Yeah this is an easy trick I saw in a book called Down and Dirty Tricks by Scott Kelby.
open your image
make a quick mask (press q)
press d to make black the foreground colour
use the Gradient tool and draw a line from the area you want out of focus to the area you want in focus. Make sure the Gradient tool is set to Foreground to Background
A red to transparent mask appears
switch back to normal mode (q again)
Feather the mask (20 is good) Under Select – feather
Use Filter Blur. I used Gaussian Blur.
It’s hard to tell if fades away with Gaussian but just try putting in a motion blur to test and you can see the blur fades in.
Ciao
Richard
"Barb Meunier" wrote in message
Is this a possibility? I am trying to acheive photographic dept of field focus where the blur increases as it falls into the background. Any suggestions would be appreciated!