Helicon Soft Forum

Apparently there is a new nifty selective focus tool offered by onOne. It seems to do what I suggested previously (although I do not remember suggesting such a hefty price :? ).
[url]http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=35[/url]

As I said, selective focus would be only a really nice toy. The blurred framed option is absolutely wonderful for what it is supposed to - I just discovered new variations - but to achieve selective focus type of photographic effects many stars would have to align perfectly. In my hands the "[u]blur[/u]/sharpen brush" seems the best way to get close to this kind of effects.

Lutz,

You can achive similar effect now by using oval frame and blurred image as background on the Frames tab. I know it is not exactly what you need but looks quite similar. I know people use it for portrait shot mostly.

A really neat toy ( obviously nothing essential) woud be a "selective focus" tool to achieve effects similarly to the lensbaby lenses.
I am thinking of a circular or oval selection ( that can be moved around freely) with steadly increasing blur towards the edges of the image (up to a selectable maximum value). Perhaps it would be good to have a lens-blur algorithm instead of the common gaussian blur.

Examples of the desired effect can be viewed for example here:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/lensbaby/
or
http://www.lensbabies.com/
http://www.imaging-resource.com/ACCS/L3G/LBY3.HTM
A software emulation can not be expected to be perfect but perhaps better than carrying around another lens.