Special thanks to Kevin Connery <keradwc@earthlink.net>
for sending in this month's
Photoshop tip: Photographic Diffusion
Filter
Dear DT&G...
I recently did a demonstration of some Photoshop tips at a local graphics group;
I've enclosed the PDF for one which I think your readers
might enjoy.
. . . It's simulating the effects of a diffusion filter--you
know, the 'soft lens' look often used for portraiture--and it's incredibly easy to
do.
Run a gaussian blur then use the Filter > Fade Gaussian Blur to either Lighten
or Darken.
Easy, sure, but there's so much in Photoshop that most people don't know about
Enjoy!
Simulated Diffusion Filters in Photoshop
Sometimes an image is too sharp, or you want to make it look softer—not blurry or
out of focus, but less crisp. Photographers havea number of tricks to accomplish
this, includingso-called soft-focus lenses and diffusion filters. Simulating the
look of either in Photoshop is very easy.
. . . When a diffusion filter is added to the lens when
taking a picture, the highlights bleed into the shadows, lightening them and blurring
the edges somewhat. If that same filter is used in the darkroom when printing a negative,
the shadows bleed into the highlights.
. . . We can do either of those tricks using the Gaussian
Blur filter and the Fade... command for filters. Because I don’t have any photographs
appropriate for this, I used an image from Nova Development’s 525,000 clip art collection.
* At 240 dpi, I used Filter > Gaussian Blur
on each blurred sample using a radius of 5, then used the Filter > Fade command
to set the mode to Lighten or Darken as desired.
(Note that the choice of blur radius is very much related to final output resolution.
This may take some experimentation.) The results are below: Original, Lighten, then
Darken.
Click to view the actual size images
