A quick "Glamour Blur" in Photoshop

A quick “Glamour Blur” in Photoshop

The photographic portrait is a photographic variant that offers many possibilities, both when taking the photo, such as when processing.

In regards to shooting, there are many possibilities to determine the final result: different planes, angles, lighting, etc..

Of course, the section processed also offers many options and tweaks that apply to improve our portraits: porcelain skin, other smoothing techniques, removing spots and blemishes, tooth whitening, improves iris, enhancing the brightness of the eyes, etc..

In today’s article we will see a new option processing retouching with Photoshop. Want to know what it is?

From here my gratitude to your good work and great work to allow many photography enthusiasts improve both the performance, and processing photographs.

Tip: My 5 Tips to Improve the Processing Of Your Photos

What we search With This Effect?

This effect is intended to reduce the sharpness in regions of less important portrait: background, blemishes and wrinkles of the skin and keep those really important areas of a picture: eyes, lips, hair, etc..

Thus, a ‘glamorous blur “(very well chosen name, by the way), which is achieved by offering a soft image and at the same time, very hard for him who observes it.

Best if we see a picture, right? Here’s an example of an image to which the effect has been applied to understand better what was described in the previous two paragraphs.

It is possible that this resolution does not appreciate good effect, so I’ll put a comparison with a resolution at 100%, to see if they better appreciated, right?

What do you think?, You appreciate the improvements achieved?, You see as you reduced the sharpness in the background, so much less distracting, and has also achieved a much smoother skin? Well see how I do with Photoshop.

Glam-Blur Effect: Step by Step

If you want to apply this effect to your photos, you should start by opening the image in Photoshop and then follow these steps.

1. Create a copy of the original layer (Ctrl + J) on which we will apply the adjustment, leaving the layer with the original image below. Thus we always have on hand the original image.

2. We remove small stains and imperfections that may appear in the skin through the Spot Healing Brush.

3. If necessary, we reduce wrinkles and bags with the patch. The operation of this tool is very simple: the correct region is selected and once selected, drag to the area that is to be taken as a sample. Photoshop is released and makes the correction.

The steps described so far are not really part of the effect, but can be very useful to achieve a better result. So now it really begins “Glam-Blur effect.”

4. We create two copies of the retouched layer (Ctrl + J). The top call it “Darken” and lower “Clear” and apply the following settings on them.

Darken: We apply Gaussian blur of 15px and modify its blending mode to “Darken”.

Clarify: 25px apply Gaussian blur and modify its blending mode to “Lighten”.

5. We hide the bottom two layers and the layers “Clear” and selected “Darken”, combine them through the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E and we call this layer “Glam-Blur”, may remove previous.

6. On this layer apply a layer mask. The purpose of this mask is to eliminate blur those parts that must be perfectly sharp. I.e. hide the content focus and make visible the distinct layer in those regions should be focused.

Therefore, we will paint with black on the mask. It is very important to go play with the opacity of the brush to achieve greater clarity, for example, eyes, lips and hair.

To facilitate the task of identifying the areas to be painted with the brush can be interesting to reduce the opacity of the top layer, so you can see a little better the content of the layer beneath.

7. The last step is, once the region on which apply blur defined, vary the opacity of the layer to determine the intensity of the blur. See, for example, the huge difference between an opacity of 80% and 20%.

To achieve a more natural, I also agree that it should be handled opacity around 30%. Although everything is a matter of taste and vary the slider to achieve the desired result.

The end result? Here it is (with an opacity of 39%).

A Practice!

All clear, no doubt about it, right? If No, then do not worry and question to understand perfectly.

And once you have it, put it into practice and show the results. We look forward to seeing examples of applying the effect. What are you waiting for? Forward!

A quick "Glamour Blur" in Photoshop