Today we’re going to be making a background based on the Bokeh style of design. Bokeh is the out-of-focus look of backgrounds, or the heavy use of focus in a design. This is highly evident in specific camera lenses, and even some people suffer from “halos”, or the out-of-focus look of lights, especially at night.

Anyway, we’re going to be making something like this today:

It looks great, and works well as a desktop background. You can choose any color you’d like, I just chose orange for sheer enjoyment.

Step 1
First, open Photoshop and make a document that’s your desktop’s resolution size, at 300 pixels per inch. Mine’s 1280 x 1024, so I made mine that size. Then, press Cmd+J to duplicate the background layer, and delete the old one.
Step 2
Now, the first thing you’re gonna wanna do is choose what color you’d like your background to be. Mine’s orange just for fun. Make yours any color you’d like. Once you’ve done that, add a gradient overlay going from a darker to a lighter shade of the color you chose. You’ll probably have to scale up your gradient in the Dialogue box that pops up. Just turn up the “Scale” bar to 200%. Mine looks like this:

Step 3

Now, to create a subtle texture to illustrate a sense of depth in the composition. We’ll do that by using the “Chalk 60 pixel” brush in the standard brush palette that comes with Photoshop. Feel free to scale up or down your brush size, or experiment with the brush to get a different look. Anyway, we’re going to need to tweak the brush a bit. So let’s go to the brush Dialogue box. If you’re in the default workspace style, then there should be a bar that looks like this:

Use the following settings:

Now, create a new layer and color over all of it with your tweaked brush. (or however you’d like your design to be, I suggest just get creative with it. Post your result in the Flickr group and show us your 1337 skillz! (Just kidding.)  Then set this layer to overlay.

After you’ve done that,  it should look like this:

Set this layer at about 25% opacity, depending on what you want your design to be. You might have to tweak this, so just remember that.

Step 4

Now we’re going to start creating the actual Bokeh effect. We’re going to attempt to make 3 different areas of focus, one in the background, with major blur, simulating the out-of-focus look, and one in the middle, where we’re focused, and one in front, blurred out once again. Let’s do it!

First: the background. Create a new layer, and choose the 9px round hard brush, and set it to 150px, depending on what size your design is. Now, set your brush to Scatter about 600% on Both Axes. (Check box just above adjuster.) Now set your color to white by pressing D, which sets your fore/background color to the default black and white, and then x, which flips them. Now, just draw diagonally with your brush across the middle of your design. Then apply a Gaussian Blur filter with a radius of 7.2 pixels. Set this layer’s opacity to about 15%, once again depending on your design.

Your design should now look like this:

Step 5

Now, for the center layer, which is focused, you’re going to use your creativity. I know, it’s hard, but at least try. Just go nuts with different sizes and colors of your brush. Tip: to get your brush to have different brightness on each circle, go to your brush window, then color dynamics, then turn the brightness Jitter up to 100%. This is what mine looked like after I was done. ( I have a Wacom tablet, so in order to get that tapered effect on your circles, you’ll have to use the pen tool to draw a path, and then stroke path, with pressure simulated.)

Now, set that layer to overlay .

Step 6

Create a new layer, set it to overlay, and then with a white 9px round brush with the scatter turned down to around 240%, draw around the corners so as to make it look like a tube going off the edge of your design. Mine looks like this:

Give it a Gaussian Blur of about 2.7 pixels. Now to create the front out-of-focus layer.

Step 7

Create a new layer, and then using a white brush at around 400px, create a couple of circles near the bottom corner of your choice. Then, Add a Gaussian Blur filter with about 9.7 pixels.

Step 8

Now, create another layer, name it bottom path, and add another path of circles just like the last half of step 5, only this time make sure the brush size is around 50-60. Then set the layer to overlay. Now, press Q to get the quick mask, then get your gradient tool (G) and make sure your gradient is set to black to transparent. Then drag over one half of your path. Save that selection by going to Select> Save Selection… and name it. Then, with that selection that it made, press Cmd+J. This sends it to a new layer. Now, load that selection you saved, then go to the layer named Lower Path, and press delete. now, go back to the top layer, and add a Gaussian blur of about 3.8 pixels. This creates the illusion of a path of circles coming closer to the camera. here’s what mine looks like now:

Step 9

Create a new layer above everything else, fill it with black, and go to Filter>Render>Lens Flare… and add a flare of any type you’d like, with 100% brightness. Now set this layer to overlay, and you’re done! Please don’t forget to Digg this post, or stumble it, or whatever you do! It helps keeps PSDden going! You can easily do it by clicking one of the social buttons on the bar below the Author Info Box. Here’s how mine turned out while I was writing this tutorial:

thanks for reading!

Credit: psdden.com