Bokeh Examples, Textures & Create A Perfect Bokeh Effect

For those who aren’t familiar with the term “Bokeh”, it refers to the light circles that appear in some photographs when the focus isn’t on the light itself, therefore they look a little blurred out. Below are some wonderful examples of Bokeh Photography, some great Bokeh textures, and a step-by-step tutorial on how to create the Bokeh effect in Adobe Photoshop.

Great Examples of Bokeh Photography

Wonderful & Free Bokeh Textures

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How To Create The Perfect Bokeh Effect

Step One: Creating the Brush

Create a new document that is 900 X 900 pixels in size with a transparent background.

Go to the Elliptical Marquee Tool and go to the very top-left of your document and Click+Shift+Drag it to the very bottom-right to create a perfect circle (The “Shift” is very important here). Fill it up with a black #000000 color, and then remove the selection.

Go to Bending Options on your “Circle” layer, and adjust your settings so they are the same as the ones below:

Now, in order to make this image a brush, go to Edit/ Define Brush Preset and name it anything you like, I named it Bokeh.

Step Two: The Gradient

Create a new document about 900 X 500 pixels in size, you can change the size if you’d like. Now using the Gradient Tool, fill up the document with a two-color gradient. You can choose any two or even three colors you like, I will be using two colors; Dark Pink: #BE2A62 and Dark Purple: #5E29A5. To fill your document, use Shift+Click+Drag down. Here’s how my document looks like so far.

Step Three: The Bokeh Group

Create a new folder by clicking the “Create Group Tool” at the very bottom of your layer’s display. And call it “Bokeh” (Double click on the name to change it).

Add a new layer to the group, and call it “Bokeh 1“, now go to the Brush Tool and select the brush we made earlier.
Change the brush settings as shown below. Set the color to white #FFFFFF and draw a few circles in “Bokeh 1″, and then go to Filter/ Blur/ Gaussian Blur.






Here’s how my image looks so far.

Create another layer in the group and call it “Bokeh 2″, use the brush a few times, and then right click on the layer and go to Blending Options, and select the Outer Glow option. Change the layer opacity to 50%.

Finally, create a third layer “Bokeh 3″ and draw more circles, open the Blending Options again and select the Outer Glow option. Then duplicate the layer.

Step Four: Add A Little Light

Create a new layer and drag it outside the group, go to your Brush Tool and choose a normal 400 pixel round brush. Select the white color and draw a circle on the right of your image.

Step Five: The Final Product

And there you have it, add a little text, and you’ve got the perfect Bokeh effect using Adobe Photoshop.
(Click here to view the final image).

Further Resource

I’ve found this wonderful tutorial by Abduzeedo.Com explaining how they made their wonderful Bokeh Wallpaper. So make sure you check it out, it shows you how to make the same effect in our tutorial, but with a very dark background, bringing the colors of the circles alone!