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PHOTO LAB · SEE THE DIFFERENCE

One moment.
Many ways to see.

Explore focus, framing, aperture and the character of light.


Fictional bride and groom with white flowers beside a lake
AI-generated fictional wedding scene. Educational illustration; not a real client event.
01 · CHOOSE THE SHARP PLANE

Focus on the feeling.

Move focus between the nearby flowers, the couple and the garden behind them.

Flowers · 1.4 mGarden · 12 m

Illustrative distances · 50 mm · f/2 · fixed view

The couple stays sharp while nearby flowers and the distant garden soften.

Preparing the illustration…
How this illustration works

The source is one AI-generated photograph. Focus and aperture use three approximate depth zones: foreground flowers at 1.4 m, the couple and their bouquet at 3 m, and the garden at 12 m. These distances are teaching assumptions, not measurements of the scene.

Each zone is softened separately using an ideal thin-lens blur estimate for a 50 mm lens and a 36 mm-wide sensor. Subject masks limit colour spill at edges. Nearby background colours are extended behind softened edges; hidden detail is unknown. This is a layered illustration, not a new photograph or a complete optical simulation. Existing softness cannot be removed; hidden areas, individual hair strands, real lens bokeh and diffraction are not reconstructed.

Focal length shows an anchored crop from 35 to 85 mm equivalents. The viewpoint and facial proportions stay fixed. It enlarges existing pixels and does not recover detail. Real photographs made with different lenses can also differ in resolution, lens characteristics and depth of field.

Aperture light is compared with f/4 at the same shutter speed and sensitivity: light varies as 1 / f-number². Equal-brightness mode represents exposure compensation. Turning it off gives a display-limited brightness illustration; highlight clipping is not a sensor simulation.

Optics reference: Physically Based Rendering: camera models.

The source photograph is shown above. Enable JavaScript to try the five experiments.