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Hi folks,

I am looking to simulate wide aperture shallow DOF. Preferably in LR, but PS is ok too.

LR has a graduated filter tool, which can be useful for gradual exposure adjustment, but not for GRADUAL gaussian blur. At least not to my knowledge.

Can anyone recommend a tool for this?

Thanks,

There are several plugins that simulate such effects, e.g. from Alienskin and OnOne. You can also try to create such an effect in Photoshop itself with the help of layers and layer masks.

Thanks for the recommendations. But, oh, the price! One is $160, the other $199 - that is serious price for a single function plugin.

I know I can (and will) download the eval versions, but has anyone one done a comparison? I presume that they may find more in depth differences than me just "playing" with the demos, and at this pricing I would not want to buy the wrong one!

Too bad that the Plugin Site hasn't tackled this. I am sure that you guys could do a good job at a better price point for amateurs...

Here are less expensive ones, but also with less features I think:
http://www.topazlabs.com/lenseffects/
http://www.frischluft.com/lenscare/index.php
http://www.dofpro.com/index.htm

Actually I did not have much motivation to develop such a filter so far. I consider it easy enough to create such an effect in Photoshop itself. You often have more creative freedom when you do it while taking a photo, because there is still depth information available, which can only be manually simulated at the postprocessing stage. Once cameras are able to capture the depth information for each pixel in a file, then applying such effects afterwards will become much more interesting.

If you overlayed a "fishnet" of rectangular squares, and then used the mouse to distort them to show the perspective, then applied a distance related diffusion, that would be useful and challenging, perhaps.

An alternative description of what I had in mind, is if you were to take an angle photo of a brick wall, that is how I visualize the stretched perspective net. The user could than use a paint brush to uncover parts that should stay in focus.

Anyway, just some ideas.

Thanks for the links. The topazsoftware is on special for $50 and is tempting...

Topaz Lens Effects is by far the least expensive option and adds additional depth map editing capability. DOF Pro hasn't been updated for two years, so that's always a red flag, plus it's Windows only, unlike the others.

Thanks. Topaz is on special this month for $50 I am going to buy that, I think...