Beautify Your Photos With Blur - Add artistic accents with your photo editor or specialized software

Add artistic accents with your photo editor or specialized software.
Razor-sharp focus is not always the right prescription for a perfect photo. Adding subtle blur effects can impart a surreal or a romantic tone to your image. Check out any original Star Trek episode to see what soft focus can do for a scene.

One way that photographers used to get a soft-focus effect was by applying gel to their camera's lens. Another method was to use a special soft-focus lens, which has a single optical element that was physically unable to produce a sharply focused image. You get sharper--or softer--images based on the aperture setting that you shoot with.

These days, of course, blur and soft-focus effects are just a few clicks away in any photo editing program. I'll show you a trick in Adobe Photoshop Elements, but you can translate it to your favorite photo editing program.
Blur the Background With Photoshop Elements

Take this photo of my daughter, for example. Suppose I wanted to make it a little more interesting.

I'll use the same sort of technique that I described last week in the lesson on sharpening. Start by choosing Layer, Duplicate Layer, and then click OK. Make sure you have selected the top layer (click the top layer in the Layer Palette on the right side of the screen) and then add some blur.

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