How to make your backgrounds more cinematic by adding blur

Let’s say you’re working on a green screen video. Or maybe you have a cutout photo of a person or some other subject / object. And you want to your green screen person or cutout photo on top of a background image.

One easy and quick way to make your green screen videos or cutout photo scenes look better is to blur the background, which will add some depth of field to your scene.

A blurred background makes your main subject stand out and gives it focus. It also looks more realistic and cinematic, as if it were shot with a professional DSLR camera.

Before: Regular background

After: Blurred background

Here is how you add blur in Camtasia…

1. Click on Annotations
2. Click on Blur & Highlight
3. Select the rectangle Blur and drag it on top of your background image (and below your main subject)
4. Click and drag the corners on the Blur to make it fit over your background image
5. Adjust the Opacity to make it more or less blury (for the example above I used 100% Opacity)