FAKING SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD
​
As well as using the panorama technique to enhance subject isolation I've also tried faking the blur in post production. This involves hand painting depth masks, which in turn controls where the photo is blurred. It can be pretty time consuming if you want good accuracy with this technique.
PHOTO SCANNING / 3D
​
The below image was taken a step further by using photo scanning (photogrammetry) to build a 3D model of the scene. This was then used to render out an accurate depth mask. The problem with this technique is that although the grey-scale values will be accurate the location of the edges won't be. This is because of the rough 3D model and approximation of the camera angle in the 3D scene. To finish off the image you'll have to do some fiddling to make the depth mask align with the photo and then some more hand painting to fix edges and small details. All this can easily amount to a whole days work, although much of that will be the processing time for the 3D model.
Z-DEPTH / MASK
​
Here is the z-depth image rendered out of the 3D software for the above image. This is used in Photoshop as a mask to control where the blur is applied using the 'Lens Blur' filter.
​