Bokeh effects have become popular recently in graphic arts and in photography. It is a technique that blurrs the background so that the light appears to be reflected and “bouncing” off the foreground subject. In Japanese, Bokeh means fuzziness or dizziness, literally. Achieving this effect can be done with a camera or digitally in Photoshop. There are hundreds of natural and digital Bokeh textures floating around the web, and they all give your photos a “dreamy” or “sparkle” effect to your photographs.

This effect adds a dreamy quality to winter photographs as well as wedding photographs. You can play around with this effect in post production to be on the safe side with wedding photography. There is a huge selection of color, shapes and styles of Bokeh photography from glitter to firework style to even grunge. Later in this article we will cover using textures in Photoshop to create the desired effect.

The first step to achieving the Bokeh effect with a camera is to adjust your aperture settings to blur the background. For the best results, you will need your background to have a brighter tone than the rest of the photograph. Sparkle will obviously not be noticeable in dimly lit areas. You will need to set your aperture settings to achieve the narrowest depth of field possible. A high zoom also helps create a naturally blurry affect. Most of today's digital cameras will not be able to achieve this affect because you can not manually adjust the settings needed to create this dream-like state. A digital SLR (DSLR) camera will give you the best results.

This effect is best created when your camera is in aperture priority mode. This method blurs the background by automatically adjusting to the narrowest depth of field settings. Full zoom will also create this effect. Manual mode could be the easiest way to achieve this effect for beginners. Setting your camera to the lowest f-stop numbers, slowing down the shutter speed, and manually setting the focus creates the best results.

Digital Bokeh can be the easiest way to create this effect. Searching for these “textures” on graphic design blogs and sites like Deviantart.com, can yield some spectacular and creative Bokeh textures.

In Photoshop, to add a texture to a photo:

• Open both documents you would like to use

• Drag the texture "on top of" the photograph.

• On the "layers panel" select blend mode by clicking on the drop down menu.

This next step is tricky because it's all a matter of preference.

• What I have found works the best is overlay and soft light blend modes. Overlay works best with darker backgrounds and light textures. Soft light works best with darker textures and light backgrounds. You will need to adjust the settings to what is attractive to your eye and works for you.

• Once you have the desired effect, flatten the image and save as a JPeg or PNG file.

Bokeh is one of the latest trends for beautifying designs and photographs. It adds a dreamy sparkle or a shimmer to your photographs. You are sure to make an impression on your clients with this technique.

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