Sometimes when looking at a portrait it’s easy to slip into the hard edged gritty look and move further away from the glamour that the 1950′s introduced. Women want to look nice on their photographs and there’s a simple effect to do that. It only takes a minute, works on any portrait and it looks great.
In this short tutorial, we’ll show you how to do the basic effect as well as a hint on giving it a more up to date feel. You’ll need an editing suite that has a capability of layers.
1) Choose the Picture
Select the photograph you want to make the changes on and open it up in your editing suite. We used Adobe Photoshop CS4. In CS4, this is done by either clicking on File, Open and selecting the file from the appropriate folder. Or you can press Control and ‘O’ together. A third option is to open the folder in a separate window and dragging it in but this takes a few seconds longer.
2) Create a duplicate layer
Edit the picture as you’d like to then go to Layer, Duplicate Layer and rename it if you wish. Click OK.
3) Blur it out
On the duplicated layer, go to Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur. Set a value of around 10 or what you prefer but don’t really go below that setting.
4) Refocus
By this stage, you’ll be left with a picture that is vastly out of focus. With the duplicated layer selected, go to the Layers pallette on the right of the window. Select the Opacity slider and drop it from 100% to around 60% but watch the picture and judge it for yourself.
Result
There you have it, a portrait with a lovely glow simply by using a duplicated layer and a blur filter. You can give it a more up to date feel by using the eraser on a soft brush and delete the blur on the eyes to keep them sharp. Maybe also highlighted areas of the hair.
Make sure you merge your layers by pressing Control and ‘E’ or going to Layer and selecting one of the Merge or Flatten options at the bottom of the list. Save your file and relish in your accomplishment.
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