Mr. Vaughan's Non-Specific Computer Technology, Educational, IT Security, and Photography Blog

Using Gaussian Blur for Photo Touch Ups – Part 1 of 3

In this three part series I’m going to show you how to use the same Photoshop filter in 3 different ways. Nearly all the steps in this tutorial are the same with just a few subtle differences.

All three parts will be available at the following links:
Part 1 – Creating the Soft Blur Effect
Part 2 –  Silky smooth skin in photoshop
Part 3 – Increasing the background blur in macro photography

Part 1 – Creating the Soft Blur Effect

This effect is commonly used in wedding photography to give your images a whimsical and dreamy feel to them and its really quite simple to accomplish.

Today I am going to be using a picture of my wife on a fairy on London River Thames.

 

Start by duplicating the layers of whatever image you are going to work with.To duplicate the layer simply right click on it from the layers window and select duplicate.

 

Now select your new layer and apply a Gaussian blur to it. To do this select the filter menu from the top menu, then choose Blur -> Gaussian Blur.

The amount of blur you apply to this image will depend on the quality of the image. My image was taken on a digital slr at the highest quality setting so my images are all quite large. For lower quality images you would apply less blur. Play around with the sliding scale until you have a enough blur to slightly blur your image without loosing to much of the detail.

After you blur the image should like pretty fuzzy. From here we are going to blend the blur effect with the original layer. To do this simply adjust the layer opacity to anywhere from 40-60% or until you get your desired effect.

Finally here is the finished image. Some editors add additional blending options to the blurred photoshop layer but I am not going to get into that with this tutorial.