But even without a high-end camera or portrait mode, you can still create beautifully soft backgrounds in Adobe Photoshop.īeyond simply granting you an ability you may have not had access to in camera, choosing to add blur in Photoshop can give you more control and flexibility over where the blur is applied and how it looks. The effect is popular for portraits, and is emulated - with some limitations - by the “portrait modes” now found on many smartphones. Background blur, often called “bokeh” after the Japanese word for blur, is generally associated with high-end cameras with wide-aperture lenses.
