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Food Photography Basics : Using Photoshop To Blur The Background

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Ever since I started the Food Photography Basics series, the most often asked question is ‘how do I blur the background of my food picture?’ or ‘I tried and I am getting some results but its not great or as blurred as I’d want it to be’.

I hear you.

Until last December, I was using my Nikon L10 which is a really basic point and shoot that only had a macro mode to boast about and no other manual settings. It was hard to get the nice blurred effect that I so badly wanted and even though I had lots of natural light and used to set up the picture just right, it was frustrating to get a wuss of a blur in most cases!

This changed when I got Photoshop. Since its an expensive software and I knew nuts about it at that time (or even now for that matter), I bought Photoshop 7.0 which was an older version back then and so, much cheaper.

The first step is always deciding to buy the software and actually getting it. I felt so guilty for sitting on my lazy ass without using it for 2 months, that one fine day I decided to search around for some photoshop tutorials. It definitely wasn’t easy to sift out what I wanted from the 1000s of articles out there. Surprisingly, none of them were meant for food pics so I randomly tried out a few things and came up with a solution.

So let’s see what we are trying to do today.

We are going to make this picture ..


.. look like this.


Excited? Good!

For more examples of pictures edited in this manner, check out the following posts. All of them were taken with my Nikon L10 which is a 5 megapixel, 3x zoom basic point and shoot.

Paneer Peas Pulao
Rasmalai
Curd Rice
Eggless Butterless Chocolate Muffins

So let’s get started

1. The first step is to open up your photoshop program and go to File >> Open and browse for the picture you want to edit.

Quick tip: Choose a picture that is not just one item, but has a definite ‘background’ and an item in it that you want to ‘highlight’ while the rest of the picture is blurred. Something like the picture I have chosen.


The good news is, we are not going to use any of the scary-looking colourful stuff on the right hand side. I have no clue what you can do with those! Let’s just concentrate on the left hand side, the long bar, the Tools Palette.

2. The next step is to choose the Brush Tool from the Tools Palette on the left.


3. Once you have chosen the brush tool, your mouse pointer will turn to a circle or a tiny dot. We need to adjust the size of this circle, or brush, by using the brush size setting on top. Just move the pointer to the right until you get a brush of the required size.

Quick tip: The size of the brush should be adjusted according to the area you want to blur. If its a big area, then choose a bigger brush size so that you can save time. If you are working with a bunch of tiny areas in the pic, then stick with a smaller brush size.


4. Now that we have a brush we can work with, the next step is to choose the area you want to blur. For that, you need to switch to the Quick Mask Mode. You will see two sqaures towards the bottom of the Tools Palette, click on the one on the right hand side.


5. Next, we need to select the area. Click and drag your mouse pointer over the area you want to blur making sure that you leave out the portion you want to highlight. I left out the slice of orange in the front and ‘chose’ the entire area outside of it. As you drag your pointer, the area will turn red so you can see what you are doing. The process is similar to using stuff on MS Paint.

Quick tip: if you accidentally highlight some portions you didn’t mean to (like the top half orange slice in the front in my pic, for eg) use the ‘eraser tool’ to clear out the red highlight. You will find the eraser on the left hand side of the Tools Palette, 5th from top.

6. Once you have ‘reddened’ the entire region you want to blur, this is how it will look.


Now, go back to the Tools Palette and click on the square to the left of the Quick Mask Mode Button. This is get you back to the Standard Mode. Once you do this, you will see a dotted line around the area you don’t want to blur. In my eg, its the orange slice, as below.


7. What this means is, the orange slice is selected as of now for the next edit that we peform. Since we want to blur the background and not the orange slice, we need to reverse the selection. Its ok if you find this confusing, just trust me and hold down CTRL+SHIFT+I.


Now you will see the dotted line shifted to the perimeter of the pic and also around the orange slice. This means we have selected everything except that slice to be worked on next.

8. Now that we have the entire background selected for Operation Blurring Background its a breeze from here.

Click on Filter — Blur — Gaussian Blur..


You will see a window appear where you can specify the amount of blur you want.


I have chosen 10 for the picture below.

Gaussian Blur – 10

For 10, its hard to see much difference so I have also tried 15 and 20 to illustrate the difference.

Gaussian Blur – 15

Gaussian Blur – 20

I’d probably go with 20 for this pic since that setting has highlighted the orange slice beautifully and made it look nice and crisp. I have never gone above 20 because I feel the picture may look too artificial beyond that.

9. Once you have chosen the blur amount you want and like what you see, go to File — Save as — and save your file.

10. The final step, of course, is to upload the picture to your site with the recipe and wow your friends 😉

I’d love to see the results in case anyone tries this. Please do leave a comment with the link to your picture.

NOTES

– The options and menu items may change with a change in the Photoshop version. I have Photoshop 7.0 so if you have a different version and absolutely cannot find any of these options, please let me know.

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Comments

  2. Pradeep U.N.

    Great blog!
    You might want to consider getting a Macro Lens. even if its a beginner lens and used – would go a long way in some great shots! Photographers buy used equipment and upgrade all the time; and they welcome new amateurs/enthusiasts by passing things along. So get a macro lens – and it also doubles up as a fantastic portrait lens!

    Reply

  4. Devika

    Thank you so much for this deceptively simple put powerful technique. I just started working on Photoshop for my food pictures and am excited about what all I can do with Gaussian blur.

    Reply

  9. macchabiscotti

    hello! I just came across your tutorial and this is great!! photoshop has always been intimidating for me, but I know I should try to learn because the results can be incredibly rewarding. Thanks!

    Reply

  12. bengalicuisine

    Hi Nags,
    that was really a good post. I have an adobe [hotoshop installed in my laptop, but the only thing I do with is to crop photos and put those copyright notices on them. This is really great knowledge I have gained and would surely try out for my next post.
    Love Sudeshna

    Reply

  13. Pavani

    Very informative tutorial. I have a very old version of photoshop, will check out if it has the blurring features. Thanks for posting this.

    Reply

  23. Sonal

    Awesome!!!!!!! followed your blog from quite sometime but not checked this series.
    lovely..bloggers will be really greatfully for such helpful series.

    Reply

  24. aquadaze

    great step by step instructions..I’ m still at the point and shoot stage, haven’t tried my hand at any thing else..you make it sound almost possible

    Reply

  27. kiran

    great stuff there, Nags! Truly appreciate the work and time you are putting in. I have learnt a lot thru ur photography classes, and a big fan of piccasa now thanks to you

    Reply

  29. Divz

    Ohhh thats cool…and i was thinking that mostly everyone had a D-SLR cam…so now all i need is to arrange for a photoshop software to get that effect.. 🙂

    Reply

  31. sharada

    hi,
    thanks a lot for visitng my blog & for those sweet words.
    i tried this blur tutorial..it works like magic and u will see this feature in my coming posts. Thanks again for this informative post.

    Reply

  32. sharada

    Hi,
    i am a novice blogger.Your blog is very informative and very well maintained .Posts like this helps a new blogger like me to enhance our blogs.
    Looking forward for more information.
    Keep it up!

    Reply

  33. Jon Silver

    Good tutorial… you just have to be careful to make the edges look sharp without leaving artefacts where it suddenly transitions from sharp to blurry.

    Reply

  35. Me

    Great post Nags!
    As always I love the pics – I was wondering the little star thing on Paneer Peas Pulao, that’s a star anise right?

    Reply

  36. Cynthia

    Great tutorial! My Canon SD20 point-and-shoot is finicky and only blurs when it wants to. This will definitely help the quality of my photographs, thank you!

    Reply

  39. Nags

    Martin – that’s definitely a good idea but developing film and stuff is too time consuming at this digital age 😉

    Sandeepa – Yes you can do it in photoshop but I don’t think I know it well enough to give a tutorial. The pics in my header were done using Picasa so that does a good job too, actually 🙂

    Vilasini – Ayoo I haven’t even heard of Corel Draw! I am really a novice at these things, sorry!

    SJ – will surely try 🙂

    Me – Yes, that’s star anise! So pretty no? In India you get these broken, shrivelled star anise but here they are so beautifully formed and lovely. I don’t know how you get them in the US but am guessing it will be good quality.

    Reply

  40. Soma

    Thanks Yaar. This is a great great post!! I love taking pics.. & it is so darn frustrating.. I use only the macro to focus on the near & automatically put the beyond in out of focus… I just got an older version of PS.. but i am really struggling to teach myself. I'm bookmarking this post!! Thanks again & again.

    Reply

  41. SJ

    If you can post all the cool features of photoshop here- step by step of course! I will be eternally grateful to you! I cannot move my lazy ass to figure out those things by myself!

    Reply

  43. S.M.Vilasini

    Its simply Awesome!!! Wonderful to c tat u have made a nice combo of ur passion for food n photography!! Btw wanna ask u this.. whether it is possible to do the same with Corel-Draw 10??

    Reply

  44. Sandeepa

    Thanks for this, really from the bottom of my heart. Also do you know how to use PS to make the entire pic B&W except for one portion with original color

    Reply

  45. Asha

    Great post Nagu. I looked at the photo shop too, although expensive and could have bought it, I am more concerned about all the tech thingies I just don’t really need. Blurring and colors, we can do that Picasa too, not as perfect, but can do and Trisha got a sample disc of Photoshop, I hardly use it! 😛

    Blurred photo looks excellent.

    Reply

  46. bengalicuisine

    Hi Nags,
    that was really a good post. I have an adobe [hotoshop installed in my laptop, but the only thing I do with is to crop photos and put those copyright notices on them. This is really great knowledge I have gained and would surely try out for my next post.
    Love Sudeshna

    Reply

  47. martin

    Good point, ‘cheap’ is relative. But maybe think about getting a Olympus OM or Canon AE? I don’t know how much it is for film processing where you live, but you could probably get an incredible camera with a fast manual focus lens for little money. Even if it’s too much of a hassle for food photography, some of the food-people have such an artsy relationship with nutrition you might like photography as well 😉

    martin

    Reply

  48. martin

    I like your approach, but why not get a cheap DSLR with a fast lens? A used 20d or even 3-Digit-Canon (350d, .. ) is cheap, plus a fast 50mm (fast = aperture of f1.4, f1.8, f2, .. ) would give you amazing and realistic results. The way you blur the image hurts everyone who knows about DOF, it’s simply not realistic and frankly not as smooth as a decent camera could make it look.

    Good luck,
    martin

    Reply

  49. Lavi

    Nags..I just followed ur step’s..it worked very well for me..such a flawless step-by-step instruction’s from u!!

    Thanks a lot with Hugs!!

    Reply

  54. Kitchen Adda

    Hey Thanks Buddy, This was one of the real original , And very useful post i received from your End.Thanks.

    I was clicking few pics and trying to write my name on pics but No luck ,

    some1 suggested me to do it with P.Shop too,

    Any Suggestions on that too?
    the neat way of this blog and step wise visual frame just made me a biggest fan of your Blog

    Take Care,

    Reply

  56. Nags

    Martin- I definitely agree that using techniques like this are only second to owning a great camera. I checked online for the price of a canon 350d and the cheapest comes for 440 USD which is roughly 22,000 INR.

    To put things into perspective, that amount is probably twice or thrice as much as an average, internet savvy person pays per month for rent in India.

    Not all of us can afford an SLR easily. Heck, I have been in Singapore for almost a year now and even I can’t afford one right now cuz I have so many other priorities.

    This post is for people like that 🙂 Maximising what you have, in the best way possible.

    Thanks for your tips though 🙂

    Reply

  58. Nags

    Kitchen Adda – You can add text using Picasa 3, and its a free software you can download. I have a tutorial for that as well, just click on Photography Tips on the top menu bar.

    Thanks Madhu, Sharmi and Mahimaa 🙂

    Reply

  59. Madhumathi

    Thats a neat tutorial for blurring food pictures using PS..Thanks for taking your time for people like me..your food photography basics series is so useful 🙂

    Reply

  60. Sharmilee! :)

    Hey nice way to blur….I use a slightly different method, use the magic wand tool for the selections, but will give a try to urs and let u know how it turns out! but still wouldnt give up the trying the blur using the digicam 🙂

    Reply

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