Will anyone show me how to soften my images?

CL
Posted By
Charlie Lj
Apr 25, 2004
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565
Replies
13
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Closed
Will anyone show me how to soften my images? I like to know how to soften my images like many of the studio photographer does. The senior picture taking at the studio appear to be very soft. Is there a feature in Photoshop CS will accomplish this result? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Charlie
Related Tags
how image show soft

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H
Ho
Apr 25, 2004
If you know how to use Actions, you can try this. < http://share.studio.adobe.com/axQuickSearchSubmit.asp?txt=ed garian+blur&allprods=2&submit1.x=19&submit1.y=11>

Or you can the Diffuse Glow filter. Try running in on a duplicate layer and use different fades and blending modes. EXPERIMENT!
L
LenHewitt
Apr 25, 2004
Charlie,

The best advice is to use a softening filter (or Vaseline on a UV filter) at the taking stage, but you can blur areas of an image by masking and then running the blur, blur more or Gaussian blur (etc.) filters
DN
DS_Nelson
Apr 26, 2004
Something that’s very easy (that’s why I’m aware of it) is to dupe the layer, apply Gaussian blur to the top layer, then reduce the opacity of the blurred layer to suit.
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Apr 26, 2004
Charlie,

In addition to the aforementioned techniques, I ran a search in on Google for "photoshop" and "soft focus", and the following tutorial was one of the linked resources: < http://www.digital-creativity.org.uk/tutorials/tutorial_12.h tml>

Other links also turned up in this search and might prove useful if you run it yourself.

Regards,

Daryl
CL
Charlie Lj
Apr 26, 2004
Thank you very very much! I’ll give that a try.

Charlie
DM
Don_McCahill
Apr 26, 2004
Not having seen the portrait you want to emulate, I can’t be sure, but I suspect that one of the reasons it looks good is the lighting. You cannot get the same softening effect through Photoshop on a single-point lit photo that you will get on a studio lit image using two or three light sources, and bounce rigs.
CC
Chris_Cox
Apr 26, 2004

1) duplicate layer
2) Gaussian Blur the layer
3) Set the blend mode to lighten
4) adjust opacity to taste
CL
Charlie Lj
Apr 26, 2004
Many thanks to all of you. It works pretty good with those steps…not perfect as Don mentioned but for not taking in studio, I’m okay with that.

Charlie
DN
DS_Nelson
Apr 26, 2004
OK, so I left out one step…not bad for a non-creative engineer type. 😀
AB
Andrew_Bokelman
Apr 26, 2004
Hi Charlie. I recently initiated some online discussion where people can learn and practice this and similar techniques, get feedback, etc.

This first one demos a very basic soften technique, then shows how to add glow via a very simple layer technique.

http://www.innographx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1621

This one might be fun too. It throws a whammy into the curves, along with soft and glow.

http://www.innographx.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1624
CL
Charlie Lj
Apr 27, 2004
Again, thank you. I’ll give two links some practice.

Charlie
S
suzwil
May 3, 2004
you can also do selective softening with a mask.Dupe the layer, gaussian blur it, add a mask to the blurred layer, Invert the mask, Ctrl-I/Command-I then using a soft brush with WHITE in the foreground box in the toolbar "paint in" the softening where you want it, this is a good method for portraits because you generally want the eyes to stay sharp, and the background more soft than the rest of the image etc.
L
lands
May 3, 2004
When I soften a portrait I use the gausan blur filter on a dup layer to the desired effect (usually 2.8 or 3) then erase the eyes mouth hair and anything else I want to stay sharp in the shot from the layer. I also erase around the tip of the nose at about 40%.

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