[GIMP tutorial] Creating an image with a «Bokeh» effect

Hello! this is my first contribution as a writer of this blog, motivated after reading the moving entrance from KZKG ^ Gaara and thinking «it would be nice to see some posts about GIMP" I told myself : "why not?»…. Yes, it does not sound like a very serious reason, but something is something in the community, don't you think? へ ( ﾟ ▽ ﾟ) No

The effect "bokeh»Is a resource used in photography to give an aesthetic blur to the background or certain objects in the image. This stylized effect is also great in terms of digital design and we can create it using GIMP, the free software image manipulation tool par excellence.

This tutorial is a short example of how to create the pattern and create the image with that effect.

To make an image with a bokeh effect, we first create a 150 × 150 image, with a transparent background.
1. We use the elliptical selection tool by checking the box "fixed: aspect ratio" in the properties section, and we mark a circle the size of the image.

2. Then with the fill tool, we color the circle white and then go to the "select" tab and choose the option "shrink [shrink]" and give it the value of 4

3. After that we proceed to delete the interior section by pressing delete.

4. Again, we choose the “fill” tool, with opacity at 50% in properties, we color the interior and the pattern is ready 😀

5. we keep in ~ / .gimp-2.8 / brushes giving it the name and description you want. (you will most likely have to close and reopen the GIMP so we can use the pattern.)

6. Once the pattern is ready, we proceed to create a new image of the desired size, in this case 1280 × 800, with the desired background color.

7. Now we make a gradient with the “blend” tool selecting “in front of transparent” in the options. Selecting the color we want

8. Next we create a new layer from the menu "layer" → "new layer", transparent and we will use it to create the first layer of "lenses".

9. We select the “brush” tool and the following is to choose our pattern in the properties, then in the “dynamics” section we choose “Dynamics Random”, this will make the size and pressure random.

10. now to create some circles

11. As the layer created is the lowest level of lenses, we go to "filters" → "Blur [blur]" → "Gaussian blur"

there we give the value (between 10 -15 is fine) and we accept.

with that we already have the first layer done. The joke of this image is to create layers at the rate that the last layer created is the most defined, the first layer we created we gave a blur between 10 - 15, the next we gave between 5-7 and the last no blur. )

* We repeat from step 8 according to the levels we want.

For this example I created 2 more layers, like this, the lower one is the most blurred, the middle one is slightly out of focus and the upper one without blur.

At the end we select the base layer (the one with the gradient) and select the “Blend” tool, opacity at 60%, shape: radial and add some background highlights (or shadows).

in the end it should look something like this:

I hope you liked it and that it is useful, greetings! (^ _ ^) ノ