In photography, scattered scene is the fuzzy aesthetic quality produced in the defocused part of the image produced by the lens. The shot has been defined as "how the shot renders the defocus.". The difference of lens aberration and aperture shape results in some lens designs blurring the image, while others produce unpleasant or distracting blurring (good and bad scatterers, respectively). The part of a scene that occurs outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use shallow focus techniques to create images with distinct out of focus areas.

Scatterers are usually most visible around small background highlights such as specular and light sources, which is why they are often associated with such areas. However, scattered views are not limited to highlights. Blurring occurs in all out of focus areas of the image.

The scatter can be simulated by convoluting the image with the kernel, which corresponds to the image taken with a real camera. Unlike conventional convolution, the kernel of this convolution depends on the distance of each image point, and at least in principle must contain the image points occluded by the objects in the foreground. In addition, the landscape is not just fuzzy. First of all, defocusing blur is convoluted by a unified disk, which requires more computation than "standard" Gaussian blur. The former produces sharp circles around the highlights, while the latter is much softer. Diffraction may change the effective shape of the blur. Some graphic editors have filters that do this, often called lens blur.

Another mechanical mechanism, called image de stabilization, has been proposed for generating scatterers in small aperture cameras, such as cameras or mobile phones, in which both the lens and the sensor move to keep the focus on one focal plane while making the nearby caustic focus. At present, this effect only blurs on one axis.

Some advanced digital cameras have the function of scatter, which can take multiple images with different apertures and focal points, and then manually synthesize them into one image. The more advanced system of scattershot uses a hardware system with two sensors, one of which takes photos as usual, while the other records depth information. After taking a picture, you can apply the scatter effect and refocus to the image.

In 2009, a research team at MIT's media lab showed that the effect could be used to make small, imperceptible barcodes or bokodes. By using a bar code as small as 3 mm and having a small lens over it, if the bar code cannot be seen by an ordinary camera focused at infinity, the generated image is large enough to scan the information in the bar code.