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How To Enhance A Portrait with a Soft Focus Effect
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| Soft focus effect for enhancing portrait photos. (It
looks even better on hi-res images.) |
This simple technique works especially well on portraits, but don't
hesitate to try it on other types of images. The effect produces a warm
glow, softening details and diminishing noise and artifacts similar to a
soft focus or diffusion lens filter. This technique will work in
Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and most other photo editors with layers
and blend modes.
Here's How:
- Open the photo.
- Duplicate the background layer by dragging it to the new layer
icon on the layers palette.
- Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the radius to 10 pixels
and click OK.
- Set the blend mode of the blurred layer to soft light.
- Optional: reduce the opacity of the blurred layer to slightly
reduce this effect.
Tips:
- Experiment with other blend modes such as screen, hard light,
overlay or others.
- Screen will lighten the photo, so try it on photos that are too
dark. Hard light and overlay will darken the picture, so try it on
photos that are too light.
- The darken blend mode sometimes produces a watercolour-like
effect.
- If you don't like the effect in certain areas of the image you can
erase portions of the top layer with a soft brush.
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Enhance - The Menu for Instant Results
1.
Quick Fixing an Image (Adobe tutorial)
2. Now let's practice with some real pictures. Click
on the thumbnail pictures below.
3.
Download (save) the larger photos from their pop-up windows:
-
Windows: Right click your mouse on the photo.
Choose Save Picture As....
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Mac:
Hold
down the control key and click on the photo. Choose
Download Image to Disk.
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Image/Rotate/Straighten and Crop Image |
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Enhance/Quick Fix:
-
Rotate
-
Brightness/Auto Levels
Image/Rotate/Straighten
A
Better Way to
Rotate
and Crop
Sharpen
with
Unsharp Mask |
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Tip: Use the multiple undo tool when
you don't like the results... 
or...
-
Control-Z is the undo button. Control-Y
goes forward.
You
can use this button to literally go backward and undo all the
manipulation steps you have made so far.
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