Focus Fall-off with Layer Masks (DEPTH OF FIELD)

Adjusting the mask to move the focus where we want it

Rather than repeating the process to move the gradient to take in more or less of the image, there's another way to achieve the goal. In this situation, we left too much of the image blurred, and needed to move the mask to the left.

Step Three: Adjusting the mask to blur less of the image

emember the mantra:
"White reveals, Black hides"

Clicking on the little chain icon between the two thumbnails to breaks the link between the mask and the image. Once unlocked, or unlinked, the mask or image can be moved independently of each other. Simply click in the thumbnail for the mask and move it around in the image.

Below you see the results of moving the mask. Keeping the shift key down to constrain the move horizontally, I click in the thumbnail and drag it to the left.
Notice the arrow is pointing to the white area of the mask, which allows blurred image to be revealed.
We want to cover that up.

Keeping the mask thumbnail active (see double lines around the thumbnail) I make a marquee (Tap M) selection of the white portion in my image window, and fill it with black! (Option/delete, or Alt/delete) Presto, the blur is gone and the crystal clear image returns to that portion. Now the mask thumbnail should be black all the way to its right edge.

Finishing: Color adjustment, crop and save

Since the awards were lighted by auditorium lights, the whole scene has an overall warmness. Rather than fooling with a bunch of tedious curves, or tonal adjustments -- just like an old-time photographer -- we'll use a color filter. They're located under the Layers menu and so we chose:
Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Photo Filters and then "Cool"

A slight amount of cooling filter brings the light to the right temperature. We feel this is more realistic since the awards were not nearly as "gold" as the auditorium lights made them look. to compare the effects of the cooling filter.