Create realistic lens blur effects from almost any video with a range of stunningly beautiful bokeh geometries.
Presets
Bokeh presets instantly bathe your images in beautiful blurred foreground effects. Find several options via the blue Open Dashboard... button or the Choose a Preset... button below it.
As with all other Universe tools, you can modify or create a Bokeh look and then save it under its own name by pressing the Save Preset... button.
Modify the Effect
Shape. You can select from eight shape styles for your bokeh: Triangle, Square, Circle, Pentagon, Hexagon, Heptagon, Octogon, and Star. The first three of these are shown below with a Blur Amount of 240. Modifying Blur Amount may make these shapes appear larger, sharper, or less defined, depending on your settings.
Blur Amount controls the amount of blur. To illustrate, the comparison below shows values of 100 (left) and 600 (right).
Blur Angle controls the angle of the blur effect. Shown below are values of 0 (the default, left) and 45 (right).
Highlight Boost controls the luminance level of your highlights. Universe Bokeh defaults to a value of 60, but notice in the comparison below how the minimum value of -100 (left) creates a general, flat blurring. In contrast the maximum of 100 (right) reveals an almost surreal, sparkly texture.
Bokeh Ratio "squeezes" your bokeh's shape. Lower values (0 shown at left, below) yield a vertical stretching, 50 (center) is the default, and 100 (right) yields horizontal stretching.
The Camera Focus group contains controls that emulate the in-camera functions one might use to manipulate bokeh characteristics optically. Access these features by checking the Enable box.
Custom Blur Map. Blur maps establish which parts of your footage are to be blurred. Traditionally, blur maps are grayscale images, with the whiter map areas having more blur applied to them and the darker parts showing less blur. This process can also be inverted (via the Invert Blur Map checkbox), as shown below. A special note for those new to depth maps: Just because an image is grayscale does not make it a blur (or depth) map. The comparison below shows this. The left picture is a conventional grayscale image. The right image is a depth map. Notice how, for example, all of the detail in the closest corner of the blur map is lost in the black. That's because no object detail is needed. The image serves only as a reference for the amount of blur applied.
Focal Length affects the field of view and depth of field. Short focal lengths capture wider scenes with more background and foreground in focus. Long focal lengths narrow the view and blur the background, which is great for highlighting subjects. Zoom lenses can vary this focal length for flexible shooting. The Bokeh plugin emulates this process. At a value of 0 (the minimum), foreground objects are clear while background objects are blurred. Higher values will do the opposite, blurring the foreground while increasingly bringing distant objects into focus. We illustrate these 0% (center) and 100% (right) values below, along with the original image (left).
Invert Blur Map effectively turns all black areas to white and all white areas to black within your blur map. Note: Custom Blur Map and the parameter set that governs focus area characteristics (see below) are two very distinct features. However, Invert Blur Map and Focal Length impact both of these features concurrently.
Focus Position marks the center of where the camera should focus (or defocus if inverted).
Size sets the dimensional area of the focus field.
Attenuation grades the focus point between the focus field (the focused region with no blur or bokeh) and the blurred, out-of-focus area with an adjustable focal length. Attenuation happens between these two regions as a graded step. We illustrate this in the image below. We've used a fairly large Blur Amount value (500) to help accentuate the effect. Also note the Attenuation value of 37 percent. This lets us see how circular bokeh in the foreground (left) are much larger than the bokeh closest to our more distant focus region (right). With Camera Focus disabled, all bokeh highlights appear similar in size.
Aspect Ratio controls whether your focus area orients along a horizontal (positive values) or vertical (negative values) field. Minimum and maximum values will yield nearly straight focal field edges while intermediate values will be rounded, with 0% presenting a roughly almond-shaped oval and -65% a circle. Shown below are values of 5% (left), 100% (center), and -100% (right).
