Bloom Blurs

Original unaltered photo from Nikon 3100




Ligthing/Lens variation added in Adobe Lightroom



Another lighting/lens effect added in Adobe Lightroom



Photoshop Elements smart-blur effects.




Bloom Scotoma
Central out of focus area accentuated with blur in Photoshop Elements

I took some time to play around with a photo I took several weeks ago with the Nikon point and shoot camera. I think that like many amateur photographers I have this sense that altering a photo with Lightroom or Adobe Elements is sort of cheating. I'm not sure this is a valid belief, since many different techniques similar to what can be done in these programs may be done in the darkroom too.

This series shows an original unaltered photo, a couple different fairly dramatic lighting changes, done in Lightroom, and then some progressively dramatic blur effects from Elements.

In the last image I thought I would try to blur the central area of the photo to accentuate the original image's out of focus area in the center area of the flower (something that usually I find very annoying). I thought that this would provide a somewhat annoyingly provocative image with a blurred central area and a periphery of the frame with sharply focused background that has also been accentuated by the earlier lighting effects that were added. In a way this image's alterations are driven out of the origial photo's shortcomings, and my frustration about not being able to improve them after the fact. (In particular I need to work on making sure that I get the FRONT of a subject fully within the depth of field when taking macro shots.) It sounds planned out when I explain the post photo alterations but I really just arrived at this last image by playing around with filters in Lightroom and Elements to find something that I would find interesting.