How-To: Soft Focus Effect in Photoshop
Well, it’s time for my first “how-to,” and this one is a pretty cool one—creating a “soft focus” effect within Photoshop. This works well for flower shots, but it can also be used very nicely with portraiture. Basically, what I’m going to show you how to do is to take an image, like the one on the top below and transform it into the one on the bottom, which gains a sort of surreal effect. Click either of the pictures for a better look at what I’m describing.
This is really simple to achieve, and can be a lot of fun—read on for detailed steps.
- Open up Photoshop and load the image you want to apply the effect to.
- Make sure the Layers palette is open. If it isn’t go to Windows → Layers
- Right-click (or Ctrl+Click for Mac users) the background layer and select “Duplicate Layer.” Press “OK” in the dialog that pops up. A new layer should appear right above the existing one.
- Now, make sure that layer is selected and go to Filter → Blur → Gaussian Blur.
A dialog similar to the one shown should appear.
- Adjust the radius. I’ve set mine to be 5 pixels here, but this is completely up to you: a larger radius will result in a softer image and a smaller radius will result in a sharper image. Press “OK.”
- You should now see a fairly blurry image, now we need to adjust the opacity of the layer. Just go over to the Layers palette, make sure the blurry layer (the top one) is selected and then press the arrow next to “Opacity” to adjust the opacity of the layer—this will allow you to “see” more of the bottom layer.
You should play around with this until you like the way it looks, and guess what? - You’re done!