I’ll repeat: I love Alien Skin products. I’ve never had or used a bad one. Someone somewhere has, so please raise your hand …  okay, no hands, so I stand on my statement. Hey, you’ve got to love a company whose mascot’s head looks like a watermelon with eyes. (Well, it is an alien, y’know.)

Bokeh – pronounced “bo-kuh,” not "bo-kay" – is derived from a Japanese word meaning “blur” or “haze”; it also means mental haze or senility and also happens to be the name of a town in Iran, but I digress.

Where we usually associate photos with a blur or haze as bad, used selectively, it creates a whole new look. (Think of it like Ben-Gay. Used the right way it’s nice, but get it where it shouldn’t be and, well, you get the drift.) We all know that backgrounds can be distracting and Bokeh (the software) lets you choose the amount of blurring, the type (explanation below) and where you create the blur. For instance, here are the original and the blurred (or Bokehed) version which I also used a frame on. Nice, huh? Well, she really liked it, anyway. If nothing else, it took a messy, busy background that distracted heavily from the subject and made it almost handsome.

There are standards and styles of bokeh. If you’re shooting a picture outdoors with a leafy background, the right lens and light combination will render a “creamy” background. It’s in quotes because that’s also blur control in Bokeh the software. Different lenses have different characteristics and produce different images ranging from soft, fuzzy round ones to ones that have pentagonal, hexagonal or other -gonal” attributes depending on the number of blades in the aperture.

 
The plug-in renders effects resembling the characteristics of certain very popular camera lens diaphragms or, by another name, aperture or aperture mechanism. To control the light coming into a lens, there are a series of blades that move to narrow the hole that lets light in.

The classic definition is that a high-quality lens will have creamier bokeh and fewer specular highlights, which means it has softer dots that don’t have really bright, hard spots to them. If you point the camera at really bright lights, the angles on the diaphragm blades become more pronounced, like below. Expensive lenses generally have more blades and rounder bokeh.

Okay, that does it for the “So what and who cares, Frank” section of this review. On to the real reason you trekked across the ether: The Alien Skin Bokeh Review.

This is not a hard tool to use, but it has a lot of power. You can really tweak the look and, like any good plug-in, mess with the controls and get your own versions/settings and save them for re-use. You have three tabs to use:
– Settings

– Bokeh

– Vignette

There are three main ways to get a blurred background (we’ll discuss what that blur looks like in a moment – all three are on the Bokeh tab, too):
– Create a mask or outline
– Use the Radial tool
– Use the Planar tool

Here'a radial mask which you can rotate and change its shape using the handles:

And here's what the planar looks like:

Even with all the controls, the manual is only about fourteen pages long including the forward, TOC, index and all the photos they use to demonstrate how the program works. Like lots of other plug-ins, your desire to push all the buttons and wiggle the sliders is the main motivator. It’s easy enough right from the start to use it in minutes. Play around with it enough and you can create bokeh that are in star, heart or other shapes. There are other sliders, too, that let you boost or decrease "creaminess."

These pictures will tell you a lot about the controls, so let’s start with the tabs.

The Settings tab is primarily for the standard settings (Blur 20%, Blur 50%, etc.) and the different “lenses” under each of the settings. There are standard settings like “Blur 20% - Bokeh with Highlight Boost” and “Blur 20% - Focus Region Vignette.” I could explain in detail what each would do, but we know better than that, don’t we, beause it could go on forever. Additionally, though, under the standard settings are lists with popular lenses, like specific ones from Canon, Leica and others.

The next tab is the Bokeh setting and half its controls are shown. This is where the magic happens (to quote a line from a bad romance movie) because you can do gross adjustments (no, not like potty joke gross) to the image. The top check box control allows you to create the blur in a new layer, which I endorse. If you get into it and say, “Aw, crap, this looks bad,” you can nuke the layer and start over – fairly standard Photoshop wisdom.

Next there’s a button for invert selection, which puts the blur inside or outside of the selection regardless whether it’s your selection or one created by Bokeh.

Next is the Focus Region which buttons to allow you to choose only your selection (lasso, tragic wand, etc.), the Radial tool or the Planar tool.

Now here’s a cool automatic feature. If you have saved a selection as a channel or in another layer, it will ask if you want to use your selection, your selection plus the radial too or your selection plus the planar tool. Nifty. Want only the radial or planar tool? Nuke your selection.

Vignetting lets you simulate the natural vignette that some lenses create, which is where the light falls off at the corners and they get darker. You can also choose the intensity of the vignette, meaning only the corners are dark, or the entire area outside the mask is dark. Bonus: You can create a colored vignette like this:

If you do much photography, I'd suggest plunking down the $199 and change to get it. If you have to shoot in bright daylight, or using flash, you can't always get the depth of field you want. This lets you dull distracting objects and keep the focus on your subject. I've already experimented with it on some tough shots and it's worked well. As with all Alien Skin products, there is no shortage of famous photogs who've endorsed it.

By the way, sorry for the sub-par appearance of some of the photos. My technology failed me and I had to resort to using my Canon to snap the monitor. Lame, but it gets the job done.

My summary: Not for everyone, but anyone can use it. It can save a few shots that mean something, and dress up those that really mean something. I can't imagine a portrait or wedding photog not getting this. Besides that, you can take everyday pictures and add a dreamy touch and draw focus just where you want it. You can create dreamy scenes, dark ones, whatever you can invent. It lets you take ordinary pictures and make them different and interesting. It's worth the money - get it.

Frank Goad, Frank Communications, www.frankcomlex.com