ZBrush Character Creation - Advanced Digital Sculpting 2nd Edition

■ Photoshop Compositing 291

Depth of Field

We are now at the final stage. As one last touch to help add more realism to the image, we’ll
add a depth-of-field effect using the depth.psd image that we exported from ZBrush. The aim
here is to blur out the edges of the image as they get farther from the viewer. This helps to
approximate the effects of an actual camera lens. It also helps guide the eye to the center of
interest of the picture by keeping the face as the most focused and crisp aspect of the image.

1. Collapse all the layers so far into a new layer by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E. Name this
   layer collapsed comp (Figure 8.51).

Figure 8.51 Create a collapsed copy of all your layers.

2. We need to resize the depth pass to the other document’s resolution. Load the depth.psd
   image. Choose Image → Image Size. In the Image Size dialog box, open the Window menu
   at the top of the screen in the main Photoshop menu. Select your main document from
   the list at the bottom of the Window menu. This will automatically set the image size
   measurements to match your main document. Click OK and your depth image will resize.
   Remember that we were exporting documents at half size, but the Alpha menu exported
   this depth grab at full resolution. You will also want to convert the image to RGB 8 bit
   using the Image → Mode menu.


3. Invert the depth grab by pressing Ctrl+I, then Select All and copy the image to the
   clipboard. Select the collapsed layer and create a layer mask by clicking Layer → Layer
   Mask → Reveal All. Select the layer mask by Alt-clicking the Layer Mask icon and
   paste the depth grab into the layer mask (Figure 8.52).