Most of you may already know this, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Depth of Field is one of many effects you can use with Vue renderings to achieve more realism in renderings. Here's how to do it in Photoshop.

The tutorial can be found at:
www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/vuelab/AddingDOFinPhotoshop.htm

best,
Chipp

Nice TUT, However,

No offense, but your depth of field, does not look like a true DOF. You have too much blurred too close to the camera, and the same amount far away. This is not true DOF. I would suggest instead you use a combination of Fadeout and Lens Blur so you will get minimal, or no blur close up and maximum blur far away.

No offense taken.

Couple of points though. One, the DOF is exaggerated to demonstrate the effect. Also, it's very difficult to accurately tell how much blur there should be without knowing exactly how far away something is. For instance, are the buildings on the shore 100 yards or 10,000 yards away?

Certainly it is difficult to critique DOF without knowing that type of information?

I've certainly seen more out of focus blurred effects from objects much closer. I assume there is a real world equivalent f-stop setting which might get this effect assuming the vehicle is standing still ;-) !

Thanks for you reply, you have some very nice images in your gallery!

best,
Chipp

I agree, unless you have a model to work with it is difficult to determine an expectable average of blur.  As a result, I use a system of measurements when creating a scene. 

I calculate the size of the object of most interest and then make measurements in relation to that to the distance and size of other objects.  You can do this by taking a length of rod, a cylinder reduced to a size that equals the length of the object of interest and use it as a measuring stick to measure approximately how far away from the camera and other objects; and how large other points of interest should be.  Just switch to one of the other views and measure.

In photography, there are lengths in inches and feet that can correspond to an f-stop.  Trying to achieve scale is difficult when you use aerial perspective, but it is possible.

Thanks, I am playing with Vue to see if I might migrate from 2D to 3D, and I think I am hooked.

Thanks for another excellent tutorial Chipp!
Wonder if there are Photoshop plugins that make DOF easier to do accurately?

Attached Link: http://www.dofpro.com/info.htm

I used to do this manually until I found this DOF plugin for photoshop. It can be unwieldy sometimes, and I still occasionally do DOF effects the manual way, but there is a level of precision in the plugin  you can just not get with the manual method

Thanks a lot, Chipp, I struggled to load the Z depth image  into the filter's map, and was never able to do it, and the PS manual never helped ( maybe I overlooked it!)
Agile, the dofpro plug in is wonderful, but works best on close ups I think, on large scale renders, the effect looks weird most of the time. But for close ups, it's just the best.