Hi, I made a depthmap for a render using poser, but i don't know how to use it in photoshop. I googled but cant' find the answer - most tutes seem to be on how to make a depth map and I already have that part. I made a mask and copied the depthmap into this and opened lensblur and fiddled around but it isn't working. I think im doing somethign wrong. Love esther

you need to add the depth map as a new channel, not a layer mask. You can select that as the lens blur and it should be fine - See

http://www.workshop.mintviz.com/tutorials/depth-of-field-using-vray-zdepth/ look at the bit from "Compositing the ZDepth in Adobe Photoshop" which is pretty much how I do it with a Vue ZDepth map. You probably won't need to invert the map though

Hi thanks. that is a good tutorial. However it didn't work. I thought maybe the image was too big so I tried a smaller image. the depth map goes blurry in the filter window but the image is unchanged.

Try taking off invert

Hi Esther! I've never used a depth map before, but I am going to try my best to help you. From what I've read from your posts, you're trying to add a lens blur to your depth map and you can only see the blur in the preview, but not on the actual image. Have you tried the lens blur on a regular image and does it show on the actual image? If it doesn't, then I wonder if something could be wrong with the preferences for the lens blur filter. I found a thread on Adobe's website in which a person couldn't get the lens blur to show on their actual image in Photoshop Elements and I think it started working again after they deleted the lens blur preferences folder, I think that refreshed the settings for the lens blur filter. Even though the thread shows how to delete the folder in Elements, Photoshop has the same folder in the same location. Maybe this solution will help you. Here's a link to the Adobe thread I'm talking about:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1083473

Thanks Dee. I am away from my computer for a few days but I will try when I get back. I will let you know how I get on. Love esther

You're welcome Esther! Ok, that sounds good. I hope what I said will work for you. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

well i tried invert and that didn't fix it. I tried another picture and that worked so then I went back to my picture and i noticed that there is this orange highlight on the layer on the right which you can see in my above image. so then I clicked all the layers off in the channel and tried againa dn ow it works. thanks.

You're welcome Esther! I'm happy you got it back to working, now you can have fun creating again!