very gentle gaussian blur next time. I just left them clean edged this time since most actual bokeh photos have some bokeh that is clean-cut. But maybe there are simply too many of them now, I could maybe only use one or two, and then the rest blurred at different levels.

But since most tutorials I found with a quick googleing used actual blur filters on an existing background to create fake bokeh, or used stock bokeh images to overlay, I'm glad I got these results with just playing around with brushes. And that means I'm not dependant on stock images. And neither will you! Once I get around to it... This stuff needs making new brush presets, playing around with colour jitter and genuine trial and error to get the proper result. Tread carefully, for the path is ridden with traps for the careless! :P Nah, just kidding, once you know what you're doing, it is pretty straightforward... And the same technique can be used to make heart-shaped bokeh and whatever you want.