An important concept in After Effects is the idea of a “blur map”: a layer that tells you how to blur another layer. This is often used in compositing – often in conjunction with multi-channel 3d renders – to help you create a sense of depth by blurring areas that the camera’s not focused on. But it there are also a lot of creative uses for blur maps, as well.

The two movies below cover the original Compound Blur effect, which is a good introduction to the idea of how to use a blur map. The first movie focuses on how to put it to good use:

While the second movie focuses on its shortcomings:

At the end of that second movie above, we mention Lens Blur as a better alternative to Compound Blur. Therefore, that’s the effect we’re going to feature next week.

These movies previously appeared in our Insight Into Effects course on Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning. They’ve retired that course from their library, so we’re making them available publicly for free.