Thought the iPhone 4S’s new camera is impressive, to say the least, it does share one issue with any other camera phone or pocket digicam: the tiny sensor means it simply can’t deep focus, making the background artistically blurry while the subject is kept crystal sharp.
If you want shallow depth-of-field like a SLR while using your iPhone, consider giving Big Lens a try. It will allow you to give your iPhone photos a super depth of field, just like those fancy pants pros use.
Of course, Big Lens only works by applying smart post-processing effects to an existing photo. After you snap a photo, you’re asked to roughly paint over the subject of the picture, which will allow Big Lens to match the edges of the subject. Then select your aperture, and what Instagram-style filters you want to apply to the final picture.
The results, as you can see above, are striking: not only does the depth of field stuff work very well, but you can apply your filters to only the subject or background of the image, allowing for some very unique effects.
Best of all? Only a buck. What are you waiting for? Blow that aperture wide the $#%! open!
[via Gadget Lab]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
34 responses to “Big Lens Allows You To Blur The Backgrounds In Your iPhone Photos”
the photo you are showing with this article is incorrect. It is a photo of Siri.
LOL. I thought Google Reader was screwing up. Thanks for confirming the image is completely wrong.
Visited the App on the App Store… Looks great. I’m picking this one up right now. :-)
… There still a pic of Siri posted above.
Would it have been too much trouble including a photo of said blurring effect made my Big Lens?
Can’t you tell that the black background behind the Mac is blurred? Amazing effect! :-)
Cool. Doesn’t work with 4s pictures..
Just as I post that they release the update. Pretty neat little toy. Worth the 99 cents.
The “Update” still DOES NOT WORK WITH iPhone 4S – you get a message saying it does not work with files larger than 3 MB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Def not worth a dollar until it supports 4S photos
The output sample on this article looks very amateurish. If this photo was taken with a large aperture camera lens, the desk would be blurred at the leading edge, the trailing edge, but sharp near where the pitcher is. Nice try, but it looks like a bad Photoshop job.
You got it confused. The iPhone can’t have shallow focus due to it’s large sensor. It naturally has a deep focus, or deep depth of field.
ick, you sound like a douchebag…
update was released today stupid
It works fine on mine, trust me, it is something that you are doing wrong…Happy trails..
ya, I agree with AaronD12. That’s no DOF, that’s blurring everything except the jug.
classy
ick, you sound like a douchebag…