How to Create a Focus Pull Effect in Less Than 5 Minutes ⌛
Adding a focus pull effect to a 2D image can really liven up your videos and make still assets more dynamic and engaging to viewers. We have a step-by-step guide on how to easily create one on After Effects, with a little help from AI.
What is a Focus Pull effect?
A focus pull is a transition effect where the focus is transferred from the background to the foreground, or vice versa. This is often done in film but it can apply to your animations too by using camera lens blur techniques.
Our Step by Step Tutorial on how to Create a Focus pull Effect in After Effects
What to do ✅
First, choose your image and visit huggingface.com.
Next, upload your image and download the generated depth map.
Import both images into After Effects
Place the depth map image layer at the bottom, let’s call this the focal depth map, and add an adjustment layer on top
After this, apply the camera lens blur effect to the adjustment layer.
Now, all you do is change the camera lens blur radius and focal depth like this to achieve the desired effect, apply keyframes to animate the blur and focus transition, and voila!
Now for the text masking effect so the text appears behind the person, we duplicate the depth map and call it ‘Text Depth map’, we then change the levels effect on the depth map image
layer and adjust it so the foreground is a solid white colour (white). This will control the blur area of the text.
Finally, we add a text layer, parent it to the text depth map layer, select the track matt layer as the text depth map, apply a Luma matte, invert the luma mat by clicking the box to the right of it, and now you have a completed focus pull effect.
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