Easy Soft Focus Lens Effect

Written By Steve Patterson

Here's the photo I'll be using in this tutorial:


And here's how it will look with the soft focus effect applied:


Let's get started!

Step 1: Duplicate The Background Layer

With our image newly opened in Photoshop, we can see in the Layers palette that we currently have one layer named Background. This layer contains our original image:


We need to make a copy of the Background layer. There's a few different ways to make a copy of a layer in Photoshop, but by far the fastest and easiest way is to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac). Photoshop creates a copy of the Background layer for us, names it "Layer 1", and places it directly above the original Background layer in the Layers palette:


Step 2: Apply The Gaussian Blur Filter To The New Layer

To create the soft focus effect, we need to blur the new layer. For that, we can use one of the most popular filters in all of Photoshop, Gaussian Blur. Make sure you have "Layer 1" selected in the Layers palette (selected layers are highlighted in blue), then go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur:


This brings up the Gaussian Blur dialog box. To control the amount of blurring that's applied to the layer, drag the Radius slider at the bottom of the dialog box while keeping an eye on your image in the document window. Dragging the Radius slider to the right will increase the amount of blurring, and dragging to the left decreases the amount of blurring. What you're trying to do here is blur the entire photo without blurring it to the point where you can no longer make anything out in the image. I'm going to set my Radius value to around 12 pixels, which works well for the image I'm using. Of course, each image is unique, and the Radius value you end up using may be different:


Click OK when you're done to apply the blurring to the layer and exit out of the Gaussian Blur dialog box. Here's my image after applying the Gaussian Blur filter:


Step 3: Lower The Opacity Of The Blurred Layer

At the moment, the blurring is much too intense. Instead of a soft focus effect, we've recreated how the world might look to someone who needs glasses. We need to reduce the amount of blurring and bring back some of the original image. To do that, all we need to do is lower the opacity value of the blurred layer. You'll find the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette. With "Layer 1" still selected, lower the opacity value of the layer down to somewhere between 50-60%. I'm going to lower mine to 50%:


The blurring is now more subtle:


Step 4: Add A Layer Mask

At this point, the basic soft focus effect is complete, but let's fine-tune things by bringing back a little more of the original detail to certain parts of the photo, specifically the two people's faces and the flower bouquet. Photoshop makes this easy to do thanks to layer masks.

First, let's add a layer mask. With "Layer 1" still selected, click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:


Nothing will appear to have happened yet in the document window, but a layer mask thumbnail has now been added to "Layer 1" in the Layers palette:


Step 5: Select The Brush Tool

Select Photoshop's Brush Tool from the Tools palette, or simply press the letter B to access it with the keyboard shortcut:


Step 6: Lower The Opacity Of The Brush To Around 25%

We're going to paint with black on the layer mask to reduce the amount of blurring in certain areas, but we don't want to remove the blurring completely. We just want to reduce it, which means we'll need to lower the opacity of our brush. With the Brush Tool selected, the Options Bar at the top of the screen changes to show options specifically for the Brush Tool. One of those options is Opacity, similar to the opacity option we just looked at in the Layers palette except that in this case, we're affecting the brush opacity, not the layer opacity. Lower the brush opacity down to around 25%:


Step 7: Set Your Foreground Color To Black

We want to paint with black, which means we need to set our Foreground color to black. By default, whenever you have a layer mask selected, Photoshop sets the Foreground color to white, with black as the Background color. To swap them so black becomes the Foreground color, simply press the letter X on your keyboard. If we look at the Foreground and Background color swatches near the bottom of the Tools palette now, we can see that black is the Foreground color (the top left swatch):


Step 8: Paint Over The Areas Where You Want To Bring Back More Detail

With the Brush Tool selected, black as the Foreground color, and the brush opacity lowered to 25% or so, simply paint over any areas where you want to bring back more of the original image detail. You can change the size of your brush using the left and right bracket keys on your keyboard, which are located to the right of the letter P. The left bracket key makes the brush smaller, while the right bracket key makes it larger. You'll want to use a soft-edge brush, and you can control the edge hardness of the brush by holding down the Shift key and pressing the left and right bracket keys. Press Shift+left bracket a few times to make the edges softer, or Shift+right bracket a few times to make the edges harder.

I'm going to paint over the bride and groom's faces with my brush to bring back some detail. If, after painting over an area once, you find you could still bring back a bit more detail, simply release the mouse button, then click and paint over the same area again. You'll need to make sure you release your mouse button before you paint over the same area again, otherwise it won't work:


I'll paint a couple of times over the flower bouquet as well to bring back some detail, and I'll leave the rest of the image alone so that only the most important areas of the photo are in focus. Or at least, they're more in focus than anything else. If we look at the layer mask thumbnail again in the Layers palette, we can see the areas where I painted with black:


And with that, we're done! Here is my final "soft focus" effect result:

Why Colors are King | Color Theory

Author: Brian McGregor

You may not realize it, but many of your website visitors form an immediate opinion about you and your website. The opinion that is formed in this instantaneous way is done so subconsciously. You might wonder why this happens. It has absolutely nothing to do with the text on your website. And yet your visitor will still form their instant opinion without even reading a single word of your costly copy.

It doesn't matter either, whether the quality of the images on your website are of the highest. Nor does your offer matter. You could be promoting a sensational deal, like selling dollars for dimes. But this too, will be overlooked by the site visitor. This is because the instant opinion is made when your web page is displayed to your visitor. You may have guessed there is something subliminal at work here. In a way, that is right. Immediate opinions are formed by visitors to every single website. This may surprise you, but the answer is colors. Your visitor's instant opinion of your website is primarily due to the color scheme which you have used.

This is because colors are psychological. They engender an intuitive reaction which we can't control. We can't help ourselves. Colors bring us these emotions and feelings whether we want them or not! As you will know, millions are spent by big companies in deciding the correct colors of new products and in their marketing campaigns. Big companies realize that colors are a psychological feature, and they can influence our reception of their marketing. In their business propositions, the big companies understand that the use of appropriate colors is a key element. What webmasters have to realize, and this can be very important, is that the same color psychology applies to our web pages.

By the psychological power you could encourage your website visitors to leave your page the instant they see it. No matter what your website is about, it may simply be unsuccessful due to the colors you're using. Forget the text, it might never be read! The good news, however, is that you can use colors to engender a really positive reaction. This color psychology is nothing new. In fact, it's been with us for years and years. Whatever our role in life, colors convey emotions to our subconscious mind.

For example, a particular color scheme could convey a good feeling in each of us. However, a different color scheme might convey not so good feelings. In essence, you might send a sense trust, warmth and belonging. Conversely, the feeling sent may be one of distrust, coolness and rejection. The following list gives an idea of the emotions associated with their respective colors:

Red Excitement, energy, danger, love, leadership, sense of power, strength etc

Orange Comfort, steadfastness, cheerfulness, courage, confidence, playfulness, friendliness etc

Yellow Curiosity, brightness, organization, intelligence, joy, amusement, caution etc

Green Harmony, nature, money, healing, health, life, food etc

Blue Trustworthiness, stability, peace, tranquility, love, acceptance, patience etc

Purple Nobility, dignity, independence, royalty, luxury, ambition, wisdom etc

Brown Reliability, nature, comfort, tribal, earthiness, durability, primitive etc

Black Sophistication, dramatic, power, formality, style, health, elegance etc

White Innocence, cleanliness, fresh, goodness, easy, simplicity, purity etc

When designing your web pages, you ideally need to ensure that the color scheme you use is consistent with your offering. The reason is that your visitors' subconscious minds will look to reconcile the color with the message. If they are irreconcilable, you will find your visitors click away from your page very quickly. Which means, your visitor will be lost. The important issue therefore is that it is essential the right color scheme is used on your website. If you do this, your website will produce the results you're looking for. In summary, the difference between the right and wrong color scheme on your website can be the difference between profit and loss.

Change Color with Hue/Saturation

1. Open your image and duplicate its background layer.



2. Staying in the layer copy go to Image > Adjustment > Hue/Saturation

3. Check Colorize in the Hue/Saturation panel and adjust Hue and Saturation until you have the color you want in the desired place of the image (Hue will change color, Saturation - its intensity). Don't bother about the rest of the image, we will deal with it in the next step.



4. Add a layer mask to the layer with modified color and choose a round soft brush. With the foreground color set to black start masking the parts of the image you don't want to be colorized.



5. You can correct what you are doing at any time by changing the foreground color to white and revealing the masked part.



6. After masking is done you can regulate the intensity of the color by changing the layer opacity. I set it to 66%.




If the layer is retained for further use in a .psd file you can change the color of your object to any other at any moment.

Photo to Illustration (Quick Vector Art)

I am going to show you that is quick and easy way to convert a picture in illustration vector effect. Here we go!

Step 1: First I will start with an image.



Step 2: Duplicate the Background layer.



Step 3: Now apply the Cutout filter (Filter => Artistic => Cutout). On the left side the amount of detail in the vector can be controlled by adjusting the Number of Levels, Edge Simplicity and Edge Fidelity sliders. For this example I am using 5 levels, with the Edge Simplicity set to 3 and Edge Fidelity set to 3. Click OK.



Step 4: You can trace the areas of color divided by the Cutout filter with the Poster Edges Filter. For this example the Edge Thickness is set to 2, Edge Intensity to 1 and Posterization to 4. Click OK.



Step 5: The color can be changed subtly with a Photo Filter adjustment layer.



Step 6: And finally, to add to the 'colored' effect, a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer will help take away the natural highlights/shadows even more.



Step 7: Here is my final vector image:

Fashion Retouching: Advanced Soft Focus

In this tutorial I will showyou an old technique done in the digital age with much more precision and control. We will look at two techniques used in fasion retouching for a face and you will see on my example how each one looks. So let's get started!



I'm going to use an image I shot recently of Stasha. In case you are interested - this was shot with two flashes bounced off nearby walls and a soft gold reflector which you can see in the background. It was done for a group photography exhibition which opened recently in Slovenia.



Duplicate the existing layer (Ctrl+J) and go to filter/blur/gaussian blur. Don't copy the settings I have but try to mimic the relative effect (amount of blur) I got. Since the radius number relies on how big the image is you can't really use it as a always-works setting. Hit OK.



The next step is to set the opacity value to 50%. You can go lower (I usually go as low as 20%) but to make the effect apparent I am going to use this value. Leave the blending mode to normal at this point or try soft light.



Soft focusing makes the eyes lack detail and this might be a problem for a lot of photographers using film. With digital we can get over this problem by selectively masking out areas we want to attract more attention. In my case this was the lips and both eyes. I created a show-all layer mask and with a big soft brush clicked on the parts where I wanted focus to have a bit less effect.



This image has the same blur layer but this time the blending mode is set to screen and the layer mask is turned off (if it wasn't it would create a skull-like effect with dark outlines around the eyes). Personally I like this effect the most so I'm keeping it.



To add some extra spark to the image I have added a curves adjustment layer to brighten up her eyes a bit. And that's it, this concludes the fashion retouching tutorial, I hope you had a nice time. If you have any comments about it I would like to hear them either here as comments. Have a nice one!

Do you Know About RSS Feed?

Author: Subhash Kumar


RSS is a format for syndicating content and metadata over the Internet. It is commonly used to share headlines and links to news articles. With news articles, the actual article isn't usually shared, but metadata about the article is; this metadata can include a headline, a URL, or a summary. RSS is an important tool for publishers because feeds can be used to syndicate content, and to integrate third-party content into your site.

Article about RSS Feeds; RSS is a form of eXtensible Markup Language or XML. Viewing an RSS feed in a web browser generally produces code that is not easy for website visitors to decipher. As a result, webmasters use tools to display the content contained in an RSS feed.

Benefit to the Webmaster:

As the web has become more crowded webmasters have been striving to provide fresh and up to date content for their website visitors. Many webmasters have discovered they can easily utilize the information in RSS feeds to provide fresh web content.

RSS Allows Webmasters:

• Provide fresh and relevant content on their website, which encourages users to return.

• Constantly changing content means that search engine spiders will visit more frequently.

• Automate content delivery.

Benefit to Web Surfers:

The beauty of RSS is that readers can quickly scan headlines (titles) and read articles of interest. Because the information is condensed and provided in a single location users can generally review more information in a shorter time frame. Additional information is only a click away. Best of all readers choose the feeds they wish to see, there is no spam with RSS. If you are not completely thrilled with the content appearing in a feed simply remove it from the newsreader.

RSS Allows for Users:

• Easily locate information.

• Read condensced information or 'soundbytes' with clearly marked and dated topic material.

• Classify and categorize information in an easy to navigate manner.

• Maximize their time without having to deal with spam.

RSS feeds can be viewed in a news aggregator or reader, which constantly updates and shows unread feeds. I found the functionality of the newsreaders to be similar to a simple email client. Consumers generally enter the URL of any RSS feeds that interest them.

RSS Allows for Content Developer:

• Increase exposure in niche markets.

• Communicate with user bases and reach potential customers via an alternate communication method.

• Disseminate relevant information.

• Define themselves as an industry expert.

• Automate content delivery.

RSS has effectively standardized the format for content delivery and has effectively defined the accepted standard for content distribution and syndication. RSS will likely rival email as a means of content distribution in another few years. The shear simplicity makes the technology very appealing.

How RSS is used:

• A publisher has some content that they want to publicize.

• They create an RSS channel for their content.

• In this channel, they include items for Web pages they want to promote.

• This channel can be read by remote applications, and converted to headlines and links. These links can be incorporated into new Web pages, or read in dedicated readers.

• People see the links on various sites, click on them, and go to the original publisher's site.

While headline syndication is the most common use for RSS, it is also used for many other purposes. RSS is a very popular format in the weblog community. It's also used for photo diaries, classified ad listings, recipes, reviews, and for tracking the status of software packages.

Benefit of Using RSS:

RSS is an easy way for you to be alerted when content that interests you appears on your favorite Web sites. Instead of visiting a particular Web site to browse for new articles and features, RSS automatically tells you when something new is posted online. Click on the section title link to obtain the RSS URL, which you will see in the "Address" field of your browser. Simply copy this URL and follow the instructions for your particular news reader to subscribe.

Magnifying Glass

1. In this tutorial I'll explain how you can create an image zoom effect using the magnifying glass. First of all you'll need a screenshot of something you want to magnify, in my case I searched for the word magnify on wikipedia and took a screenshot of it. Then I openened photoshop (edit - paste) on a new document (800*600).



2. Now you'll need a picture of a magnifying glass, below this second step you can download one or drag it on your document, it should already be transparent. Everything should look like the second picture for now…





3. Now select the inside area of the magnifying glass using your magic wand tool, that will become the part of the screenshot that we will magnify.



4. Now go to (edit - cut) and make sure you've selected the layer with your screenshot. After that just go to (edit - paste) to paste the selection which will be magnified! Everything should look like the previous step but now the magnified part will be on another layer.



5. After that it's time to shrink our screenshot layer. So select it and go to (edit - transform - scale). In the screenshot below you can see that I changed it with 25% to 75% instead of 100%. Please make sure you move the layer with the screenshot so that you can't see the part where we cut out the magnified piece.



6. This time we'll add a gaussian blur to the layer with the screenshot. Select it and go to (filter - blur - gaussian blur) with a radius of about 2px.



7. In this step we'll add some depth to our magnifying glass, so go ahead and select the right layer and add a drop shadow (layer - layer style - drop shadow). The settings I've used are shown in the image below.



8. Now select the layer you've cut out in step 4 and add an inner shadow (layer - layer style - inner shadow) with the following settings.



9. That's it, you've just created an image zoom effect using a magnifying glass! Here is my final result! You can download the .psd file if you have a problem or contact me!